I’ve made some good progress on my colorblock sweater this week. I finished the back, which will be navy blue, and I’ve just knit a few rows on the front, which is kind of a sea-foam green. I may decide to put a red stripe across the front and then use the sea-foam green and the red on the sleeves – I’m not sure yet. I think I’ve definitely decided against a pure colorblock design, with four different solid colors for the front, back, and the two sleeves. We’ll see…

I’m having one of those weeks when I’m reading several books at once. The one I included in the photo today is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which Jill and I are both reading in preparation for some semi-secret excitement that we’re planning here on the blog. More to come next week sometime on what we have planned. This is the second time I’ve read this book. The first was in the fall of 2000, I think, when I read it for one of my graduate courses. I loved the first hundred pages and just sailed through them, and then the novel began to drag. I think this is the same way I responded to it the last time I read it, too. I admire many things about this book, and the first on that list is the incredible beauty of Marquez’s prose. But as I’ve said before, magic realism just isn’t my thing. I think I could like magic realism if it weren’t for the fact that it always seems to serve as a stand-in for real characterization. I do admire this book and recognize how groundbreaking it was when it was published in 1969 and how much it has impacted world literature. But more to come on all of this very soon.

I always marvel at how well Jill gets her cats to sit still for pictures. My cat Emma never sits still, ever, and my cat Cleo likes to lick cell phones and cameras, so whenever I try to take her picture it ends up being a shot of her open mouth as she lunges forward to take a taste. Yesterday when I was taking my Yarn Along photo, Emma showed up and planted herself right on top of my knitting, and I thought I might have a chance of getting her into the photo.

No such luck. This was the first shot:

And this was the second:

All she wanted to do was pace back and forth over the knitting and the book, just to make sure they weren’t getting more attention than she was. Then she jumped up on her climber and rested her chin on the edge, and I was able to get this shot – which, no joke, is probably the clearest, most focused photo of her I have taken in the eight years I’ve had her:

Have a nice day, everyone!

P.S. Yarn Along is hosted by Ginny at her blog Small Things.

P.P.S. Can anyone recommend a good yarn store in the San Francisco Bay Area? I’m going through a little bit of withdrawal here.