Another Sweaty Weekend

It was another weekend -- another hot weekend -- here, though this weekend we actually had a bit of rain!  I'd been hoping for a good thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, which did not materialize, but we did get a couple of good soaking rains. Still a drop in the bucket as far as our deficit is concerned, but I'll take it!

We ended up going out to dinner with my parents on Friday night to a new-to-us place that we all agreed was a place we'd go back to. Saturday Molly worked, the Mister rode his bike, and I managed to go for a 6+-mile walk (in addition to my regular walks with Ruthie). I made a chocolate zucchini cake (from this cookbook) using the two zucchinis I managed to harvest from my plants before the heat killed them. Ruthie took naps -- and apparently had some interesting dreams:

I finished an ebook and an audiobook and pondered which of these variegated skeins to use with the light green semisolid for a new shawl (Ravelry link):

I was up both mornings a little earlier than I'd like, but I slept well and managed a brief nap both days, so I can't complain. The only cooking I had to do all weekend was make a salad to go with pizza on Saturday night and prep some potatoes and asparagus for the oven last night. As weekends go, it was a pretty good one! And now it's back to the usual. It's Molly's last week of summer break, and in addition to working two shifts this week, she's got to finish her summer reading assignment, which happens to be what might be my favorite book, Pride and Prejudice. It looks like it's going to be a little cooler this week, so maybe it'll be less sweaty than it has been. There are already leaves drying up and falling in the neighborhood, so fall is on the way!

Three Random Things

It's Friday, thank goodness, and because I don't have much of an update to share in the way of knitting (everything looks pretty much the same as it did on Wednesday), I thought I'd share three random things -- good things! -- to end the week.

1. We got rain!
After getting no measurable precipitation for nearly the first half of August for the first time since the 1800s, we finally got a couple of good soakings on Wednesday. I woke to a thunderstorm in the morning, and there was another as I was going to bed. We're still at quite a deficit, but it was nice to see the flowers perking up a little.

2. I met some new neighbors.
Okay, this might be stretching it a bit, but yesterday as I was walking in to the office, I heard a noise up a driveway, looked to my left, and saw this mama and her babies:

The photo isn't the best because I was trying to take it without scaring them, but the two fawns still had lots of spots and were so cute! It's a good thing Ruthie wasn't with me because I don't know what she'd make of deer; she already gets freaked out by rabbits, squirrels, and birds, to say nothing of dogs she doesn't know.

3. Girl dinner
You may have heard of this trend. "Girl dinner" is apparently the name for having what amounts to snacks for dinner, but in our house, it's what Molly and I eat when the Mister is out of town or at a work dinner and we don't feel like making an organized meal. It's what we did last night, when I made homemade pita bread (using this recipe) and we had some dips to go with it. I make this pita a lot, and while it takes a bit of time, it's always excellent. Here, have a piece!

I will note that if you'd like to try to make it, I find it works just fine with regular all-purpose flour. The dough is also very sticky, so you'll want to have extra flour on hand. And if you can't eat it all at once, it'll keep in the fridge and reheat in the microwave very nicely the next day.

We have what I hope will be another quiet weekend ahead. Molly is working tomorrow and then having a friend sleep over ahead of her last week of summer vacation. I'm looking forward to sneaking in a nap or two with Ruthie, who reminds you to make sure you're getting enough rest, too!

Have a great weekend, friends, and see you back here on Monday!

Unraveled, Week 33/2025

It's another hot Wednesday here, and the humidity has been turned back up -- but we are supposed to get rain today! Good thing, too, because we've apparently had the driest start to August since sometime in the 1800s. I am longing for fall weather, but it looks like that's not coming for a while yet, so I'll be hiding in the air conditioning as much as I can until then.

Time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers! The arrival of a big work project last week meant a slowdown in my daytime knitting, but the current hat on the needles is now about half a Ruthie long:

Apologies for showing you so much leg!

I haven't weighed the skein of yarn, but it has gotten noticeably smaller, so I'd estimate I'm about halfway done. There's no deadline for this, but I expect it won't be on the needles for too much longer because it's so easy to work on while doing other things.

I've also made some progress on my Kudzu, despite putting it down for a day or so to check with the designer on some numbers. I've just joined the front and the back to work in the round, so things are likely to go faster now.

I'd really like to get this done by the end of the month, if possible. I have a lace/texture chart to work through under both arms, but after that it's all stockinette, and I know that will go quickly. Partly I want to get it done to be able to wear it while it's still summer (even though at the moment it feels like summer is going to last forever), but partly the desire to finish it is so I can get started on something for colder weather.

