This has been a week … with not enough knitting but lots of other stuff going on!

We’ve been caught up with Kotch (almost 20) coming home from college, rehearsals of the local community theater’s summer production of Oklahoma (the three kiddoes are in the ensemble and I’m stage manager), the sudden death and funeral of a wonderful woman (we spent Monday at funeral and services to celebrate Helen’s life), and the year-end celebration for our St. Agnes Fiber Club (where we spent the last year learning tons about wool including spinning, weaving, knitting, felting, braiding and generally playing with this amazing natural fiber).

We also got tons of reading done this week: I finally read (and loved!) The Forgotten Garden, finished a few other books including The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and am almost done with a lovely book of short stories: The Return of Father Brown (which is a “sequel” to the Chesterton stories with the unobtrusive Father Brown now in his 90s and living in the mid-West … still solving “locked door” mysteries!).

Which means, for today’s yarn-along I can show you just a bit of work on the sheep blanket (the border you see is actually on all four sides) and the new books on our reading table:

On the needles:
I’m still working away at the sheep blanket … the “boring” part of knitting round and round, trying to remember to increase 8 sts (2 at each corner) every other round to ensure nice 90-degree corners. It’s coming along nicely and is perfect for me to bring with me since it’s mindless knitting at this point. Hoping to finish this weekend as I really want to start a few designs that are floating about my head, including the Design-along I mentioned yesterday.
On the reading table:
We are FINALLY ready to start reading the newest Penderwick book, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette … I have been trying to sneak in a bit of pre-reading, but the kids made me promise to wait till we could enjoy it together. We start TODAY!

I’ll be finishing up the Return of Father Brown and then moving on to Indelible by Kristen Heitzmann (Christian chicklit) and Sweater Design in Plain English-2nd Edition by Maggie Righetti (I’ve well-thumbed the first edition of this book and am really interested to see what they’ve added to this one and whether it improved it or not … I’ll post a thorough review when I’m done!).

So what are you knitting/crocheting and reading? Won’t you “yarn-along” with us? Check out Ginny’s post at small things and join in the fun … we’re all getting to be such wonderful friends!