Thankful Thursday, again

   Maybe this is too easy.  But this entry really has some knitting content. I have really enjoyed reading all the Thankful Thursday Blogs from others, even when they have nothing to do with fiber.

       1.  I am very thankful to have some actual knitting done.  Holiday gifts, idle projects completed.  Enough done that I can actually start all new projects with virtually no guilty secrets hidden away.  Well, maybe one...  I finished the Herbivore scarf.  It has some horrible mistakes.  It is smaller than it is supposed to be, by a lot.  But quite honestly I got sick of it.  Because of the way I knit I don't do well with k1p1 knitting or with seed stitch, and I learned that K1bp1 just does in my wrists, murders 'em.  Won't do it again.  It looks great, though.

      Finished the basket weave  scarf, found buttons at the fourth store I looked in, and actually attached them.  Love the scarf, but I can't keep it.

     Finished the endless socks.  You know who tried them on and now they have vanished so that there will be at least one thing under the tree. Found needles to start a new pair of travelling socks; Regia sport destined to be boot socks for the Girl who always has cold feet.
     2. What else am I Thankful for?  My mother.  I know I have spent decades complaining about her.  She is undoubtedly the reason I gleefully got on that boat and moved to Alaska; good and far away from Vermont.  My mother instilled in me, and in my sister, many good qualities, independence, curiosity, love of the outdoors, and a general skepticism of the status quo.  My mother was particularly skeptical about two things, organized religion and politicians.  Probably with good reason.  It is because of my mother that I am a good cook.  My mother DID NOT COOK.  Fortunately my father did.  I grew up eating grilled cheese, apples and brownies, the only things my mother ever mastered in the culinary realm.  She cut the apples into "bird's nests".  I still eat them that way.
     But most of all my mother taught me to love books. She was a voracious reader, and an adventurous reader .  She  read books in French,  when she couldn't find what she considered competent translations.  And she read to me.  I am not even sure that everything she read to me was appropriate, but I loved it anyway.  My mother bought me every single Newbery Award book until I was about 35.  Honestly.  When I became a children's librarian she continued to buy them for me because she figured I needed them for work.  I still try to read the Newbery books every year although I agree less and less with the choices as I get older.
   I have to share this verse from Strickland Gillian's poem "The Reading Mother".
               You may have tangible wealth untold;
               Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
               Richer than you I can never be-
               I had a mother who read to me.
   My mother died Feb 11, 1997.  She was 90 years old and lived at home alone until a few months before she died.  She was a piece of work, that woman.