Unraveled, Week 40/2025

Hello, friends, and happy Wednesday! And happy October! Even though it's the middle of the week, I feel like it's been forever since I did a catch-up post because of Monday's OLW post. So I've got a lot for you in today's Unraveled post, and as usual I'm linking up with Kat and the other Unravelers.

For starters, how about a pair of finished socks?

I used my SHaGS pattern (Ravelry link) and 95 g of a skein of Woolens and Nosh Targhee fingering, one of two that came home with me from SSK this year. The colorway name is Penwings, which is a strange name, so I did some digging and it turns out that it has to do with Benedict Cumberbatch and his apparent difficulty with pronouncing the word "penguins" (thank you to Bonny for directing me to this video that explains it all). I used my usual US 0/2.0 mm needles for these, magic loop, and I'm quite pleased with myself for getting them to match pretty much perfectly:

I'm typically pretty successful in getting striped socks to match through the leg, but sometimes something goes off kilter in the heel and the toes end up being slightly mismatched. Not so with this pair (though it may appear that way just because of how they're stacked in the photo). I also grafted the toe of the second sock in a moving vehicle, so I think I earned some sort of knitter's merit badge with these? We're supposed to have some cooler weather for a couple of days, so perhaps these will get their inaugural wearing.

As for WIPs, here's where things stand:

I have a third of the current repeat and two more full repeats on my shawl remaining in the pattern as written, but it's looking like I will have enough yarn to knit some more. I also discovered four more balls of Felici in my stash, despite thinking I had used up the last of it earlier this year, so they are becoming socks for my sisters-in-law for Christmas. I've already started on the first of these.

On to reading! Last week was kind of chaotic, with not as much downtime, but that's life. I've finished two books since this time last week:

Flashlight is on both the longlist for the National Book Award (fiction) and the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize, and it was highly praised by some readers I admire, so I'd been waiting rather impatiently for my hold to come up from the library. It turns out to have been well worth the wait. This is a family drama at its core. At the outset, we learn that Louisa and her father have gone for a walk on the beach; he is carrying a flashlight and cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found alone, her father presumably having drowned. But then we go back in time and learn about her father's life, from his time growing up in Japan as the son of Korean immigrants to his emigration to the United States to his disappearance in the sea, and we go forward with Louise and her mother, Anne, as they navigate their new reality and their difficult relationship. This is a big book, with a twist I did not expect, and writing that requires one to read slowly. I loved it -- 5 stars.

The Listeners is a work of historical fiction set in West Virginia in the early days of the United States' involvement in WWII. It takes place in a fictional luxury hotel called the Avallon but has its basis in reality: When the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, and its citizens were detained in those countries, the government decided to sequester diplomats and their families from those hostile countries in resort hotels. At the Avallon, June Hudson is the general manager, trained for the role by the recently deceased patriarch of the family who owns it, and she must walk the fine line between maintaining the high level of service the hotel prides itself on and cooperating with the state department and FBI officials who are overseeing the unusual guests. There is also a special relationship between June and the "sweetwater" the hotel is known for, water that is reputed to have therapeutic powers and that somehow enables the hotel to be a success but also is somehow influenced by the events that take place in the hotel and the emotions of those involved. I thought this was a really interesting read in the sense that I learned about an aspect of WWII that was previously unknown to me, but I was also frustrated by how much was left unexplained or skipped over. I gave it 3.5 stars.

As I should have expected, I've gotten a bit overwhelmed by my library holds right at a time when work is going to get busy, so I've had to suspend some holds for a bit while I get a handle on things, particularly as I also have a couple of ARCs on my Kindle shelf. I'm still trying to get through Mrs. Dalloway, though I haven't read more than half a page or so in the past week. Perhaps this weekend there will be more reading time.

Also, by way of a life update, I took a sick day on Monday (which ended up being a good thing, as I really needed to recover from both the race and my COVID shot) primarily because I was going to the eye doctor for a much-needed checkup, and I'm here to report that I am officially middle-aged because I came home with a prescription for reading glasses!

