Unraveled, Week 38/2025

Hello and happy Wednesday, friends! I hope you're having a good week. It's been a bit exhausting here, but the sun is shining, my sinus infection is finally going away, and it's my favorite day of the blogging week. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

You saw my sock progress on Monday, so I'll spare you more of that and instead show you how my two-color shawl has grown:

I am about halfway through the pattern repeats now, but of course the rows get longer as you go, so there's still a lot more knitting still to do than already done. The pattern has two main body charts, one with the first color dominant and one with the second color dominant, and you alternate three repeats of each for each section. Now that there's more knit, the zig-zag patterning is also much more apparent. I'm also at the point where I basically just have to do a quick check-in at the beginning of each right-side row to get my bearings and then I'm off the chart.

I've also managed to put in a bit more time at my wheel. I'm starting to wonder if this yarn is just going to look grayish brown when it's plied, but we'll see -- I very well may be surprised!

There hasn't been as much reading in the past week as in weeks prior -- not entirely a surprise, given a puppy patient and a big work project -- but I have managed to finish two books since this time last week.

When I asked for audiobook recommendations recently, Pam mentioned Kevin Wilson's latest book, but as you'd expect, it has a long wait on Libby and isn't on Hoopla. Hoopla did, however, have two of his earlier books available, so I decided to finally read Nothing to See Here, a book that many people I know had long ago read and that I actually had a copy of on my shelf, having picked it up from a Little Free Library. The premise of this book is a bit ridiculous: Lillian, our narrator, gets a call one day from Madison, who was her roommate for a year she spent at an elite boarding school. Madison is now married to a senator being considered for secretary of state, but there's a big secret in his family that could derail his plans: His children from his first marriage spontaneously burst into flames. Madison asks Lillian to come take care of the children for the summer while the vetting process is ongoing, and Lillian, whose life since leaving that school has been rather aimless, sees it as a way to get out of her mother's house and get a change of scenery. Though the idea of children catching on fire is bizarre and totally unrealistic, it's a creative way to portray people who feel like they don't fit in or aren't loved by their family. Yes, it's all rather preposterous, but it's also funny and surprisingly touching. And it was an easy listen. I gave it 4 stars.

It's a good thing I was listening to a lighthearted book, because my other finish this week was the complete opposite. As Night Watch opens, it is 1874 and 12-year-old ConaLee and her mother are being driven to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum by Papa, the man who ConaLee knows is the father of the three babies her mother has given birth to in the past two years and who they have just given to nearby families but not to her. She doesn't really know who he is, only that since he came to their West Virginia mountain home, her mother has virtually stopped talking and stopped being able to care for herself or her children. Papa tells ConaLee that she must pretend to be a neighbor of her mother's, call her by a different name, and see that she's taken care of in the asylum -- and then he drives off, leaving them alone. The story then jumps back in time a decade, to the last year of the Civil War and the experience of a nameless sharpshooter in the Union Army leading up to the Battle of the Wilderness. And we get some of the story of Dearbhla, the older Irish woman who lived near ConaLee and her mother and who was more intimately connected with them than ConaLee ever knew. All of this is set against the background of the hospital, a real place founded according to the principles of a "moral" cure. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2024, and if you look at the reviews on Goodreads, it's a mixed bag. It's not an easy book to read and includes some very difficult subject matter -- war, sexual assault/rape, racism, etc. -- but I think it was extremely well done. I gave it 5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Now THAT Was a Weekend

It's been a while since I had a truly restful weekend when it wasn't because someone was unwell, but we finally had one -- though it didn't start out great. My parents invited us over for dinner on Friday night, and I thought we should take Ruthie so I could give her a dose of medicine due at 7 p.m., but she spent most of the evening being crazy, barking at everyone, and then pooped on their floor. Fortunately, she made up for being so naughty by sleeping in both Saturday and Sunday -- I actually had to wake her up at 7 to take her medicine! I'm sure it's a result of being on a sedative continuously, but part of me hopes she's adjusting to the later sunrise. Either way, I had two good nights' worth of sleep and am feeling the benefits of it.

