The weekend's work

 I did a little bit of schoolwork (grading, and doing some preparation of things for week after this one) but I also did some of my own stuff:

- worked more on the corner-to-corner blanket; I'm up to the next color change (a pale green) and soon will be at the end of this yarn cake, which is when I will start the decrease section. As I said, I want this for once it gets cooler again, as a replacement for the weighted blanket which I think was too heavy for me and made me be too still in my sleep (and contributed to my joint pain)

- I did the next few steps on the Moominhouse kit, including putting the "wallpaper" (which is self stick, kind of like Con-Tact paper) on one set of walls. It's tricky in places because most of the kit is wood and sometimes the pieces don't want to fit - like, the wall (which has a slight curve to it) doesn't want for its pegs to fit into the holes in the floor piece. I finally managed (by partly whittling down the pegs) to get it to mostly fit, and since you don't glue it yet, I just left it stuck into the floor, figuring maybe the humidity in my sewing room and being forced into the holes will make the wood reshape a little to fit better when I DO glue. I also assembled the dining table, but will have to get paint (white as a primer and cobalt blue to be true to the Scandinavian style). I'll have to figure out where the art students get their paints in this town; we had an art supply shop but I think they closed. Failing everything else, I could pick some up the next time I am near JoAnn Fabrics, I guess. Or mail order some. 

- I also knit a bit on the Chalcedony sweater; perhaps this will be the initial invigilating knitting for this fall; it's still at a portable stage and it's not so complicated I couldn't knit and invigilate.

- And I got more done on the (modified) Leaves of Grass socks - I am doing the lace on the legs as well as eventually on the instep instead of just doing a plain ribbed leg. I suspect the lace *takes* longer but it is a more "sticky" task for me (as in: I stick with it longer in a session) because it's less-boring than ribbing is.

That's three repeats of the pattern. I think I'm going to do four more for the leg and then do the heel flap. 

- Had a brief but bad bout of the Sunday Scaries last night - I think part of it is being alone all afternoon after church, and also this time, I had read an Albert Campion short mystery story - one of the Christmas ones, and well.....spoilers follow:

The murder (well, it wasn't INTENTIONAL) is kind of a MacGuffin here. The real story is how the it was proven the thieves who hit the victim (a mailman) with their car hinged on an old widow-woman and her celebration of Christmas.

Fundamentally, every year she "lied" to herself - took old Christmas cards from her past, almost everyone in her life she loved being dead - and she put them back in their neat envelopes, and set them under her doormat (which was how the postman delivered her mail) to get the next morning.

And yes, in those days, apparently there was Christmas mail delivery in Britain, which was why the Police Inspector was confused and it took Campion noticing the old, old postmarks on the neatly bundled envelopes as he admired the cards to realize that they dated back 20 years or more. 

And finally she embarrassedly confesses to doing it, foolish as it seems - because, as she said, everyone she had cared about was dead (she did refer to a woman and her greedy little boy coming visiting later but it's not clear if that was real). But then she commented something on the order of "Christmas is a time for love, and while all these that I loved are now gone, I still have their love, in these cards" and yeah, that was the point where I needed a minute. Because I do suspect that will be my lot in life at some point. And it is hard to think about.

I don't think I'd read that story before (despite having read a lot of Campion stories) so I wasn't prepared for that minor gut punch going in.