Rippling Along

Greetings, one and all!  After a hiatus last week involving a sick SuperToddler and a bedraggled, worn-out mommy, I have returned to Yarn Along, flush with success in my fortnight's endeavor to keep my Blueberry Ripple Afghan growing.  A piece like this isn't just a project, of course--it's a commitment.  When you undertake an afghan like this, you know you're in for a bit of a long haul.  But, it's growing by leaps and bounds, and I'm enjoying it very much.  Would you like to see it?  Well, obviously you would; that's the whole point!  So...

TA-DA!  A bouncing baby Blueberry Ripple Afghan!  Hurray!  I'd say it's just about 3/5 completed at this point.  As a matter of fact, since its intended purpose is to allow me to snuggle up beneath it, and it currently covers me from hanging just below my feet to the top of my abdomen, I'd call that an extremely accurate measurment of its progress!  Now then, let's give this beauty a close-up, Mr. Demille.

What do you think, gang?  I'm quite pleased overall, so much so that I've decided to make another in a different colorway as a gift, when I finish this one (which means you won't get to see that one until after the gift is presented to its intended owner, but eventually there will be pictures and much rejoicing here on Yarn Along, I promise). 

Oops!  I almost forgot the READING bit of this exercise, which would have been a shame, since I've finished FOUR books in the past week!!  I'm reading three books currently, because I'm just a compulsive simultaneous-multiple reader (I've finally embraced this fact about myself), but probably the most fascinating is The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans.

This book certainly isn't a light-weight--over 650 pages, and although that includes probably 150 pages of endnotes, bibliography and index, Goodreads counts all of it in my "pages read" count for the year!  I must confess that pleases me, even if the confession indicates some major flaw in my character.  When I checked this book out from the library, the lady who checked it out to me said, "A bit of light reading, huh?"  And she's right; this one is certainly not many laughs.  But it's certainly enthralling; I always wondered how all that lunacy got started, and now I'm finally finding out.  It's not written for scholars or experts, either; if you're interested in the subject, I can recommend this one so far.

Anyway, that's the past two weeks in review.  Hope you're having satisfying times with book, hook, and/or needles!