Less in 2025: September

Dear friends, can you believe that we are almost finished with the wonderful month that is September? It's usually one of my favorite months because of the weather, the holidays, the start of the school year, and all that. It was a busy September this year, but I'm not letting it pass by without checking in on my One Little Word. Thank you to Kat for hosting our link-ups this year.

Less has shown up in a few different ways this month, but the biggest is that there has been a lot less in my checking account -- it's been a very expensive month! First, there was Ruthie's spay surgery, which was planned for and expected but still a big bill. Then, I did something I'd never done before: I dropped my cell phone and smashed the glass. Molly said it was the universe's way of telling me that it was time for a new phone; I'd actually been thinking about getting a new one soon anyway, because my old one was an iPhone 11 from 2020, but this decided it. There was the cost of the new phone plus a new case and new charger (because of course none of the accessories I had for the old phone would work with the new one). Then, about three days after the phone arrived, it flew out of my hand while I was out on a walk and the glass broke in the exact same place. Never before had I broken the glass on a phone and I managed to do it twice in a week! Fortunately, with Apple Care, I was able to get the glass replaced and paid only a reasonable service fee. And that was not the end: The Mister celebrated his birthday last week, and he is notoriously hard to buy gifts for (mainly because when there's something he wants, he just buys it for himself), so when he said he'd found a piece of luggage he really wanted, how could I say no? All of this is to say that my expenses have exceeded my income this month and it's a good thing I'm a saver -- and that I've been knitting from stash this year!

There has also been less running this month. I started having some pain in my left knee several weeks ago, so I pulled out my trusty knee brace. It helped, but the discomfort was still there, so I figured the best thing to do was rest. I've only run once a week for the past couple of weeks and it's helped a lot; I would have stopped altogether were it not for the race this past weekend -- I didn't want to go into it having not run at all recently. I've noticed it's been feeling better, and clearly my reduced running time did not impact me in the least, because I had a new PR in the 5K:

I finished 13th (out of 183) in my age group, 95th (out of 1,318) among women, and 321st (out of 2,399) overall. My previous record for this race was last year's 27:14, so I really blew it out of the water. And I was not at all expecting it! I was hoping to be around 26 minutes, but I guess the adrenaline really gave me an extra boost this time. Now that the race is over, however, I'm going to give my knee more time to heel and probably will be sticking to walking for a while. And here's hoping that translates to Less knee pain in October!

Good Things to End the Week

I am very happy to see Friday come around again; it's been a busy week, even with (or perhaps because of) the day off. I thought I'd wrap up the week with some happy things, because don't we all prefer and need happy things in our lives?

First good thing: Ruthie is free of all her post-op restrictions and is back to being her normal rambunctious self. We have some behavioral things to address (like the fact that she's suddenly started biting us to get our attention), but most of the time she's a good girl. And now that she doesn't have all that stuff she has to wear, she's resumed her second career as a cinnamon roll:

Second good thing: We got rain! We had a wet start to spring and then a long stretch of mostly dry weather and heat for the summer, so we were actually in drought conditions until this week. You might even say that the start of the new year brought rain, as the first downpour occurred during our Rosh Hashanah dinner on Monday evening. Thankfully the heavy showers have been brief and we've mainly had light but persistent showers for the past several days; I think by the time it moves out, we will have gotten between 2 and 3 inches this week, and apparently it's been enough to put us at an above-average total for the month. I don't think our front lawn is likely to recover, but at least there's some green on it now, instead of the brown it was.

Third good thing: I am nearly finished with a pair of socks!

I was maybe being a tad ambitious in declaring that I might have them done by the end of the week, but really I am very close. I'm past all the parts (save the toe) where I really have to pay attention, so I can pretty much go on autopilot until I'm ready to decrease.

This weekend all three of us are running the Great Race 5K. I'm not sure I'll match or beat my time from last year, but I will be able to run it, which is saying a lot given that less than a year ago I couldn't walk without pain. Afterward, Molly and I are going to get our COVID shots -- I figure that after running a race and getting a vaccine, we will be totally justified in loafing the rest of the day.