I did manage to get a batch of challah baked up on Saturday -- and resisted eating any of it!

These two raisin loaves are in the freezer now. I'll bake two plain loaves next weekend, for which I will need to make some room in the freezer (which is really why I didn't try to do it all at once -- just no room!).

Much of my weekend was spent like this:

Ruthie normally takes a good nap in the afternoon, but with the addition of the medications she's on, she is really zonking out. That makes for good reading and knitting time for me, especially when I don't also need to keep an eye on my work inbox. This weekend I managed to finish the heel of my Penwings sock and get through a good portion of a really good book.

Another side effect of the medication is that it seems to make Ruthie less interested in going to the bathroom, so much of our trips outside end up like this:

Her incision site seems to be healing well, and it's been virtually impossible to keep from running around while playing at home, so it's going to be a long week plus that we have left until she can be free of the donut and the onesie. At least after Tuesday we can go for walks again! I'm sure she'd like some fresh smells, and I would like a little more of the exercise I'm used to. Here's hoping the week ahead brings healing and more good news for all of us!

Another Week's End

Ah, Friday. It's been a tiring week, between caring for Ruthie and a big, high-profile work project, so I'm ready for the weekend.

Ruthie has been doing well, though she spends a lot of time sleeping (unsurprising, giving the medication she's taking). Though she chewed through the strap keeping the donut on the first night, I've found a way to keep it on by threading her collar through the inside, and while she doesn't love it, it seems to be working out well as a pillow for her when she naps.

She has seemed much more like her normal self in the past couple of days, once all the anesthesia wore off and she got to eat again, but I imagine it's going to take a bit of time for everything to get back to normal. She's getting a little annoyed with me that she can't go on her regular walks and visit her friends, but she's getting extra treats and lots of love.

With the big work project, not a ton of knitting has been done the past couple of days, but I did manage to get a photo of the singles I started spinning on Tuesday:

Given that the majority of the fiber was undyed, I think I'm going to end up with a pretty muted finished yarn because the pops of color will get blended as I draft. I'm spinning from one end of the braid to the other and will ply it back on itself, so I really don't have much idea of what the finished yarn will look like -- and frankly I'm enjoying the mental break that provides! I am hoping to spend some time spinning in the evenings this weekend (I've yet to try to spin around the dog), so maybe this won't take me forever and a day to finish.

As for the weekend, the weather is supposed to be beautiful, so I'm sure I'll get out for some walks. Other than the usual stuff we do on weekends, the only thing I have on my to-do list is to start baking challah for Rosh Hashanah. We are hosting the big dinner at our house, which feels appropriate given that the holiday starts the evening of the Mister's birthday, and my mother asked if I could once again bake my challah (I believe I've done it the past two years). Each batch yields two challahs, so I figured I'd make one batch plain and one with raisins. I'm not sure if I'll manage all of the baking this weekend, but I'll do at least one batch and put the loaves in the freezer until the 22nd. They take a good amount of time, but challahs for Rosh Hashanah are always round, so I won't have to worry about pretty braids. By the way, I think I may have shared it here before, but if you'd like the recipe I use for challah, please let me know and I'll be happy to send it to you. It's pretty easy and still makes a delicious loaf even if you have zero braiding skills!

I hope your weekend brings you good weather, time to relax, and maybe even a delicious baked good to enjoy!

Unraveled, Week 37/2025

It is Wednesday, and that means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers to talk making and reading. But first, a thank-you for all the well wishes for Ruthie. She made it through her surgery with no problems and is now home in a onesie and an inflatable donut. I think she will not be very happy with me for the next two weeks as her activity is limited, but I am thankful that she's now spayed and I didn't have to deal with a heat cycle.

