{Yarn along} dog days

 Good sleepy morning. Is it autumn, yet?

I've been getting up every morning hoping to feel the cool crispness of the change of seasons - nothing. I've been looking out the window to see the mist roll through the hollow leaving sparkly dots on our windows - feels like a wet blanket.

At least it is autumn in my knitting. What lovely colors! I was attempting a de-stash with this rustic shrug project, but I have two skeins of the yarn and it is now evident that I will need at least four. The first skein has brought me just to where I split for the armhole.

I am reading two books at once. When the first gets too sweet and kiddy, I switch to death by malaria.  See here:

 The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma is an autobiography of a girl, now grown, told about a 3,000+ day reading streak with her father. The original plan was to read aloud for 100 straight days in a row and both discovered they enjoyed it so much, they never wanted to stop. It started when she was in elementary school and stopped only when she went away to college.

My mom was a teacher and she certainly made sure we had plenty of books but once I learned to read, no one ever read to me. This story is very sweet to me because Julian reads aloud to me now - there is something irreplaceable about a book shared at the same time in the same place.


River of Doubt is also a biography, but one of a much different nature. This tells the story of Theodore Roosevelt's post-election expedition into the far reaches of the Amazon basin. After being fascinated this winter by the story of Ernest Shackleton, I was tempted to start another expedition story despite the fact that we stopped short on Shackleton (when they had to abandon the poor kitty). So far, River of Doubt has been a very interesting look into the life of a man but also an era. I think it should be required reading for high school US history students, but it doesn't feel like required reading at all.

What are you reading and/or knitting? Joining up with Ginny.