knit 1 purl 2: February 2009

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.

Ok - normally I have little respect for the NEA (memories of Robert Mapplethorpe just don't fade) but this is an interesting exercise. Apparently, studies have shown that the average American has read only 6 books on this list. The idea is to copy this list, put the titles you have read in bold, and pass it along.
Here is my list:
1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8 ) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare
15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18 ) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 ) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
34) Emma by Jane Austen
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
50) Atonement by Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52) Dune by Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
69) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte's Web by EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Top-down half sock with curious cat looking on

I am bound and determined that this is the year that I will become a true knitter. To accomplish this end, I must gather my concentration and my patience and knit a pair of socks. The word pair is key, here. Many aspiring knitters have slaved and picked and despaired their way through that first sock only to succumb to the deadly Second Sock Syndrome -- that dreaded malady where the thought of casting on another set of tiny stitches in tiny yarn on tiny needles is so over-powering. Add to that the necessity of having Sock #2 be a reasonable facsimile of Sock #1 and many a knitter falls by the wayside. This is my year -- I WILL create a pair of socks.

Attempt #1

This is a traditional "top down" sock (while not actually knitting socks, I have at least learned the lingo -- socks fall into two general categories of "top down" and "toe up"). I bought some sock yarn without reading the label as carefully as I should. That means, should this pair come to fruition, I will be hand washing them in cold water for the duration of their lifespan. I thought it would be prudent to start with a child-size pair, also -- fewer of those tiny stitches to worry about while still learning all the ins and outs of sock construction. I found a promising pattern online (Basic Child's Sock Pattern) and went to work. The sock was really coming along fairly well until I got to the heel. ...cue ominous music here...
Problem 1:
At this point, the pattern says (I'll translate for any non-knitters reading this):
Put 26 stitches on working needle
Purl 12 stitches, purl next two stitches together, purl 1 stitch and turn, leaving remaining 10 stitches unworked.
No matter how many times I read this, I can only count 25 stitches being accounted for in this step. I leave 11 unworked stitches and continue, feeling a little nervous.
Problem 2:
Now, there is a series of rows that seem to follow a logical pattern:
Slip one stitch, purl 2, purl decrease, purl 1, turn
Slip one stitch, knit 3, knit decrease, knit 1, turn
Slip one stitch, purl 4, purl decrease, purl 1, turn
Slip one stitch, knit 5, knit decrease, knit 1, turn
Slip one stitch, purl 6, purl decrease, purl 1, turn
Slip one stitch, knit 7, knit decrease, knit 1, turn
Then:
Slip one stitch, purl 8, knit decrease, purl 1, turn
Do I really want a knit stitch in the middle of this purl row?
Then, again:
Slip one stitch, knit 9, knit decrease, knit 1
Slip one stitch, purl 10, purl decrease, purl 1, turn
No "turn" after that knit row? This has to be a mistake.

Things like this were eroding my confidence very quickly. I had my own problems to worry about and couldn't be bothered worrying about the integrity of the pattern. I suppose that's what I get from scrounging a free pattern -- you get what you pay for.

I went ahead and "turned the heel" (another bit of sock lingo) for the sake of experience. I will probably finish the sock but I doubt I will try to do a mate. I would rather take that time and effort and try a different pattern.