More Multitasking

It's another cool morning here in Western Pennsylvania, currently 55F as I type, and my toes are very happy to be wearing some wool socks! It's Wednesday, or so the calendar tells me, so I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers to chat about what I'm knitting and what I'm reading.

After finishing up my sweater, my top priority was that secret project that I couldn't show you. I'm happy to say that I finished it on Monday, and the sample has been blocked. Now I just need to finish writing up the pattern and get it and the sample off to the publisher. I'm hoping to have all that done by the end of the week. And now my sock mojo is running high!

These are socks for my mother-in-law for the holidays, and I'm nearly done with the second. One of the joys of working from home is that I can knit while I work, when feasible, and I got all of the gusset decreases on the second sock done yesterday while proofing a document. I expect I'll be able to finish this sock today, and then I'm planning on casting on some socks for my sister-in-law (who, I think, is the only member of the immediate family who has not received a pair of hand-knit socks from me because I didn't have her feet measurements until recently).

Stockinette socks are good knitting to do while reading, and I've been doing some of that this week as well. I finished another good book over the weekend (in fact, I stayed up late one night to finish it!).

A number of my well-read friends recommended Deacon King Kong, and I decided to give it a go because I really enjoyed McBride's writing in Song Yet Sung. I'll admit that when I first started reading, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it because the setting and characters seemed so wildly outside my usual areas of interest. But I have so rarely been led astray by the friends who'd recommended it, so I stuck with it. I am so glad I did! It's pretty much impossible to describe what this book is about save that it involves a cast of pretty unforgettable characters who seem like they'd be completely unrelated but wind up all being involved in one slightly crazy and very complex story. The writing is excellent and the characterization superb. I gave it 4 stars.

Currently in progress (and likely soon to be finished) is a new book, published earlier this year, that I am reading for a discussion with the group that Mary hosts on Zoom on Sundays. The Mountains Sing is set in Vietnam and is told from the point of view of two women, Tran Dieu, who struggles to raise her children and keep her family safe during the rise of Communism, and her granddaughter Huong, who is struggling to find her own way and to connect with her family in the years during and just after the Vietnam War. It's interesting to get a non-Western perspective on a conflict that was so divisive here in the United States, and the book has made it clear to me just how little I know about the region and the politics of the time.

I'm waiting on several holds from the library to come up, so there should be lots more reading in the coming days. I'd love to hear what good reads you've been getting lost in lately!