mostly wool mitts and Out of Africa

I wanted to join Ginny for yarnalong today (which was really yesterday).

Cyndi gave me some different yarns for Christmas which I hadn't done anything with yet; so, I picked out this Kathmandu Aran the other day, which is mostly wool, with some silk and a bit of cashmere, 104 yards. Since I have such a weakness for hand warmers, I chose this pattern - 70 Yard Mitts, by Hannah Fettig. They're cute, and I only just started.

Working with size three dpn's took me a few minutes to get used to, but now I think I'm good. I'll switch to sixes soon (that is, when Linda loans me hers, because I could have sworn I had some, but I guess not). The color is a sort of brick tweed, which is hard to tell here.

Two weeks ago I brought home Out of Africa to watch - had never seen it!  Now I'm reading the book, out of curiosity for the real story, because I know the film was romanticized; and I've looked with interest at it many times at the library. She was a real poet in her descriptions of Africa.

The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air. The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects, and created great Fata Morgana. Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.