making a list

I feel like Twilight Sparkle. I am always like this before traveling: there are so many things one can forget that would cause problems (medications, my mouthguard, the books I plan to read towards my new class, my mom's birthday present)

I decided not to take the hexie quilt. Partly because I had my suitcase all packed when I remembered it, and I didn't feel like pulling out a couple of skeins of sockyarn to make room. Part of it is that I don't want to fold it all up and maybe knock out some of the papers around the working edges - they sort of need to stay in until I sew another hexagon on. I am taking Grasse Matinee and Celestarium - those are both pretty big projects - and some socks to work on. And a couple of little "freebee" toy kits that came with the British knitting/crochet magazines I buy: two unicorns (one knit, one crochet) and a set of three small dogs that I might knit up and set aside as a gift for my niece's birthday in October. And the yarn and eyes and pattern for Kero-chan.

I mowed the lawn again today with the mower set really low - hopefully it will not regrow so tall it's a problem. (I also used the weedwhacker on the taller stuff at the back of the yard. I'm hoping the turmoil at City Hall I've heard rumors about is going to prevent them from being too picky about yards at the moment...) I also set up a sprinkler on a timer for my garden and moved the hanging baskets back there so they benefit as well.

I started a new book to take with me (along with Tom Jones) - a vintage British mystery called Family Matters. It's a comic mystery - so far it's very funny, the intended victim is a very dislikable person and apparently the plot is a comic inversion of the old "Murder on the Orient Express" method - everyone wants to kill the guy but apparently their different methods cancel each other out and he won't die. Or at least that's the thumbnail I got from the introduction.

I really love that so many of these are being republished - they are a lot of fun (Well, some are better-written than others) and it's enjoyable to find new authors. This author wrote under the pen name Anthony Rolls and apparently there is at least one of his other books that has been republished (and I suppose there might be more).