Yarn Along 2

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading...

I haven't finished my red sweater from the last yarn along yet.  I still have some construction sewing to do on it.  However, since my Mother was here last week I got excited to start a new project before the other was done.  (I spent about an hour showing her my stash and patterns.)

So this new project will someday be a sweater from a vintage (1930's) pattern.  I found the yarn at Savers for cheap and am rather excited about the project.  The yarn is wool and a darn bit scratchier than I originally thought.  So much so that by the time I finished casting on I was ready to stop because I disliked it so much.  Now after two rows I am falling slightly more in love with it again.  I intend for the ribbing to be black (the color in the picture) and blue for the body.  I like the blue better than the black - it's far more vibrant - but am unsure I have enough blue to finish it all. 

For my book I'm reading Contested Will by James Shapiro.  It does say "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" on the cover but the book is more about why people want to believe someone else wrote Shakespeare and when they started.  That is a question I often ask myself too.  I believe that William Shakespeare wrote the Shakespeare plays.  I believe it not just because I have only see credible evidence of this but because believing that a man from a small town who had no formal training, travel, or access to the uppercrust of society can still write something amazing is believing that anyone can do anything.  It's a belief in the human spirit.  The spirit and amazement of genius.  It also speaks to my inherent Americanness - it doesn't matter who your father was or what circumstances you were born only what you do with it.  That's a simplified view of it I know.  Even in the most democratic of places it still matters how you grew up, but I still believe in the ideal that people can rise above and that upstart crows can be read for millennia.

I only just started this book and I like it.  My Dad read it cover to cover when he came to visit  and he enjoyed it too.  I usually take his advice on books because he is a writer as well.  Here is his book review on his blog he writes for The Maui News.