Better in 2024: October

We've made it to the last Monday of the month, and that means it's time to check in with my One Little Word and to join Carolyn in the monthly link-up.

This will be old news to at least some of you, but the major way things have gotten Better this month is that finally, more than a year after the initial change and after almost a year of fighting for it to get fixed, my job classification has finally been corrected and I am once again a salaried, exempt employee at work. My job classification is now "editorial specialist," which I think better captures what I do. The change was essentially processed as a promotion, which feels pretty good considering I've never gotten one or even been eligible for one before -- despite the fact that I've taken on numerous additional responsibilities over the years. I'm thankful that my direct supervisor has been supportive this whole time (as well she should have been, given how much I help her out by doing work that she used to do!), but it's also good to know that if other such shenanigans happen in the future, I'll also have the union on my side.

I'm also hoping that in the days ahead I'll feel physically Better as well, because guess who fell again on Sunday? I stepped onto my brother's deck wearing boots that I know I slide around in and completely wiped out. But I suppose you could say I've also gotten Better at falling, because I managed to get myself to my side as I fell and my right foot took the worst of it. I think I either tore something or sprained something, because it's painful and swollen (no running for me this week), though I can still hobble around a bit. I timed it perfectly for when the Mister had to leave for a quick work trip, too! Molly has been a huge help in carrying things up and down stairs for me (that's the hardest part of getting around), and this injury might just get me out of going into the office this week -- if I can't really walk, getting there will be hard! I'm annoyed with myself but also relieved I didn't do any major damage.

As promised, here's a photo of us girls in our Halloween costumes. Can you figure out who we are?

There's Good News

I won't bury the lede: I divided the sleeve and body stitches on my sweater and knit enough fabric under the arms that I could try it on -- and it fits!

My selfie skills still leave a lot to be desired, but I think this photo is good enough that you can see that I've got a little positive ease but not so much that I'm swimming in fabric. Now I just have to knit, knit, knit in the round until I have 5 inches of body under the arms, and thanks to some unexpected knitting time yesterday afternoon, I have just an inch of that left to go. After that, this project will require more attention because I will start in on the colorwork, so I'll be juggling two strands of yarn and keeping an eye on a chart. Considering how fine this yarn is and the number of stitches I have on the needles, though, I'm pretty impressed with how quickly this sweater has grown. Dare I hope I might have it complete in time for Thanksgiving? It's a possibility!

The socks for my sister-in-law have grown as well, even though I've only worked on them while I was at the office Tuesday and Thursday. I am continuing to love these colors, and had I not already designated this pair for her, I might be tempted to keep them for myself.

They're not all blue, but look what color is up next!

I expect that once I start the colorwork on my sweater, these will become my knitting-while-reading project and will get a lot more attention.

We've got a fairly quiet weekend ahead of us. We've got nothing on the schedule on Saturday except for a friend's birthday gathering in the evening, and Sunday my brother and sister-in-law are holding their annual Halloween party, though the Mister has to leave for a work trip earlier in the day and Molly and I will only briefly be stopping by because she has a performance with her Glee Club in the afternoon. You may remember from past years that my brother is a stickler for people dressing up for his party, and Molly and I came up with what we thought was a great family theme that would involve all three of us. Fortunately, it'll work with just us two girls, even if it won't be quite as impressive as it would have been with all three of us. I'll be sure to share some pictures (if I'm permitted) next week.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful weekend! Next week is the last one in October, so I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word update for the month.

Unraveled, Week 43/2024

Goodness, it's Wednesday again, already? I will say that when work is busy, it makes the days go by quickly, so here I am ready for my weekly check-in with Kat and the Unravelers.

I'm getting very close to a critical moment in my handspun sweater -- that moment when the sleeve stitches are split from the body and it's possible to try on the sweater for fit. I've completed all the circular yoke increases and have just another set or two of raglan increases remaining before I put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn. It's hard to get a sense for the size of the sweater at this point because all 300+ stitches are crowded onto one needle, but it has grown a lot and I will feel much better about things if it fits as I want it to. By this time next week, I should know if I'm continuing on with it or frogging and starting over.

In other blue projects, I've done three repeats of my new sock/swatch and am pleased with how the pattern is progressing:

I had charted out the stitch pattern using my charting software but saw I had to made some adjustments once I had worked up the first repeat (including dropping a couple of knit columns and picking them back up as purls). There's some wonkiness in there that should block out, but I'm happy so far.

