Doing what I love

"What a foolish thing he was doing, walking like this under an open sky, with a beautiful man child for any evil spirit passing by to see!... and he said in a loud voice, 'What a pity our child is a female whom no one could want and covered with smallpox as well!..'"        

– Pearl Buck, The Good Earth

You know those people who love to work because their work is what they love? That is, what they get to call work happens to be, for them, a passion. I never thought I'd be one of those people, well, not in a while. When I was six I naturally assumed it, I knew without a doubt I'd be a librarian. And now I find myself actually living like this, being required to do what I love. What is it I'm doing? In a word: reading. 

              I finished Moll Flanders on Sunday, I'll reserve judgement for after the group discussion, but I don't think Defoe quite managed what he set out to do. It is mean spirited of me, but I'd have rather she died a penitent in Newgate than live to lie another day. I start Pamela on Wednesdayuntil then I'm reading Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I have read it a million times already, but this time I have to read it. Woe is me, I've been ordered to read an Austen. I'm also reading Macbeth and various poems (Free Verse, none of which are to my fancy, so I'll spare you the names). That's all for mandatory reading.

                  On Thursday a beautiful package arrived at the post office. I picked it up and opened it with restless hands eager to stroke the spine that they knew was enclosed. Ah, the smell of books – especially books with end papers, gilded

 edges, and leather covers – can simply not be surpassed by earth, chocolate, or even bread. The book's contents are as much worth mentiong as its aroma. It is The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck, on loan to me from my grandfather,  and it is about Wang Lung and his family. Wang Lung is a chinese peasant who works hard for his food, understands the value of land, and worries, when he gets too happy, that the spirits will punsih him. The facts of his life, even the few everyday ones, are so different from anything that I have ever known that the book cannot help to be diverting, though there is no intense plot (of course, Moll Flanders didn't have much of a plot either). 

               To top off my week from paradise, I've actually cast-on for the second sock and have already knit to the heel. This is the fastest I've ever knit a sock, not to mention the closets cast-off/ cast-on time for a pair. But even this pales to dinner on Friday: quiche and apple pie toped with vanilla ice cream, all made with a friend in the spirit of anything-goes.  

                  

Progress

I think that, if technology can be said to have affected any area of our lives over that of another, the greatest impact has come to our perception of time. In times past, if you wanted to make the world intimate with your every thought and feeling, you'd have to spend a life time keeping a journal, and then hope that your family was enterprising enough to try to publish it. But now you can not only publish autobiographies before you reach the tender age of forty, you can also blog your everyday, and twitter your every thought. We no longer have the patience to wait for our deaths to share our cognitive gems, we want the world to have them now. 

Likewise with pictures. Centuries ago, if you had knit a pair of Nutkin socks and wanted to let an acquaintance see them, you would be forced to wait hours while the picture was painted. Then, in all likelihood, your acquaintance wouldn't receive it until a week later. But now you can spend less than twenty minutes taking photos of your sock-clad feet, take two hours googling "trouble importing," spend ten minutes taking the silliest pictures imaginable with Photo Booth, and, in short, expect her to see them before dinner. 

Nutkin Photo-shoot 2
Originally uploaded by smaykull

Pattern: Nutkin

Yarn: Lorna Laces Shepherd Sock (a gift from Theo) 

Modifications: I believe I stuck mainly to the pattern; though, I did change the heel on the second sock, and by the time I got to the toes I was done being experimental and fancy, and so opted to do a row of purling and a boring, evenly decreased, toe instead of the prescribed turned toe, with its three-needle-bind-off. But other than that, yes. I followed the pattern. 

Further apologies for these photos. I don't foresee my camera magically complying to my every whim anytime soon, so I can't promise you anything better. I guess I'm going to have to start digging onto my Japan files in order to illustrate these post. What a shame.