November begins with two birthdays around here, my son’s yesterday and my oldest daughter’s on Sunday. I’m not big on parties, so birthdays are generally a few nice gifts and a special dinner. My son chose his favorite local burger place. It’s once again freakishly warm around here, so we all ate in the patio area outside. A good time was had by all.

The rest of the week was more quiet and cozy. I’ve made great progress on the cardigan, though it now looks like a crazy mass of short rows and placeholders. I’ve never actually done a sweater from the bottom up before, so all these shoulder decreases and short rows and held stitches are making me nervous but excited.

I’m halfway through the second shoulder now, but I think I have to make sleeves before I start binding everything together. The shoulders and upper back have a lot of short row shaping and I’m not completely sure I’ve done it al right, so I’ve kept all the lifelines in place in case I have to rip things back and try again. Still, this project is moving a lot quicker than I expected. At this rate I might even be done by Thanksgiving. Maybe by then it will finally be consistently cold enough to need it.

In the meantime, I’ve also finally finished reading Paul Clifford. I really enjoyed it. In a nutshell, Paul is an orphan raised and mentored by various people of questionable moral character. Early in life, he’s sent to jail for a theft he didn’t commit and one of his questionable friends helps him escape from prison and invites him to join a band of robbers. At one point, a few of them decide to pose as gentlemen to infiltrate high society and snag some rich wives so they can quit the life of crime and live in luxury. Paul, however, falls in love for real.

As you’d expect from a Victorian adventure novel, there are many more twists and surprises than that, but I won’t spoil any more of them. It was a silly but fun adventure and for the most part I really like Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s writing style. Some of his sentences are incredibly long and winding, and he makes a whole lot of references to old-time politics that I only vaguely understand, but his characters are fun and lovingly rendered and there’s a real sense of humor that comes through his writing. He also has a strong message behind his story–he has a lot to say about unfairness in the justice system and about the unfairness of harshly punishing the poor for “bad choices” largely forced on them by circumstance. His attitude felt surprisingly relevant to the present day.

I find old novels incredibly pleasant. It takes some practice and vocabulary building to really enjoy that older writing style, but once you’re used to it that style is a huge part of the charm. It forces you to read with a different speed and rhythm, making time for long winding sentences and looking up old words and references (I’ve learned a lot about horse-drawn carriages, for example, and about candles and fireplaces while reading old novels). The fact that the very language and scenery are so different really immerses me in that different time and place. Of course, any good fiction creates its own little world to escape into for a while, but I’ve come to take a special pleasure in picking up a novel a hundred or two hundred years old to find even the language is different from my modern American world.

But it’s time to get back to the chores of the present day, I suppose. I hope your November is shaping up well, full of dark nights, crisp mornings, and cozy indoorsy diversions. Until next time. –Corvus