I mentioned on Monday that wrapping up my mother-in-law's socks meant I was without a mindless stockinette project to work on in meetings or while reading, so naturally that meant I needed to cast on an additional project. What I neglected to mention was that I was expecting yarn in the mail on Monday from my favorite yarn pusher. I had preordered Lisa's suicide prevention fundraiser colorway, and I'd added on another skein to keep it company. This one, called Wild Atlantic Wildflowers, is pretty much perfect for my sister-in-law, who always gets a pair of socks at Christmas. I cast on and got the cuff knit while I was at the office yesterday morning:

That pale gray stripes narrowly between each of the colors.

I have not yet cast on the gnome yet, but that will be happening soon! Thanks again to all of you who chimed in on the color choice. The majority seems to be for the more muted skein, which I think will create a more matchy-matchy look in any case, and then I can use the more colorful one for me.

It's been another week of good reading, even if work has kept my eyes busy during the day. I've finished two really good books.

It was Kat who put Awake in the Floating City on my radar, and I requested an ARC based on her review. In the not-so-distant future, San Francisco has become a place where it rains all the time, where the water has washed away much of the city (taking with it plenty of people), and where those who remain live in high-rise apartment buildings with markets and pathways to other buildings on their roofs. Medicine has allowed people to live much longer, but humanity has not been able to stop climate change. Our main character, Bo, feels adrift in her life. A onetime visual artist, she is grieving the disappearance and presumed death of her mother in a flood yet cannot bring herself to leave and join her cousin and uncle -- her only remaining family -- in the relative safety of Canada. She agrees to take on the role of caretaker to Mia, a supercentenarian living in her building, putting off at least temporarily the decision to leave. The two soon form a bond, allowing Bo to reexamine her relationship with her mother and find inspiration to create art again. Some might call this a dystopian novel to the environmental setting, but the relationships at its core make it timeless. This is a beautiful novel about relationships between mothers and daughters; the need to create art and memorials, even at a time when it might be considered superfluous and even wasteful; and the selfless beauty in the act of one human being caring for the physical needs of another. It asks the reader to ponder what connects us to a place, even when the place no longer looks as it once did, and to consider what we leave behind when we leave a place, either to go somewhere else or by the ending of our life. I gave it 4 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published May 13, 2025.

I had preordered Louise Erdrich's newest novel, The Mighty Red, from Birchbark Books earlier this year, so my signed copy arrived right after publication. I didn't really know much of anything about the plot of the book before I started reading, and it did feel quite different from the Erdrich I'm used to. There are lots of short chapters, lots of characters, and a lot of threads that seem to be going in every direction. What ties it all together is the land and the river of the title, with frequent stark reminders of what the Earth can give and what it can take away. I don't want to say too much because trying to describe the plot pretty much tells you everything; you can look up a synopsis if you need one, but I think there's a lot to be gained from going in blind. I wouldn't say this is my favorite of her works, but I loved getting more of her flawed yet lovable characters and her humor that comes through even in moments of great stress or sadness. I gave it 4 stars.

Now I am reading, on paper, How to Be Both for the next discussion of past Women's Prize for Fiction winners and Playground on Kindle. I also expect I'll be starting a new audiobook today, as I'm just about caught up on podcasts.

What are you making and reading this week?

Variations on a Theme

I don't know what it was like in your neck of the woods, but I can only hope that this past weekend was as gorgeous and perfect a fall weekend as it was for me! It was Rhinebeck weekend, but obviously I didn't go and didn't have any plans to go. It looks like it was a stunning weekend for those who were there; honestly, I was quite content to enjoy the weekend here! We had cool temps to start both days but the sun was bright and warmed things up by the afternoon, and we had sparkling blue skies. We've even gotten a bit of fall color in the neighborhood!

One of the "good" trees in the neighborhood

Friday ended up being quite busy at work, but I did manage to get my mother-in-law's socks done that evening, and naturally that meant I was free to cast on the new pair -- effectively I swapped one blue project for another!

The yarn I used for my MIL's socks, the discontinued Regia Bamboo Color in the very descriptive colorway 1061, resulted in a nice-feeling fabric but was rather splitty to work with, especially with my sharp size 0 needles. It has a cabled construction, meaning that the strand of yarn is made of what are essentially much finer yarns that have been plied together. I'm thankful that there was no weird flashing or pooling of the colors, and I'm glad to have the yarn (mostly) used up and out of the stash. I have no idea how they will hold up to wear given the high bamboo content (45%, compared to 40% for the wool!), but the label says they can be machine washed and dried, so I'm not too concerned. More importantly, they are done and just have to be washed and blocked to be ready for gifting.

You can see I haven't gotten too far on the new socks, but I did find some time over the weekend to chart out the pattern and wind the yarn so I'd be able to at least get started. I'm clearly going to need to cast on another pair of socks soon, too, because this pair will be patterned and thus require me to look at it, making it unsuitable for knitting while reading. There's plenty of self-striping to choose from and several more people still in need of socks for the holidays, so that will not be a problem!

