Work in Progress & What I'm Reading Wednesday - #7!

This is WIPW/WIR#7 - thanks, Tami! (For more great blog posts on these topics, see the links at the bottom of Tami's post.)

Last week I mentioned that I had some cotton yarn on order for a sweater for my great nephew. Here it is all dyed up:

(It's for a baby, but these are seriously his parents' favorite colors.) Here it is "cooking" in the hot sun on top of the garbage can:

I've done enough dyeing to know that heat is my friend. Finally, here is the tangled mess I pulled out of the dryer last evening that I'm winding into a ball. There'll be a few knots in this yarn as I work through it. It was a good evening project after a frustrating day at work.

Now, for Peppermint Candy! Hubby Dearest looked at this and said he thinks the top is done. It's smaller than I want it (by a few inches in each direction), but it does feel done to me. I still think, though, I'm going to swap out those strips of odd fabric (the gray green fabrics that leap out of the quilt).

Next, I wanted to show you that I had helpers when I was setting up the yarn outside:

I also had a guard kitty in the sewing room:

This is the creature who woke me up at 2a this morning by sprawling on my shoulder (I was sleeping on my side) and purring loudly and then grandly accepting petting before leaning over and licking my face - this is why she still has a home despite her bad moods!

In terms of what I'm reading, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that I've got a real hole in my knowledge regarding the history of China - of Asia, really. At the big booksale that weekend, I looked for books on the topic and lucked into John King Fairbanks' The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 (published in 1987). I say "lucked into" because it turns out that this man is one of the great American scholars about China. The book is readable, engaging, thought-provoking, and causing my little brain to whir. Here's a tidbit from page 10:

Something over a billion people live in Europe and North and South America.

These billion-odd Europeans and Americans live in about fifty sovereign and independent states,

while the billion-odd people of China live in only one single state.

Okay. In two sentences in the introduction, I was hooked.

I'll be selling raffle tickets for the quilt guild at the American Sewing Expo in Novi, Michigan, this coming Saturday afternoon. If you're at the expo, stop by the booth!