A Little Light Knitting

There’s not much you can do about a rainy day, when the barometric pressure tanks and it’s all you can do to keep your eyes open. Best to find an activity that can be done, given those parameters.

Last night I started this:

I’ve knitted blankets, sweaters, socks and pillows but, believe it or not, I’ve never knitted a scarf. Since I have a proclivity toward losing unattached apparel, I’ve always been reluctant to sink the time and effort into something handmade that will end up in the lost and found. I picture someone picking up my creation using just their thumb and forefinger, like you do when you’re picking up someone else’s tissue, and saying, “No wonder they left it behind.” (I know, I know. I won’t be there to hear it. But, still, I worry.)

I found this mohair at the Mountain Heritage Arts and Crafts Festival in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., a few years ago and I wish I could find the card of the lady who spun it. It’s lovely and earthy, which will hopefully make me so fond of it that I will think about the scarf constantly and be immediately aware of its absence when I try to leave where I’m wearing it.

Since I find most television is, for the most part, annoying, my preference while knitting is recorded books. Today is perfect for a mystery, something with very British overtones, given the weather. Something suggesting fog, damp and moodiness. Something Doyle-esque.

Alas, I’ve read and reread all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. So, we have the next best thing: Caleb Carr’s The Italian Secretary.

Carr was chosen by Doyle’s estate to continue Holmes’s adventures, though Laurie R. King’s series in pretty interesting also, even if it is doubtful that Doyle would have ever allowed Holmes to marry.

And so, having completed the weekly Cleaning of the Bathrooms, you will know where to find me.