In spite of being busy at work, I somehow managed to finish four books in the past week -- largely thanks to being caught up on a backlog of podcasts and thus being on the hunt for audiobooks!

First up was The Friend, the next Read With Us selection. There was a wait for the digital book at my library but not for the audio, so I went that route. This is a short novel (only about 6 hours on audio) about a woman whose longtime friend and mentor has just died by suicide and whose Great Dane she ends up inheriting, despite living in a New York City apartment where dogs are forbidden. The dog's presence inspires her to reminisce on their friendship and reflect on her grief as well as how the dog might (or might not) be processing the absence of its owner. I think that perhaps audio might not have been the best format for me to read this book because I kept getting lost and a little confused, and that definitely contributed to my feelings about the book in general. I'll be watching the movie made from it (the first time we've done this for RWU!), and perhaps that will help to make things a bit clearer for me. I gave it 3 stars.

Next up was Sandwich, a book I know quite a lot of you read when it came out last year and that I'd been meaning to read, and I was reminded of this fact when Bonny mentioned the author's forthcoming follow-up. This was another short book (less than 6 hours) that I ended up listening to in its entirety over the course of one day between my run, walks with Ruthie, and doing some house cleaning. The title is a reference to that stage of life when adults have to worry both about their children and their parents, though I think it's also clever as it could be the setting for the town on Cape Cod where the main character's family vacations for a week every year. Rocky is about 10 years older than I am, but I felt that I understood a lot of her struggles -- the worry about her kids, the worry about her parents, the havoc caused by menopause hormones (perimenopause, in my case), and the nostalgia for the seemingly simpler times when the kids were young and life seemed less complicated. I think this book also appealed to me because we used to vacation at the Cape when I was tween/teen, and when I was younger than that, we'd go to the New Jersey shore, so the descriptions of packing up lunches, schlepping all the stuff to the beach, and having sand get positively everywhere felt so very familiar. I gave it 4 stars.

Up next was a selection from my library holds, Ali Smith's Gliff. This is apparently meant to be a retelling or reimagining of Brave New World, which I have never read (so I cannot comment on that aspect). All I can really say is that, like other Smith novels I've read, I didn't fully understand what was going on but nevertheless enjoyed it. I've learned that I really just need to go along for the ride and not worry about the details, because they're rarely forthcoming. The best sense of the plot I got is that this is set in the near future, when technology has taken over nearly every aspect of life and has led to a surveillance state in which certain people are considered undesirable and are forced from their homes, the notice of which is a red line literally being painted around them. That is what has happened to the two siblings at the center of this story when their mother has gone to help out their ill aunt, leaving them with her partner. But when they are evicted, the partner goes to retrieve the mother and leaves the two children on their own. There's a horse involved and attempted evasion from the authorities, and later on one sibling (having lost track of the other) is looking back on this time in their life. I still feel a bit like I need someone to explain it to me, but I gave it 4 stars in spite of feeling rather clueless.

After finishing Sandwich, I thought I should listen to Catherine Newman's first book, We All Want Impossible Things. Though the characters and circumstances are completely different, many things felt similar, so it's clear to me that Newman is drawing a lot from her own life and experiences. This is a largely sad novel, about two friends since childhood, one of whom is dying of ovarian cancer. Ash and Edi have known each other for nearly all their lives, and now Edi is spending her last days in a hospice in Ash's hometown. As she grapples with the impending loss of her best friend, Ash is also struggling with her marriage and recent separation and concerns about her daughters. It seems like this novel should be a tearjerker, and it is at parts, but it also made me laugh out loud several times. I was left with the message that it shouldn't take the death of a loved one to make us appreciate the people in our lives we most care about. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

August Weekending

Happy Monday, friends! I hope you had a good weekend. Ours was hot but good. As they have done for the past couple of years, some of our Chicago cousins stopped by to stay with us overnight on their way home from vacation in North Carolina. It had been more than a year since we last saw them (when we went to Chicago for another cousin's bat mitzvah), so they hadn't before met my niece or Ruthie. It was all a bit chaotic Friday night and Saturday morning, but it was a good time. And my cousin's two daughters are growing up very quickly. The two of them had a sleepover in Molly's room -- the oldest is only 12 but already pretty much as tall as Molly!

We had everyone -- the cousins, my parents, and my brother and his family -- over to our house for breakfast on Saturday morning before the cousins left for the final leg of the trip home. Leo even came over to play with Ruthie!

It's still amazing to me how similar they look -- that same white stripe down the middle and a pink spot by their nose.