I hope there are some good things in your life this week, and I hope you can find some more this weekend. I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word reflection (yes, we are almost at the end of September!).

Unraveled, Week 39/2025

Happy Wednesday, friends! On the one hand, I'm glad it's already Wednesday, but on the other hand, Monday and Tuesday ended up being such long days that I feel ready for the weekend already. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and see what everyone is up to!

I barely sat down for more than 20 minutes on Monday until just before bed, and yesterday we were at services in the morning, then out to lunch, and then Ruthie's schedule was so off that she didn't take her usual afternoon nap. All of that meant little to no knitting time for me, so I don't have much of a knitting update today because my WIPs look virtually the same as they did on Monday (I've added just a few rows to the shawl). I can report, though, that Ruthie did really well with all the people on Monday evening. I'm sure the sedative helped (and I'm keeping the few we have left for Thanksgiving!), but she did start to come out of her shell just a bit toward the end of the evening. She seemed really interested in my niece, which I guess is no big surprise because she's the human closest in size to her!

They really seemed to enjoy each other, and I'm hoping they'll get to play again soon when there aren't quite so many other people around. Apparently my niece is very into Leo lately, too, and Leo is being a good boy and tolerating her. As you can see from the photo, she's started pulling herself up to stand -- she was even standing on tiptoes as she was trying to hold on to a higher step at one point! I'm sure she's going to be running after both dogs before we know it.

The reading has not been as voluminous this past week, but it has been very good. I've finished two books, both of which are up for the National Book Award (one for fiction, one for nonfiction).

A Guardian and a Thief is a work of speculative fiction set in Kolkata, India, in the not-so-distant future when climate change has caused temperatures and seas to rise, leading to crop failures and food shortages. In a week's time, Ma, her 2-year-old daughter, and her father are due to leave to join her husband in Michigan, having secured valuable climate visas that will allow them to leave India and settle in the United States. But the night after obtaining these precious documents, they are stolen, leaving their potentially lifesaving trip in jeopardy. In turn we learn what led the thief to Ma's house and that her seeming good luck in having food for her family and an exit strategy haven't entirely come her way honestly. This book paints a fairly grim picture of what happens when there isn't enough to go around to ensure everyone's survival, the lengths even an otherwise good person will go to in order to feed their family, and the rationalizations and lies people will tell themselves to justify their actions. This isn't a story with a happy ending -- but often that's reality, so it feels genuine. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published October 14, 2025.

My other finish this week was The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life, which I listened to via Hoopla. As the title implies, much of this memoir is about the author's experience running a farm in Vermont, where she and her family raise Icelandic sheep and try to be conscientious stewards of the land. Although the setting sounds idyllic, the author is frank about the hard work, expenses, and life-and-death realities of raising livestock. Amidst the stories of lambing and sheep shearing are interludes of history, such as how the Merino sheep got to North America and the cruel attempts of white settlers to keep Indigenous tribes of the Southwest from the sheep they traditionally raised. And it's not all about the farm, with moving and wistful passages about raising children (the author's stepdaughter and daughter) and losing her mother to dementia. In spite of some bad blunders by the reader, I found this book to be thoroughly enchanting and would recommend it highly to anyone interested in the fiber arts. I gave it 5 stars.

I'm currently in a good place where I have more to read than I have time for -- to the point where I actually had to suspend a hold on a library book because I have too many others ahead of it! My top priority is finishing Flashlight, which I've been reading since late last week and which just made the Booker Prize shortlist. And I'm also roughly halfway through a reread of Mrs. Dalloway, having last read it during my senior year of high school -- I'm even using the same copy I used back then, which has all my notes in it and even contained a bookmark on which I'd passed notes back and forth with a classmate talking about where we thought we might choose to go to college, which is quite a trip down memory lane!

What are you making and reading this week?

