In-Vest-ed

We've finally made it to Friday after a long week. The Mister got home very late last night (actually, I think it was technically very early this morning) from his latest work trip -- thankfully the last one he'll take for the month. Next week he'll be home, which will be nice but a bit of an adjustment.

It's been a really cold week here, not the coldest we've had this winter but close to it, and when I came downstairs yesterday morning it was noticeably colder on the first floor of the house than the second. It turns out that the power went out (briefly, I assume) overnight, and our thermostat's set point when that happens is about 62ºF. In the summer, that wouldn't be so bad, but when it's not even freezing outside? Brrr! The power ended up going out again for a few minutes while we were finishing up breakfast but fortunately stayed on the rest of the day. Considering that we woke to more snow and temperatures that stayed in the teens and low 20s, it would have been a very bad situation if we'd had no heat!

All of that is to say that I've had good motivation to work on my All Season Vest this week. I've been pleasantly surprised by how quickly it has been knitting up giving all the short rows and direction changes. Last night I finally reached the exciting "join front and back" instruction, but I took some progress photos yesterday afternoon while there was still some light:

If you look closely in the photo of the front, you might be able to see that I pinned it in place so it wouldn't curl up, so what you're seeing here isn't quite representative of the dimensions. I've got a little bit of waist shaping to do and then it's just knit straight to the ribbing at the bottom. At some point soon, once I've got enough fabric under the arms to be stable, I will try it on to verify that it fits (I'm not too worried, as I picked a size with several inches of positive ease, but I want to check it all the same). This project has been bringing me so much joy, in part because it's just engaging enough to keep my mind off the bad stuff and in part because of the surprise of the different colors in the yarn.

I hope you're able to find some joy yourself in this last weekend of February! I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word reflection for the month.

Unraveled, Week 8/2025

Happy hump day, friends! It's still quite frigid here -- it won't get above freezing until the weekend -- so I am making liberal use of all handknits. It's Wednesday, so that means it's time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I've made a bit more progress on my vest since you last saw it, and it occurred to me that I could pin it out so you could see the shape a bit better (though you'll have to forgive this somewhat awkward angle):

I've completed the shoulders and am now working down the length of the armhole on the back. I'm alternating my two skeins every two rows and will switch to alternating every round once the front and back are joined for the body. I don't expect that much variation between the two skeins given how the yarn was spun (I had three batts that I spun onto their own bobbin and plied all three together), but it seems like the best way to manage the yarn. And I'm glad I decided to go with the handspun on its own, because that lace yarn would have obscured a lot of the flecks of color in it:

I'd encourage you to click on this to make the photo bigger.

I don't think I really knew exactly what the content of those batts was, but I know that there were bits of sari silk in all different colors, so there are bright pops here and there.

At the other end of the color spectrum are Molly's socks, which have seen a bit of attention this week because I've been editing an annual report and needed something in my hands that didn't also require my eyes to knit.

These are precisely the wrong colors to knit right now -- I'm so sick of the gray and drab of outside -- but the yarn was her choice and she so rarely asks me to knit her something that I couldn't turn her down.

Reading progress has slowed a bit, partly due to work and partly because I'm reading some longer books, but I did have one finish this past week.

Technically Permafrost isn't part of our Women in Translation study, but it was Eva Baltasar's debut novel, was translated by the same woman as Boulder, and includes a translator's note that I think we'll be discussing when we talk about the second book. This one similarly has an unnamed no-nonsense narrator who doesn't feel like she fits in in her family and often feels the need to uproot her life and move somewhere new. Amidst all of this, she is constantly thinking about suicide and how to do it, but the way she thinks about it is, ironically, a bit humorous. It takes a twist of fate toward the end of the book (which I won't spoil) to give her a sense of purpose and place in life. My one complaint is that there is some jumping back and forth in time but without any real indication of when the story is other than context. I gave it 4 stars.