In addition to ending the week with a finished project, we learned some exciting things on Friday. First, when I took Molly to the orthodontist on Friday, he confirmed that the next appointment will the be one where she gets her braces off! That's scheduled for November 21, which also happens to be my sister-in-law's due date. Molly will get the braces off in the morning, they'll do some molds, and then I'll take her back after school to get her retainers. She's pretty excited that they'll be off before her birthday and the end of the year!

Second, we had dinner with my brother and his family Friday night (my parents are at their Florida place for a couple of weeks), so we got to enjoy the explosion of words from my nephew.

I highly recommend you click to embiggen so you can see his face!

We learned that he calls a sloth a "slowly" (thanks to this book), that he knows the word "ghost" and that a ghost says "boo," and -- and here's the most exciting part -- he knows the word "gnome!" So perhaps there are more gnome-related gifts in my knitting future!

All Things Blue

I've noticed it recently, so perhaps you have, too? Lately all my projects seem to be in the same color family. I was even about to start a new spinning project but realized the fiber I'd pick out was -- you guessed it! -- blue. I might need an intervention. The good news is that the sky has turned blue again, after several days of clouds and rain and colder temps. We had a frost advisory overnight, but it's supposed to get back up into the 70s this weekend and into early next week. I don't mind the cooler temperatures, but I'm happy to see the sun again!

My handspun sweater has continued to get a little attention every night, and though it grew quickly at the beginning, I'm now getting close to 300 stitches and the rounds are taking a bit more time. I have one more increase round to do before I work to a certain length and then do some raglan increases, and my knitting is officially big enough to comfortably stretch around a 40-inch circular needle.

My mother-in-law's socks are very close to being finished -- in fact, I'm hoping I can finish them up this morning when I take Molly to an orthodontist appointment! And while I'm planning to cast on that design pair soon, I've also been thinking about starting a gnome for my brother for this year's Chanukah gift. I have never managed to do one of Sarah Schira's mystery gnomes while it is a mystery, but I have several times bought the pattern after I've seen FOs, and that was the case with the most recent one (Ravelry link). I found an old 50 g skein of Knit Picks Gloss from a long time ago that I'm planning to use for the body and legs, but I'm debating which self-striping to use for the hat and socks. Thoughts?

The skein on the right has some University of Michigan vibes going for it, but it's also pretty dark and subdued, so I'm leaning toward the skein on the left -- though I also really liked that colorway and kind of wanted it for socks for me (but I think I could make some shortie socks with the leftovers and a mini skein or two). Really I could be convinced either way, though the left skein is certainly less blue!

We are headed into a much calmer weekend than the last one. Molly is off from school today while parent/teacher conferences happen, and after her appointment, I think she's going to try to get all her homework done so she can forget about it for a couple of days. Saturday evening is the homecoming dance at her school, which she's going to with a girlfriend from her class, and the Mister and I are having dinner out while she's there. And the only thing I have on the schedule on Sunday, assuming everyone can still make it, is a get-together with my mah-jongg group before one of our members moves (temporarily) to Sweden with her husband. I'm thinking it'll be a good weekend to bake some fall treats -- perhaps some apple cider donuts, seeing as I will not be getting the real thing at Rhinebeck -- catch up on sleep, do some reading, and perhaps cast on some new projects. Here's hoping your weekend is similarly full of good things!

Unraveled, Week 42/2024

It is Wednesday, and though Kat is on vacation this week and not hosting a formal link-up, I can't let a week go by without an Unraveling post.

My sweater doesn't look all that different from how it did on Monday, though it's been getting attention each evening. Molly and I have finished watching all of Gilmore Girls, so we're taking a little break from series for the time being and watching romcoms in between episodes of The Great British Baking Show. It makes for good knitting time. I've also turned the heel and started the gusset on the second mother-in-law sock:

and I dug out the skein I wanted for the next pair of socks (the design idea I mentioned):

This is LolaBean Yarn Co. String Bean (75/15 superwash merino/nylon) in the colorway Troll-la, which might have been a special/limited edition. In any case, the pattern idea involves lace, so I didn't want self-striping or anything heavily variegated, so I hope this will work. I still need to sketch out a chart before I swatch, and I'm not even winding the yarn until I finish the current socks -- but I am keeping the skein out where I can see it as motivation.

I'm happy to report that the week has, thus far, been fairly calm, though the power went out unexpectedly for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon for no apparent reason, giving me some unexpected crafting time -- no power means no work email! I pulled a book from my Kindle library and plied the skein of mystery wool:

I ended up with approximately 159 yards of chain-plied fingering weight from 55 grams. It looks like it will work quite well for beards and various other gnome-related needs, plus now I have used up another random ball of wool.