I mentioned that it's been hot; after a week where the humidity dropped significantly and temperatures were more bearable, our highs are climbing again this week, but the big thing is that we haven't had measurable rain since July. There were a few sprinkles on Friday morning, but that's done nothing for how dry everything is. I've been trying to water the plants, but the grass is pretty crispy. The tomatoes don't seem to be bothered by the heat, though -- look at what I picked on Friday!

That tiny zucchini was only picked because the plant it was attached to was dying, and I ended up tossing it in the compost anyway because there was a bug burrowing into it. The tomatoes look great, though. I can't get over how the one plant has grown. I've managed to harvest about four cherry tomatoes, but that plant has been dwarfed by the full-size plant. I've got some fresh mozzarella in the fridge for caprese salads for these.

I'm hoping for an uneventful week ahead. I finished up a big work project Friday afternoon, so I'm hoping things will be calm in that arena. Molly has three work shifts this week, and the Mister has a brief work trip, so Ruthie and I will be on our own for much of the week. I hope to have a real knitting update on Wednesday (and for sure I'll have a reading update). In the meantime, please enjoy this short video of Ruthie enjoying her first taste of watermelon!

Feel Good Friday

I don't know about you, but these past several weeks, I've really looked forward to Friday because of Kym's Sanctuary posts. She always has such a fun mix of something interesting, something beautiful, and something funny. But Kym is taking a well-deserved break to have a visit with her sister this week, and because I've been busy with actual work this week and don't have a lot of usual content to share, I thought I would take a page from her book and share some things that I hope will lift your spirits a bit. I'm a bit crunched for time, so this post won't be anywhere close to Kym's level of perfection, but if I can make you smile or chuckle, I'll be happy.

First, if you're a fan of dogs and you aren't following WeRateDogs on whatever social media channel you use, you're missing out. Truly, their posts are some of the best parts of my day. This post from the other day made me laugh out loud:

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Next, are you familiar with red pandas? Molly was a little obsessed with them for a while, especially when we started watching videos of them trying to look tough when facing a very threatening ... rock.

Finally, if you want to see some beautiful photography, I'll direct you to the site of my favorite local photographer. He does a lot of shots of Pittsburgh, which might or might not interest you, but he also takes gorgeous photos of nature and landscapes. Here are a few examples:

If you like these, I'd encourage you to check out his galleries (and I won't be offended in the least if you don't feel a need to browse the Pittsburgh photos!).

Have a good weekend, remember there is beauty out there to be seen, and do your best to have a good laugh.

Unraveled, Week 32/2025

Happy Wednesday, friends! Before I join in with Kat and the Unravelers, I have an apology. Each week for my Unraveled post, I look back at the number from the week before, and it took typing out 40 this week for me to realize that something was not right because I know there are more than 12 week left in this year. It seems that somewhere back in spring, instead of typing the number 12, I typed 20, and that set off a chain reaction of mis-numbering the weeks. I've gone back and corrected them all, but that means that if you use some sort of blog reader or subscribe to something that notifies you that I've posted, you will have seen what looks like a ton of new posts from me. I wish I had that much exciting content to share, but alas I'm just fixing my own errors. I've always maintained that my strength is in words, not numbers, and I think this just confirms it.

But enough about my typos -- let's get back to the making and the reading! Since finishing up my latest pair of socks, my afternoon puppy nap time/reading time knitting has been the hat I'm knitting using the SSK goodie bag yarn, and at present it's about the size of Ruthie's tushie:

There's obviously still a good ways to go on this, but I do like the way the colors are pooling in sort-of stripes.

I've also cast on a new project, using the free-to-me Shibui Linen yarn that I picked up from the giveaway table at SSK. I'm making Kudzu (Ravelry link), the pattern I originally bought the Miss Babs silk/linen for.

This lace is a lot less complicated than Midsommarkrans, so with any luck it will go quickly and I'll be able to speed through to the stockinette body. I did swatch for this and got stitch gauge with a US 5/3.75 mm, though this start looks awfully small. I am making a size that should give me about an inch of positive ease, assuming I get gauge in the actual piece.

Reading has been good this past week, with three solid finishes.

It's been a number of years since the last Jimmy Perez novel and I truly thought the series was done, so I was delighted to see there's a forthcoming ninth book! In this latest installment, The Killing Stones, the action has moved from the Shetland Islands to the Orkney Islands, closer to mainland Scotland but remote enough that Jimmy and his team are largely on their own when it comes to investigations. This time, the first victim is Jimmy's longtime friend Archie Stout, and the discovery of his body at an archaeological site suggests a motive related to the island's history. The murder investigation keeps you guessing and keeps the list of suspects long, but the real focus of the novel is the changing nature of life in an island community where everyone knows each other and where outsiders are suspect. It's an entertaining and propulsive tour of Jimmy Perez's new home and also serves as a satisfying update on his personal life with his new family. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for providing me with a digital ARC in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 30, 2025.