Not So Monday

Monday is a lot easier to take when you know you'll have Tuesday off -- and that you'll be knocking off from work a little early! Rosh Hashanah begins tonight, and we'll have 20 people (including four small children) and a dog in the house. This is technically Ruthie's last day of recovery, but I'm going to wait to give her the sedative until a couple of hours before everyone comes over in the hope that it will help her handle all those people in the house. She's been without her donut since Saturday, when she woke up with it deflated and I finally admitted defeat (I'd patched a hole in it once before). She seemed quite happy with the situation:

Today she'll finally get to be free of the onesie. I probably could have taken it off earlier, as the incision seems to be almost completely healed, but as she wasn't fighting it as much as she fought the donut, I figured I'd keep it on for the full two weeks. 

In between walks and naps, I managed to bake another pair of challahs, and these looked even better than the last batch, if I do say so myself:

I learned from last week and baked them on separate baking sheets so they didn't get stuck together. Tonight we'll get to dig into all of them, with plenty of honey drizzled on top for a sweet new year.

There was some knitting over the weekend as well, though perhaps not as much as I'd like, but that's okay. Here's where the two WIP stand:

I made a rather stupid mistake on my shawl on Friday night and knit a couple of rows I'd already knit (because I missed the arrow I'd written on the chart to indicate where to start when I picked it up again), so all my knitting time was spent knitting and then tinking four rows. But now I'm back on track, and fortunately the sock requires no chart or even remembering where I was because I can measure or compare it to the first sock. I'm very close to starting the heel on the second sock, so if I can get in a little time every day, I may well have a finished sock before the end of the week.

In addition to celebrating the holiday today, we're also going to be celebrating the Mister's birthday -- there will be birthday cake and apple cake for dessert! There will also be plenty of other delicious food, all cooked by my mother: matzoh ball soup, brisket, chicken, vegetables, etc. I'm sure she'll send food home with everyone and there will still be more than enough for another meal for several families, so we'll get to enjoy it more than once. I'd share some with all of you if I could!

I hope your Monday isn't too Monday-ish, and even if tomorrow is just a regular Tuesday for you, I hereby give you permission to eat something sweet, like homemade challah or a ripe apple dipped in honey. See you back here on Wednesday!

It's Friday?

Good morning, friends. I have a confession to make: Since Ruthie joined the family, mornings have gotten a lot more hectic, so I've been writing my blog posts ahead of time. Maybe some of you thought I was awake enough to put together a post before 6 a.m., but the reality is that even though I'm usually awake before then, I'm rarely alert enough to form coherent sentences until I've had at least one cup of coffee. So writing the day or evening before and setting the post to publish the next morning has been working well -- at least when I remember what day it is and when I need to write a post. Yesterday I completely forgot. And this morning when I came downstairs to let Ruthie out of her crate and take her outside, I discovered her donut was extremely deflated, which required taking it off, re-inflating it, and then getting it back on in addition to getting her harness and leash on. You can imagine how much she enjoyed all that (not). All of this is to say that my usual posting plain failed me and I'm flying a bit by the seat of my pants.

It's been a bit of a weird week, not especially busy but just enough that I've felt like I'm running behind schedule. Nevertheless, I did manage to finish a sock:

The toe wrapped up at an ideal point in the stripe sequence to enable me to make the second sock match without having to wind too much yarn off, and that felt like a win. We're still having summer-like weather here, but cooler temperatures are surely coming, and I'll be happy to have fun new wool socks to wear when they do.

Another win this week? After not seeing one for a while, I found a praying mantis in the garden:

They are such weird-looking creatures, so finding one is a bit like finding an alien in the yard.

The weekend ahead looks relatively quiet, though there's Rosh Hashanah prep to do (the holiday begins on Monday at sunset). I've got a second batch of challah to bake, and because we're hosting the big dinner on Monday evening, we've got a lot of cleaning and setup to do. Ruthie would like to remind you that it's important to get your rest, so whatever you have planned, remember that naps are always a good idea.

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?