Back to knitting

I decided (after getting home from my evening class last night) that I didn't feel like sewing the binding on the quilt just then. (I think part of my new mantra is not forcing myself to do things I don't feel like, especially if they don't negatively affect me (like not doing exercise would) or other people).

So I pulled out the current pair of "simple socks." I always have a pair of these going - they are portable, so I can grab them when I need to wait somewhere (I knit on them while waiting at the doctors'. I've read that knitting can decrease blood pressure; I worry to think what mine might have read if I hadn't had the knitting while in the waiting room). They're also good when you're tired and don't feel like something that takes full attention (sewing the binding kind of does, because I like to keep the stitches small and invisible).

So it's nice to have some kind of simple project going.

These socks are approaching completion. The yarn is (IIRC) Claudia's handpaints in a color called "ancient pottery" (This may be a discontinued color; I know I got it on a good sale from Simply Sock Yarn or somewhere). It's a mix of sort of a pale orange grading into almost burnt sienna, gray, and turquoise. As I said before: I don't know enough anthropology to know what, if any, culture actually glazed their pots in those colors, but it is kind of an interesting combination. And I like the base yarn Claudia uses - it's slicker and smoother than some yarns (I think it is all merino wool).

I'm also closing in on finishing "Bleak House." I can tell, because Dickens is doing the typical Victorian-novelist thing of taking the 40 or so characters he developed and introduced, and is beginning to show how they are all interconnected, how their paths all tend to cross. (That may be partly why I like Victorian novelists - not so much all the characters (sometimes I feel like I need notecards to keep track) but the idea that everyone's life affects many other lives, maybe in ways they don't always recognize.)

Also, one of the people I follow on Twitter (if you're reading this, hi Dyddgu!) commented that patent cases today are like the modern equivalent of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. While I don't know a whole lot about chancery law (and don't know a whole lot more, I admit, after reading Bleak House), it does seem that the long-drawn-out process, the fact that some lawyers can build an entire career on one case, does apply. (And intellectual-property law in general). And I suspect, some of the parties involved do go slightly M__ (as Miss Flite would put it, while tapping her forehead) and come to expect big settlements that may never be forthcoming.