After clearing a long podcast backlog, I went looking for something fun on audio and decided on a romance that had long been on my radar. In Red, White & Royal Blue, the son of the president of the United States and a British prince are involved in an incident at a royal wedding, leading them to be forced to be together in the name of damage control and end up falling in love -- and dealing with all the complications that such a relationship entails. I thought this would be a fun little fairy tale-type romance, but it deals with some surprisingly serious issues. Clearly the author was dealing with the outcome of the 2016 election (the president in this world is the first woman elected, and there's a plot point involving a private email server), so I guess you could call it a left-wing political fantasy if you wanted. There are a few real political names dropped (and some made-up figures who are clear stand-ins for real people), but for the most part all the people are fictional, and it seems the author has also taken a few liberties with the rules of royal succession. It was fun and more serious than I expected. I do have to lodge one complaint about the narrator, who pronounced Bowie (as in David) as if it rhymes with "owie." Yikes! Still, it was enjoyable. I gave it 4 stars as well.

My most recent finish this past week was also my favorite of the bunch, but it's one that feels almost impossible to describe. The Antidote is set in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, in the early 1930s. It's the time of the Dust Bowl and opens as a massive dust storm moves through and wreaks havoc on this small town founded mostly by Polish immigrants a quarter-century earlier and displacing the Indigenous people who lived there. But in this version of the Dust Bowl, there exist Prairie Witches, women called Vaults who can store your memories for you and relieve you of the burden of carrying them -- at least until you decide you want to withdraw them. When the titular character wakes following the storm, she realizes that the memories she's been storing in her body have left her, leaving her effectively bankrupt. She and her backstory -- along with a farmer, his orphaned niece, and a Black female photographer working for the federal government -- form the center of the story that follows. I'm actually glad I didn't know much about this book before I started reading; in fact, I bought it when it was a Kindle deal mainly because I kept seeing it pop up all the places buzzy books do, and now I'm glad I own it because I have a feeling I will need to reread it. There is so much going on in this book and it has a lot to say about some big, important issues -- things like colonialism, the mistreatment of Indigenous tribes by the federal government, racism, memory, and climate change. This is not a book that can be rushed through, and from the material at the back, it's clear the author did extensive research to do justice to the issues she raises. It's not a book for everyone, but I know it's a book I'm very glad I read and will be thinking about for a long time. I gave it 5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Refreshed but Not Quite Rested

We had a truly spectacular weekend of weather here -- very low humidity, blue skies, and highs in the upper 70s/low 80s. It was so nice not to be melting every time I was out with Ruthie. Less nice was that she had me up before sunrise both days, at 5:45 on Saturday and 5:15 on Sunday. She's supposedly an adolescent now at 7 months old, but unlike my human teenager, who didn't wake up until well after noon yesterday, she doesn't seem to like sleeping in. I'm sure it's just a phase, but it sure is tiring!

Thankfully, we didn't have a whole lot on the docket this weekend, so I was able to squeeze in some cat naps and a fair amount of knitting and reading time. And I finished my socks!

Although I did start at the same exact spot in the stripe sequence, they're not a perfect match, probably because I started the heel on the second sock where it looked like I did it on the first rather than measuring. This was partly due to laziness but also because the old measuring tape in my sock bag, one from my now-closed former LYS, decided it was done. The pull completely separated from the tape, rendering it completely useless, and as I was ready to start the heel when I had a puppy sleeping on me, I couldn't really go get a replacement. Really the only way you can tell they're not a perfect match is if you look at the very tip of the toes and notice that there are two short rounds of of gray on one toe and not the other. And really, how many people are going to be looking at that part of my feet?

Now that these are done, I need another project to work on while Ruthie naps and I read, so I cast on another charity hat using the yarn from the SSK goodie bag:

The colors are a bit more vibrant in better lighting, maybe a little too vibrant for the people I knit for, but I think they'll make a great hat. I finished the crown during nap time yesterday, so I should be good for the week -- and I'm feeling pretty virtuous for using some SSK yarn right away!

We've got a pretty typical week ahead, and we're looking forward to a visit from some cousins next weekend. I'm hoping Ruthie will sleep a little later and let me catch up!