So many books, not enough shelves

First, knitting project reduction progress:

Slow but steady. And somewhat obvious that switching needles at the heel flap of the first sock has affected the matchy matchiness of the pair. I'm a little OCD about sock matchy matchiness, and thus was faced with the dilemma of what to do -- keep on knitting, or rip out the second sock and re-do it so that it matches?

When I found this project, it was on four size 1 dpns (the coated alumninum kind, probably Inox/Prym). When I use dpns for socks, I like to have five. Rarely will I "make do" with four, as the triangular formation is too rigid and causes the needles to poke me in the hands. I don't have many sets of size 1 needles (true size 1's - 2.25mm - not 2.5mm, which is really a US 1 1/2), and the fifth needle was nowhere to be found, so all I had available to switch to was a 32" Harmony circ. Turns out there is enough drag on the Harmony needles to cause me to knit just a bit looser than I would on slick metal needles, which meant my gauge shifted slightly.

It's not easy to keep this sock on the needles, rather than ripping out the second sock, buying some new needles and reknitting the leg (switching to the Harmonies, of course, at the gusset, so that the feet will match on both). Instead, I will knit on, and show them to future sock knitting classes as an example of how same-size needles of different materials can affect gauge.

Oh, but it hurts.

Otherwise, we worked on the living room this weekend, picking up some shelves and a chair that the World's Best Mother-in-Law ™ won't be taking to her fab new apartment.

There is one other shelf unit, but we haven't decided whether to put it next to these three, or find another location.

See all that decorative stuff on the top shelves? That, my friends, is the first time we've had tzotchkes in our living room since having kids. (The kids are 11 and 14 now.) I dug these things out of cabinets and off high shelves in the basement. We're starting to live like grownups again.

The new shelves are much nicer looking than the shelves we used to have, but they leave us with a problem. Where to put all the books? These new shelves are more decorative than utilitarian, as far as book storage goes.

This pile will be given away


but these two boxes are keepers

as they are either books I re-read occasionally or books written by friends.

Thank goodness TWBMiL™ gave me one of these for my (upcoming) birthday.

Which will help keep the constantly-expanding number of books down to a manageable level, as I am running out of places to store books. I need it for yarn.

And guess what? There are a few knitting patterns available to download to the Kindle. I was also able to email a Cookie A sock pattern PDF from my laptop to the Kindle. Pretty cool. The downside of the Kindle is that I do most of my reading in the bathtub. I'm not keen on having the Kindle read to me. A Stephen Hawkings-ish voice reading fiction aloud doesn't do it for me. Such problems I have.

The new-to-us chair is temporarily in the kitchen, until we can move the 4th shelf (which is lying on the across the living room floor) to wherever it will go. We also need to move an existing living room chair upstairs.



Cotton quite likes the new chair, which is why it is covered with towels. He often comes in from the backyard or the garage (both of which are accessed through the kitchen) with wet and/or muddy feet. It'd be nice to keep the pseudo-suede fabric clean at least until it makes it into the living room, where he won't have ready access to it.

In other news. things are marching along on the Master Hand Knitting front. I may actually make my goal of finishing Level II before my birthday! (March 24).

See you Wednesday!