Weekend update

This is Theo, my cat with the most unusual and endearing personality. I got Theo when Shane (dog in tornado picture) was going to rehabilitation to help his very bad knees. My vet had a cage of a litter of kittens she had nursed back to health and put them in the lobby so she could entice new owners. I fell for Theo. He is a cat that thinks he's a dog, loves his buddy Aidan (Cairn terrier) and is a master of sleeping in strange positions and locations. He's also sick. I'm worried. He didn't eat this morning and is very lethargic. I wanted to take him into the vet but he's disappeared. When sick cats disappear, I get worried. So, think healthy thoughts for him, will you, and hope I find him so I can take him in for diagnosis and treatment.

I'm pushing through this weekend to finish up Loopy Ewe swap socks. I'm knitting them at the same time on 2 sets of circular needles. I finished the legs last night and am working on heels today. I have a week, and I should make the deadline at the rate I'm going. I'm just hoping I don't run out of yarn!

I spent some time yesterday perusing yarn shops in Portland. I could tell it was Super Bowl Sunday! Lyn took me to Twisted and optimistically brought along a book to read. There was not one chair available for him to sit down while I browsed. He took a walk and then went back to the car to wait for me. I suspect he was listening to the game. The screen was playing some movie at Twisted, but it was not the football game. Anyway, I scored on local stuff at Twisted for my Scavenger Hunt pal. I think I have funny, green and local, which now leaves something related to letter T, something round, something hard, and a category of my choosing.

While browsing through Scavenger Hunt blogs today, I happened upon the news of Gigi Silva's death. This was a shock although I had known she was ill and that the Socktopia site had been taken down. I joined Socktopia this summer after finding the site through some free pattern links at Pattern Central. There are a few knit-alongs in progress right now and I think I'll knit one of the patterns I printed off. She leaves behind young children and I think I'm going to look for a way to donate to a fund for them - maybe donate 5 dollars per pattern that I have. Socktopia is now a group at Ravelry and I'll see what's up there before I decide what to do.

In reading news, I finished Of Human Bondage (finally!). I recognized very little of it and I think most of my fascination and persistence in finishing the book (which I thought kind of boring) was trying to figure out why I considered this such a wonderful book when I was 16! Maybe because so much of it was about adolescence and young adulthood, maybe that it was one of the first books I'd read where someone questioned the existence of faith and God? I really don't remember. At any rate, I found Maugham's opinions about women bothersome (in the chapters about the family he befriended) and think this would be a much better book if Maugham had been able to write about his true sexual orientation. The women in Of Human Bondage were cardboard characters. He did a good job in The Painted Veil though. I found his years in medical school and later in internship to be the most interesting. I'm glad I reread the book, if only to find out I interpreted this book very differently when I first read it.

I'm currently reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. My friend Barb lent me this book as it was one she really enjoyed discussing with her book group and she thought I'd like it. I do. I think I'll return the book with The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, by Xinran.

Next up is Multnomah County Library's Everybody Reads choice, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, and newly published library book called A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (the first in a trilogy about Bangladesh).