Back to the usual blog content! I have been working on my two projects a bit every day. I didn't take another photo of my socks, though they look pretty much the same as they did on Monday except that there's an additional repeat. The shawl, on the other hand, has grown quite a bit:

I was a bit worried at first because it didn't look like the pattern pictures and I thought I was doing something wrong, but it turns out that you can't really see the zig-zag effect unless you look at it at a distance or squint your eyes a bit. I am still referring to the pattern because I don't yet have it memorized (and I do have to keep track of repeats of each chart because they switch back and forth each section), but I can at least see the logic of the stitch pattern and can kind of intuit the next step. I will say that although the pattern does have both written and charted directions, one thing it seems to be missing is any indication of a repeat for when the stitch count exceeds the stitches shown on the chart. Understanding how the pattern works is how I figured out how to proceed, but a less-experienced knitter might find it challenging.

Something I did not manage to get a photo of (though there's really not much to photograph at this point) is that I started spinning something on my wheel yesterday while Ruthie was at the vet! I pulled out the Shaniko wool that I brought home from SSK and started spinning off one end of the braid. I'm planning to spin the whole thing onto one bobbin, wind the singles into a cake, and then ply from both ends. But I have a feeling that's a ways off yet. The important thing is that I am trying to actually use what came home with me from Nashville rather than just tossing it into the stash. As I did with my acquisitions last time, I took a photo of everything, and I'm crossing off what I've used:

It's worth noting that three skeins of yarn you see here are currently being used in projects, and the fiber at the bottom is what I'm spinning. I have plants for the gray cake with the three minis at the top, the other self-striping skein, and the skein of dark green, so really that leaves me with just one skein of yarn without a plan. Not bad!

My reading was not as prolific or as wonderful this week compared to last, but after a week with three 5-star books, anything is going to be a letdown! Let's just say I finished three books that were fine (they all earned 3 stars from me).

My parents are both fans of Fredrik Backman's books, so I was not at all surprised to get handed down a hardback copy of his latest, My Friends. As is the case with all of his books that I've read (I've read most of them), you don't get the full picture or the full story until the end, but pretty early on you're plopped right in the middle of it. This novel centers around a famous painting and the group of teenage friends responsible for it. An 18-year-old named Louisa, who has recently aged out of the foster care system, is the impetus for the story being told, as she has long adored the painting and wanted to know the story behind it. So the reader learns the story as she does, and it's not a completely happy one. There is a lot of darkness in this book -- domestic abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, death -- but there's also art and beauty and friendship and love. I think it's probably my least favorite of Backman's books that I read.

I have a bad habit of not having a queue of audiobooks I want to listen to so that I'm not rushing to pick something right before I need it, so sometimes I don't make the best choices. That's what happened to me last Friday, when I needed something in my ears for my run. I'd just heard someone mention The Wedding People, so I thought I'd see if the author had any other books. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is her previous novel, and it is told from the point of view of Sally Holt and addressed toward her older sister, Kathy, who dies in an accident pretty early in the book (this isn't a spoiler; we know from the beginning that Sally is looking back from her late 20s and that Kathy died when the two were 13 and 16). What this novel is, at its heart, is a book about grief and the ways people deal with it. I thought the characters were well written and multifaceted, but I also wanted to yell at many of them to go get some therapy. I think The Wedding People, which also has a dark side, is a much better book.

My last finish was The Emporer of Gladness, which I'd put on hold after Kat raved about it. I had a little trouble getting into it but was determined to persevere. This is a story set in a run-down Connecticut town that starts with a thwarted suicide attempt, when Grazina, an aging widow with dementia, spots Hai, a 19-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, on a bridge and talks him down. Hai ends up living with and caring for Grazina and going to work with his autistic cousin, Sony, at a chain restaurant that seems a lot like Boston Market and that employs its own cast of misfits and outcasts. It's a story about found family and about the lasting impacts of trauma. The writing is strong, but I found it to be depressing. There's a lot about drug addiction, poverty, death, etc. There was a scene in the middle with a pig slaughtering operation that was particularly hard to read. I might give Ocean Vuong's poetry a try, but I don't think his novels are for me.

