So, I have less than a month to finish this. I'm not stressed about this at all. Really, though, I think I have almost all the bugs in the pattern figured out, so it is just a matter of getting the sample finished. The good news is that over the next month, I have many opportunities to knit on long car rides, and stripes are fun to knit, so I hope to make enough progress quickly.

This is the last of the five pattern collection, which is themed on the incense route. I love using these bright colors, because people think of the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, as a place of black and white and sand. The truth is that it is a place with a riot of color. This sweater is named after a fortified city that was the last stop to the north on the incense route before heading out to open desert. I modeled the colors and stitch patterns on textiles of that area, and I am particularly proud of the boxed corrugated ribbing. The boxes are a nod to the mud bricks of the city walls themselves.

The sweaters are both named after cities on the route, as is a stole, there is a shawl and a pair of mitts named after a tribe and ancient civilization from the route, respectively. I'm looking forward to sharing all of them with you soon.

I've made a little more progress in Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages and I finished Knit of the Living Dead. Our library does not have the rest of the series yet, so I have to wait on those.

There was another book I started, that I don't even want to share here, because it was such trash. I had seen the movie which had a lot of gratuitous violence and sex, and some unexplained events, and I thought the book might be better and explain some of that. Well, although there was more to the characters, I felt like I was having to skip half of the story because of how much explicit material was in it, so finally, after my complaints about it, Rich asked why I was still reading it, and I realized I should just stop. Honestly, I wish the author had left all the garbage out of it. There really was something to the story and characters, and he didn't have to make them all little saints for him to have a good novel, but it was like he could not figure out how to show their complexity without making it explicit and just gross. It got worse each time, too. Anyway, that was a disappointment. So, I will focus on my book about milk and wait for a happy, little murder instead.

Linking to Unraveled Wednesday.

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Labels: Books, Design, Governor Inslee Needs a Frozen Fish to the Forehead, Homemaking, Knitting, WIP, Yarn Along

// posted by Ranee @ Arabian Knits @ 9:02 AM