The sample for Jamal is coming along apace. The design has two options, so I will be making at least one pair and a third, to show the variation, even if I don't get the complete second pair made. This is one of the more whimsical patterns I have designed, and I think I like it. The cuffs have the option of either one or two puffy "humps" for both decoration and warmth. So you can make either a dromedary or bactrian camel pair. The word and name that people use and often spell Jamal would really be better spelled Jamaal, as it is an extended short vowel A. The word Jamal, for camel, sounds more like the A in pedal.

I'm going to block this and see if I like the hump as it is, or if I want to change the increases a little. We shall see.

It does not look like I will be finished with the baptismal gown before the end of this month, but that is fine. I will at least be able to count the yardage from it on my race to the bottom challenge.

VBS has really put a crimp in our reading time for Sense and Sensibility, but we are still meandering our way through it. I started Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories, and am about a third of the way through it, but a hold showed up at the library for The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

I really have a love-hate relationship with these books. The author is insufferable. She cannot help but lecture the reader on her modern sensibilities, she is didactic, pompous and condescending, never failing to instruct the reader on what and how to think about that time period. Even the criticisms that people of that time might have shared are not expressed how they would have done so, and the author does not fail to make sure the reader knows exactly what to think, lest we are too stupid to come to the same conclusions she does. It breaks character, interupts the story, and is jarring. The first few paragraphs of the first chapter of this book were dedicated to her scolding lessons, and the most recent chapter I finished has a parenthetical lesson to make sure we don't think the wrong way. She should have written non-fiction essays on this, rather than trying to make a story and force her message on everyone so brutishly. I do like the characters and story, when she can step away from her lecturn, so I keep coming back, but it makes me more and more annoyed each time, and I don't know if my eyes can roll any further without falling out of my head.

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Labels: Books, Design, Homemaking, Knitting, WIP, Yarn Along

// posted by Ranee @ Arabian Knits @ 8:40 PM