I'm currently rereading Mrs. Dalloway -- even using the copy I read my senior year of high school with my notes in it! -- and just started Night Watch. I'll be in the market for an audiobook later this week, so let me know if you have any good recommendations!

Recovery Days

It was another quiet weekend here, which I think we all needed. The Mister has been feeling better, though he still has a lingering cough. I've had what I'm pretty sure was a sinus infection that's been getting better day by day but has been giving me a sinus headache pretty much every day for the past week. And Molly is still adjusting to being back at school and worked a five-hour shift on Saturday. Needless to say, we all were in need of rest. We did manage to get ourselves cleaned up and out to dinner on Saturday night, but other than a couple of walks and taking Ruthie out, I spent the weekend relaxing.

Saturday was pretty gloomy after some rain early in the day, but yesterday was a gorgeous fall day -- the sun was out, there was a light breeze, and because the high was only in the upper 60s, it was cool enough to wear wool socks. I decided to give my most recently finished pair their inaugural wearing:

I cast on some new projects over the weekend, but before I could do that, I wanted to finish up a lingering WIP that had some issues. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen this scary-looking photo:

This is the hat I was knitting using the two 50 g skeins of Loopy Ewe yarn I picked up from the giveaway table at SSK. I did weigh them before I started and saw that one was slightly heavier than the other, but I figured I'd just use a little less of that yarn. It wasn't until I switched from the pink to the blue, however, that I realized that the blue was noticeably thicker than the pink, and that meant that it didn't go as far. So when I finished the blue half, it was shorter than the pink. To make the hat work, I needed to take some fabric out of the pink half, which I thought I'd do by running needles through two points, removing the fabric between them, and then grafting the stitches back together. In reality, my eyesight is now apparently bad enough that I didn't follow a round of stitches the whole way, so when I tried to pull the excess yarn out, I ended up having to undo it stitch by stitch to get to one continuous round. At that point, it was easier to just reconnect the yarn from the part I'd pulled off and knit up the crown again. It took much longer than it should have, but it's done now. Next time, I'll remember to count rounds or at least measure so that the length is the same!

This is going into the charity pile, unless someone I know expresses interest. And it's two skeins used up!

The two new projects are also using SSK yarn -- I'm determined to use it all as soon as possible so it doesn't linger in the stash. First, a pair of socks using superwash Targhee/nylon fingering from Woolens & Nosh. The colorway is called Penwings, and I don't know the meaning or inspiration, but it sure is pretty! I also didn't expect it to stripe this way, so that was a fun surprise.

I also cast on a new shawl using a semisolid from the giveaway table and one of the skeins of Lorna's Laces that was a doorprize. The pattern is Tessella (Ravelry link), and it's a lot more straightforward than it looks. What you're seeing here is actually a second version; I had started it with the colors switched and realized it was messing with my brain to have the darker color associated with the light squares in the chart and vice versa, so I ripped it out and started again. There's not as much contrast between my two colors as the samples in the pattern, so it may be that the patterning doesn't show up as well as it could, but who can argue with using free yarn? And I can always make another one.

I'll leave you for the day with a little bit of eye candy: After nurturing it all summer, my one sunflower finally bloomed late last week, and this weekend, the bees found it.

Tomorrow Ruthie is getting spayed. I'm sure she'll be fine, but if you can send a good thought or two her way (and then a good thought or two my way as I take care of her after), I'd appreciate her!

Recent Reads

As promised, I have a bunch of book reviews to share with you today -- there were really too many for Wednesday's post! And in fact I've even finished another book since Wednesday, so it was as well that I waited. Most of these books were really good, but as you'll see, they can't all be five stars.

