Pop Quiz

With the assumption that we're discussing American English grammar, which of the following is correct:

Question 1:
a. She exclaimed, "I've never seen something so big!"
b. She exclaimed, "I've never seen something so big"!

Question 2:
a. Turn to the "Wide Spread Section," and then review your emotions.
b. Turn to the "Wide Spread Section", and then review your emotions.

Question 3:
a. His wink made me realize exactly what he meant by the word "stones."
b. His wink made me realize exactly what he meant by the word "stones".

Answers
Surprisingly (at least to me), the answers are all "a."

It seems that American grammar states that punctuation should always be placed inside quotation marks, even when it doesn't make sense.

And do you know the reason for this?

When they used to have to manually set type on printing presses, the "comma," and the "period" characters were more likely to break when placed in their proper place outside quotation marks. So the inventive, capitalist, American printer just changed the rules of grammar.

Current Knitting
I had just started on the sleeve for the wool/hemp sweater and finished about 10 rounds...



...when I got a call from my craft show friend, who asked if I could make a bag 'o scarves for an upcoming craft show.

I put down the sweater and started making novelty yarn scarves, and then did an inventory of all completed scarves.



I only have six complete, and two more on the needles (they go pretty quickly). I'd like to have a couple of dozen scarves done in time for the show (sometime in mid November).

Readers' Comments/Questions
JoVE asks, "What have you done to the blog layout? It's gone all wide and I have to adjust the size of my window and scroll horizontally to read."

I've changed the way I add pictures, but it shouldn't really affect the layout. Is anyone else having difficulties?

Michelene says, "I like the texture of the wool/hemp sweater. Is hemp as heavy as cotton?"

It varies. There are some very fine, fiber-quality hemps around (Dzined and LanaKnits both have hemp and/or hemp/wool yarns that are very nice). The hemp in my current project is pretty coarse, and even blended in with the wool, it's pretty scratchy. I bought it in a little boutique store in Saratoga Springs, NY, and it was very cheap.

Tracy asks, "Are there any blogs that you would recommend for new knitters who are hoping to branch out of their very confined comfort zones?"

Thanks for your nice comments on this blog. As for other blogs, there are lots of good ones out there, but I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for. My suggestion is when you find a blog that meets your needs, look at the blogs that they link to. I only list blogs that I personally read, whereas some bloggers link to as many other blogs as they can find. Good luck in your quest to expand your knitting world.