Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Yarn Along With My Test Crochet Sail Shawl...

Yay!   Only three more rows and I'm blocking this baby!   I hit the wall over the weekend - not wanting to touch this thing, but after much gnashing of teeth and just sitting myself down to finish it I got over my slump.   Weaving in all the ends yesterday helped greatly, too.  There is little that is more demotivating to me than to know I have to weave in all the dangly ends when I'm finally finished crocheting something.  I'd been reluctant to weave them in earlier because of the concern that a problem in the pattern would be revealed.  But trusting I was finally past that likelihood I weaved them in with abandon yesterday!

This is just a peek of the nearly finished Sail Shawl.   I'll be blocking it today and by Sunday I'll plan to post a picture in my weekly Year of Projects post. 


I'm reading I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak.  I was intrigued by the positive reviews, but about 50 pages in I was ready to give up.  This is a YA fiction, so I shouldn't have been surprised that the voice of the book is an angsty 19 year-old male.   I don't do teenage angst anymore.  Certainly not fictional teenage angst.  It's also written in an English voice - as in UK (or actually, I guess, Australian) vernacular.  This kept throwing me when odd sounding expressions were used because I didn't realize it took place in Australia (I've read this online, I haven't come across this in the book - so far).  Maybe if you've read Zusak before you'd have a clue about that.  But I hadn't and I didn't.   When I finally caught on and embraced that the location was somewhere in some UK-like English (now I know Australian-English) speaking place, the voice of the young person it was written in made complete sense and it didn't irritate me anymore.  I'm tempted to go back and read the beginning with this new perspective.  But I'm not going to.  Like my shawl, ultimately I want to be finished and move onto something new.

But I'm happy to say by the time I turned the 100th page I was hooked.  Well, actually, it was something like the 55th page I'd turned, but...well...that doesn't sound as...I don't know...dramatic?  By page 100 of the story, not only am I okay with the voice, I'm even accepting the angst.  And now I'm wanting to finish the book and see how the mystery resolves.  I can't say, yet, how much I'll recommend the book, but it feels so much better to be wanting to pick it up to finish it as opposed to entertaining the thought of flinging it across the room in irritated exasperation.

'Till next week's Yarn Along...check out what other yarn lovers are making and reading by clicking the Yarn Along button below. 

http://www.gsheller.com/2015/08/yarn-along-242.html

8 comments:

  1. Weaving in the ends means mission accomplished. It looks wonderful, looking forward to seeing it blocked and in its full glory.

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  2. Love the shawl. I do hate the last bit when I have to push through projects but it is so nice once I am finished. So glad your book turned out well. I've quit on a few and that is a bummer.

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    1. A little over half way in and I'm back to the book feeling a bit tedious. I think it's just not my style. But now I'm committed to read to the end and find out what the mystery is.

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  3. Looking forward to seeing it after it's blocked! I read The Messenger when I was a teenager but I almost always forget what happens in books and movies unless they ended up favorites of mine. I don't remember a bad feeling towards it though, I probably would've remembered if I had hated it! I do remember it being Australian, though I can't remember if I knew that from the beginning either. Hopefully it ends up being a good read!

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  4. I look forward to seeing the whole shawl too. I'm a knitter but I love the textures in this crochet shawl. Lovely colours too.

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    1. I'm realizing I should really call this a scarf. It's too small for anyone to call a shawl - even someone half my size, I think. I'll be correcting that when I post the picture on Sunday.

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