I've been going through a lot of audiobooks lately (in fact I used all of my allotted borrows from Hoopla for the first time ever in August, all of them on audiobooks). One of those was The Briar Club, the most recent work of historical fiction from Kate Quinn. I've enjoyed her books in the past and knew I could follow one on audio, so I decided to give it a try. This one is set in a boarding house in Washington, D.C., in the early 1950s, at the height of McCarthy and HUAC and the Red Scare. As is typical of Quinn's historical novels, it's told from multiple points of view and from predominantly female characters. It's clear that all the women living in this house have their secrets, and as they take over the story, we learn some (but not all) of them. We also know that the story takes place over the course of several years and that there's been a murder at the conclusion, but it takes us most of the novel before we learn who has died, how, and why. Overall, I found it to be entertaining and something that kept my attention while I ran, cleaned, folded laundry, etc. But I don't think this is the best of Quinn's novels; I didn't quite figure out the twist at the end, but I came close, and generally I thought it was all a bit implausible and tied up a little too neatly at the end. I gave it 3 stars.

Next was a memoir that Mary put on my radar. My Good Bright Wolf has an unusual structure, most notably including a commentary (an inner critic?) that pops up from time to time to refute the author's claims. While the book largely chronicle's the author's struggles with an eating disorder and mental health, it also addresses how society has largely discounted women's suffering even as it has placed entirely unreasonable expectations for their behavior and appearance. There's some difficult stuff here, but it's beautifully written. The narration is also really well done. You'd think those critical asides would be difficult to convey on audio (I would imagine there is some treatment of the font in the print book to set them apart), but the tone and voice is just different enough to be subtle yet effective. (Incidentally, if the reader sounds familiar and, like me, you're a fan of PBS and Masterpiece, you might recognize her as the actress who played Amanda on the first few seasons of Grantchester.) While I found some of this book really difficult to listen to, I can't deny that it's very well done. I gave it 5 stars and would recommend it, unless the subject matter would be difficult for you.

Don't let the slightly creepy cover of Loved and Missed put you off -- this is a beautiful, though sad, short novel about mothers and daughters. Ruth is a middle-aged woman who is somewhat estranged from her daughter, Eleanor, due to the daughter's addiction. Ruth continually tries to help Eleanor -- with food, with money, with offers of help -- to no avail. But when Eleanor has her own daughter, and it's clear that she's in no shape to take care of her, Ruth steps in as a surrogate mother to her granddaughter, Lily. The novel follows them through the years, as Ruth continues reaching out to Eleanor to no avail and as Lily learns that Ruth is more her mother than Eleanor. Ruth never gives up on Eleanor, but in her relationship with Lily, there is some redemption. It's sad and lovely and a beautiful reflection on mothers and daughters. I gave it 5 stars as well.

In February 2021, outside the country house where she went to escape London during the early days of the pandemic, Chloe Dalton came across a leveret, a newborn hare. She took steps to rescue it and keep it alive, even though the experts she consulted told her it was likely a lost cause, and against all odds it survived, living alongside her and inspiring her to learn more not only about hares but about many other native species and the impact humans have had on them. Raising Hare is her account of what it was like to rescue the hare and help it survive without trying to tame it, her observations of the behaviors and proclivities of the hare, and her attempts to have as little impact as possible on the hare's life. I found it to be charming and a good reminder of one of the few positives of those early pandemic days: the appreciation of and respect for nature that I felt when I walked to try to dissipate some of my anxiety. I gave it 4 stars.

I wanted to read Soldier Sailor last year, when it was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for fiction, but my library didn't have it at the time and I forgot about it until I was scrolling through available audiobooks and came across it. And I am so glad I did. It's been 16 years since I was a new mother with an infant, but it all came racing back: the constant worry, the feeling of being alone in doing everything, the resentment that your partner gets to go to work, the utter exhaustion. It's a novel but feels like it could be a memoir because it's so true to life and so well illustrates how mothers are expected to do it all -- care for children, cook and clean, have careers, and keep their sanity on top of it all. I expect every mother who has read this would feel the same. I gave it 5 stars.