There's been some excellent reading happening this week. I have finished two books and am getting close to the end of two more.

First was the next Read With Us selection, Intermezzo. At the last Zoom, the book was announced ahead of its publication, so I went into my Libby app and tagged the book "notify me" so that I'd get an alert when the library had it. I happened to see the notification pop up on my phone and immediately put the book on hold, making me third in line for it, so I didn't have to wait long (and I did think about delaying it, given that the discussion isn't happening until early next year, but thought I could always reread it if I need to). This is the story of two brothers, Peter and Ivan, who are a decade apart in age and in very different places in life, and when we meet them, their father has just died after a long illness. The story is told in shifting perspectives, and through following the thoughts and experiences of both brothers, we learn a lot about their history, how their relationship with one another has evolved, and how they are both dealing (or not) with their grief. This was only my second time reading a book by Sally Rooney, and I wasn't terribly impressed by the first one. I found this new novel to be a bit of a slow burn for me; I was kind of confused at first, particularly by Peter's sections, as his thoughts were more rambling and full of incomplete sentences. But once I got about halfway through, I had a better sense of my bearings in terms of the two brothers and their voices, such as they are. I can understand why some people have trouble with Rooney's writing (she doesn't use quotation marks around speech, for instance), but I think it's something you can adapt to. I really enjoyed this one, and I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more after the discussion. I gave it 4 stars.

Next, I went on the hunt for audiobooks on NetGalley because I was caught up on podcasts and had a wait for the next audiobook I wanted to read from the library. I can't remember where I first heard about Quarterlife; I must've seen someone bookmark it and it showed up in my feed. But after spending the summer with A Suitable Boy, this seemed like an excellent pairing. Like "the brick," it's largely a story of young people searching for meaning and purpose in their lives, but instead of dealing with the echoes of Partition and colonialism, they are contending with the impacts of economic meltdowns and rising nationalism -- as well as the same issues associated with caste and religion that have not gone away. The narrative centers three 20-somethings: Naren, who has studied and worked in the United States and returned to India following news of changes in political power; Amanda, a white New Englander feeling a need to escape her life and contribute to the betterment of society; and Rohit, Naren's younger brother, a filmmaker exploring politics and his family history. There's a lot going on in this book, with many other characters and side stories introduced and a lot of discussion of politics, caste, and religion. I'm not sure if my difficulty in following was due to the sheer volume of information, my lack of familiarity with Indian politics, or that I was listening rather than reading with my eyes; it was likely a combination of all three. I'm sure that readers who could appreciate the details and the nuance got a lot more out of the novel than I did. Despite my confusion, however, I could appreciate the skill of the author in tackling so much and in getting inside the heads of such an array of characters. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and HighBridge Audio for providing me with an advanced listener copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I'm nearing the end of another NetGalley ARC, Awake in the Floating City, and Louise Erdrich's newest novel, The Mighty Red. I expect I'll have a review of both by this time next week.

What are you making and reading this week?

Back to Routine

Good morning, friends. It rarely happens, but I woke up this morning happy that it's Monday. It's not that I'm eager to get back to work and all that, but I really am feeling a need for a regular routine after an unusual weekend. More than anything, my body is craving normal meals and my normal amount of water consumption! I can't say that our Yom Kippur observance was good, really, because it's a very solemn holiday, but it was a meaningful one. Molly fasted for the first time and did fine without eating, though she felt faint after services and drank some water when we got home. And we had a lovely birthday brunch for my father yesterday, but it was a large meal in the middle of the day and thus messed up my appetite a bit -- probably not the best after a day of not eating. Today it is back to normal for me, with plenty of water and plenty of fruits and vegetables.

I did not do much knitting over the weekend because frankly there wasn't much time. When we got home from services Saturday afternoon, I was just too tired and took a nap instead! But I've made some progress on my sweater the past two evenings. I've completed the short rows (which I think I made only one tiny mistake on -- but I'm not tinking back to fix it) and have gotten through three increase sections.

I also worked a little on my current socks yesterday while listening to the end of an audiobook and am almost finished with the leg of sock number two:

I'm feeling an urge to finish up this second sock because I actually had an idea for a sock design last week and I'd like to swatch it, but I know if I do that and it works as I hope, I'll completely abandon these socks, so I'm forcing myself to stay focused until they're done. Really that shouldn't take too much time, so perhaps you'll see the swatch later in the week.

Today I'm hoping to get a run in before it rains again -- we had some surprise thunderstorms yesterday -- and to feel more like myself again. Thankfully my to-do list isn't too long and it's a work-from-home day, both of which will help me to recover from my weekend. Here's hoping your new week is similarly off to a calm start.