Yarns: "Wild" and Easy Goes It Shawl

     In between working on my son's hat (A Sockhead Hat and "The Great Alone"), I've been knitting a new shawl Easy Goes It (I love shawls!).  This is a simple pattern, pretty much mindless knitting, but the results are really nice.  I'm using a Malabrigo Sock Yarn in Caribeno I got for my birthday two years ago.  I've tried it in several projects that didn't work and I really want to wear it.  Hence a simple, easy pattern.  Also, it's summer and my brain wants to escape into my reading and my knitting projects have to cooperate with that.  If I can do both at once it gets my attention!  The Slouch Hat won in that area.  I'd grab it the most and it's a few days from being done.

 Easy Goes It (Ravelry Shots)

© Finicky Creations

© Finicky Creations

      My son's hat was meant for Christmas, but my husband suggested I send it to him in Alaska where he's fishing for salmon.  A job that gives him a cabin and an outhouse for the summer, off the grid.  It's 50's, sporadic rain on Kodiak Island and out on the boat I'm sure it's cold.  The hat, mostly wool will be cozy and warm.

“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. 
It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”  Cheryl Strayed. Wild. p. 207

Source

     I've discovered a new genre for me that I am loving.  Traveling into wild untamed areas vicariously in my reading chair (while I knit, of course).  After "The Great Alone" by Kristen Hannah I had a hard time going on reading something else.  I think that book was one of the best I've read.  But I got "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed for my birthday and I pressed on.  Now I'm hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in a recounting that's great.  Strayed writes of the why she's hiking alone on this trail and then dives into the ups and downs of her adventures.  We delve into the author's life from her grief over her mother's death and other dark sides of her life she was trying to escape from and reclaim herself.  Her journey is wonderfully and frankly written.  I love reading overcoming adventure stories.  Truly encouraging.

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Cheryl Strayed - Quotes Goodreads