Finally, my least favorite of the week was Audition, from this year's Booker Prize longlist. You may remember that I read two of Katie Kitamura's previous novels earlier in the summer, and that was partially so I'd be familiar with her style when my hold came up for this new one. I've made my peace with her run-on sentences and comma splices (they still irk me, but I get that that's her style), but I think her books just aren't for me. This novel is presented in two parts, almost like two entirely different novels that just happen to have the same cast of characters. The story is told in the first person by a main character who remains nameless, though we know she's an actress and is not white (there are references to her racial background, though it's never made explicitly clear what it is), and both parts center her relationships with others. In the first part, she is in the rehearsal stage of a play when she's approached by a 20-something young man who believes, based on an interview she gave years ago, that he might be her son, and their meetings, she realizes, might be seen by an outsider as romantic in nature. In the second part, he is her son and is coming home to live with her and her husband again for a bit. I could appreciate the writing (minus the comma splices), but ultimately I felt that I just didn't get this book. When I finished, I felt that I just wasn't smart enough to appreciate it or had missed something major that would bring it all together; based on some of the reviews I read, I am not alone. I gave it 3 stars.

So this week was a mixed bag, but three 5-star reads in one week is practically unheard of for me! Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think?

I hope that my weekend includes time to finish at least one more book, and I hope yours includes time for whatever brings you joy!

Unraveled, Week 36/2025

It is so hard to go back to the normal routine after a long weekend, particularly a long weekend with so much rest, but the nice thing about it is that it's already Wednesday, and that means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers. This week there has been no unraveling -- but there has been some finishing!

Pattern: Kudzu by Laura Aylor (Ravelry link), size S/36.1 in. bust
Yarn: Shibui Linen (100% linen), color Ash, approximately 2.1 skeins/516 yards
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm -- 
Started/Completed: August 3/August 28
Mods: see below

This pattern had been in my library since the summer of 2023, and it was I originally bought the Miss Babs linen/silk for (I ended up using it for Midsommarkrans). But when I found three skeins of the now-discontinued Shibui Linen on the giveaway table and realized there was enough, I figured it was fate that I finally made it.

The yarn took a little getting used to because it's 100% linen and has no stretch, but it's formed in a kind of i-cord tube that gives it some flexibility. I didn't find it tiring to work with, but my hands are always dry these days because I'm washing my hands so much, and sometimes the yarn would catch on a rough spot, so I made sure to have some lotion nearby if needed.

The pattern itself took a little getting used to because I've knit at least one Laura Aylor pattern before but never a garment. I had fewer issues with the lace, though, with no ripping and reknitting required. I especially like how the leafy edging along the armholes comes together under the arms:

I went a bit off piste with the body, in part because my stitch count was a little off for the front and in part because I didn't want the lower hem to be too wide, so I only worked two sets of increases below the waist (I'm pretty sure the pattern called for more). The only real modification I made was to work an i-cord bind-off for the lower hem. The pattern calls for simply binding off (maybe in purl?), but even in a plant-based fiber I thought there was still a risk of that hem curling up. Plus, there's an i-cord edging around the arms and on the sides of the straps, so why not make it match? It took a little extra time, but I think it was worth it.

Please excuse the messy hair.

After I washed the tank and left it to dry flat, I pressed it with a steamy iron to open up the lace and flatten the straps. I imagine that in time, with more washing and wearing, it'll soften, but for now it's fairly crisp, though not uncomfortably so. If I were knitting this again, I would make the neck opening in the front as wide as the back; I'm just not wild about how closely it comes in. As it is, I will need to wear this with a tank underneath, as you see here, or with a strapless bra (yuck). But it feels very comfy on and will be a great piece for the summer because it weighs practically nothing -- 105 g!

Now I'm only working on that two-tone charity hat and trying to finish it up as soon as I can because the Pigskin Party kicks off tomorrow and WIPs don't count, so I'll want to cast on some new projects.

It's been another pretty stellar week of reading, so much so that I'm going to take a page from Bonny's book and save my reviews for Friday. Until then, friends, enjoy your first week of September!