Three Thrills for Thursday

In keeping with Mary's theme this week of "good newses," here are three things making me happy today:

1. My Soldotna Crop is almost finished!

The body was bound off a little earlier in the week, and last night I started and finished the first sleeve. Tonight I plan to get the second sleeve done and, I hope, weave in all the remaining ends so that it's ready to block. I won't be wearing it anytime soon, as we're expecting heat indexes above 100 degrees the next couple of days, but at least I'll be able to model it around the house. I've got some less-than-stellar photos from this morning courtesy of Rainbow (who's a little shaky with the phone and, obviously, shorter than I am):

And here's a close-up of the sleeve so you can see the modification I've made (three rounds in the light blue, followed by two rounds of stranded colorwork and a round in the dark blue before the called-for ribbing):

As you can see, this sweater has a good amount of positive ease, perhaps more than I was expecting, though I'll take full responsibility for that because I'm still having trouble with accurately judging my size. I expect I'll get a bit more drape when I block it (and I'm certainly counting on it to loosen up in the collar area).

2. I'm hooking again.

One of my crafting goals for the year was to improve my crochet skills, and I decided to start with something relatively easy. Jen of the Down Cellar Studio podcast recently released a free crochet pattern for a cozy/sleeve for Ball jars, and as I unearthed a random skein of Knit Picks Dishie in my stash this past weekend, I figured it was as good an excuse as any to give it a try, particularly as we'd just bought a package of the special blue Ball jars. I was home with Rainbow a little early last night (I left a work retreat to pick her up from the camp bus, and by the time the bus came it was too late to do anything but go straight home), so I got down to business. In less than an hour, I was more than halfway done. I forgot how fast and satisfying crochet can be!

If I have time, I'll finish this up tonight -- I think I only have about a dozen more rows to do.

3. I have less than 100 pages left in my book.

I've been reading Twelve Years a Slave for the past couple of days, and I'm hoping that I'll find time to finish it up today or tomorrow. Despite the fact that it was written in the 1800s and uses language that's a bit old fashioned compared to today's books, I've found that it moves along fairly quickly. It's also a great (albeit heartbreaking) story; while it's incredibly sad that Solomon Northup found himself in slavery, it could be said to be to our benefit because, as a man who was born free and was educated, he was really uniquely positioned to write such a powerful account of what it was really like to be enslaved.

Stay cool and hydrated this weekend!