I am currently reading South to America on Kindle and have started my reread of The Secret History on paper for the next Read With Us discussion. I also had a minor library victory yesterday: I got a notification from Libby that my library had acquired the audio of Blue Light Hours (gotta love the "Notify Me" tag!), and though it took me a few minutes before I could open the app, there was a copy available! It's only four hours long, so it should be an easy listen.

What are you making and reading this week?

A Wintry Start to the Week

We had quite the weekend of weather here in Pittsburgh! On Saturday, it was snowing heavily when I got up. I'd planned to go to Costco when it opened, but after looking out the window and seeing the weather forecast, I decided to push that trip back a day. Over the course of the day, the temperature rose a bit and the snow transitioned to rain. Thankfully that improved the conditions of the roads so I could drive to a friend's house to play mahjongg and so the Mister and I could go out for a date night, but it was still gross out there. Yesterday, I woke to rain (and most of the snow had melted), so I had a wet trip to Costco. By early afternoon, temps had dropped and the rain changed to snow. And this morning I woke up to this:

I am glad that Molly does not have school today and I don't have to go outside in this mess! Though it's supposed to be frigid this week, so this stuff isn't going anywhere for a while and I'll have to deal with it tomorrow. For today, though, I can stay cozy inside. And there's more good news -- I had coffee again this weekend with no ill effects, so I can be fully awake this week!

Although the weekend had its fair share of cleaning, laundry, and errands, it also had a good amount of knitting time. I finished up the hat I am testing yesterday morning during my weekly friend Zoom:

This will be getting a good soak today because it's a very snug fit on me. I'll admit that I only did one swatch, with a US 6/4.0 mm needle, and I was so far off on gauge that I decided to follow the recommended needle sizes in the pattern (US 4/3.5 mm and US 3/3.25 mm for the ribbing). I have a feeling the fabric is going to relax a bit when it gets wet, but I want an accurate measurement of the gauge I got with the recommended needles to report back to the designer. I may be that I should have gone down only one needle size rather than two, but we'll see. This can always be added to the donation pile if it's still too snug for me or Molly.

I also cast on for my vest yesterday! The opinions to my blog post were unanimous in favor of handspun alone, and the responses to the poll I posted on Instagram were heavily weighted in that direction (at last check, 83% voted for handspun only). While I liked the feel of the fabric with both yarns, probably because the laceweight was a fuzzy 100% merino, the handspun was so much prettier on its own, and my gauge was closer with just the handspun was closer to the pattern gauge anyway. So that's the way I went. I didn't get very far because the start of this pattern has a lot of short rows, and it's hard to see in any case because it's in stockinette, but here's the humble beginning:

While I'd glanced over the pattern after printing it out, I didn't really get a complete sense of the construction until I read through it to highlight the instructions for my size. It's knit from the top down, starting with the back. The shoulders are shaped with short rows, and then you work down to the underarm, incorporating shaping for the armholes. Next, you place those stitches on hold and return to the cast-on edge, picking up stitches for the front, which is worked to the same spot, incorporating neck shaping as well as that for the sleeves. When the front and back are both knit to the same point, they're joined to work in the round for the body, and then the armhole and neckline ribbing is added at the end. The pattern is extremely detailed, with helpful diagrams scattered throughout. It's an excellent example of a project that appears to be very simple is actually very well designed.

I'm working today, but it's a work-from-home day and I won't have to do school pickup, so I should stay nice and cozy. I got us a rotisserie chicken from Costco for dinner last night, so I'm planning to pop the carcass into my slow cooker and make some chicken broth for the freezer (this is the first time I've done that not using the whole chicken, so I'm excited to see how it goes). I baked banana bread yesterday afternoon, and we're having spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner -- we are all about the comfort food right now! The Mister has yet another work trip this week, but luckily it's only a couple of days and not the whole week. And while my stomach issues have settled, this week's anxiety-induced fun is an eczema flare around my eyes, one of which looks like I've been punched in the face, so I'll be getting in touch with my dermatologist to see if there's anything I can do beyond leaving it alone and keeping it covered with Aquaphor. It's always something, isn't it?

I hope your week is starting out with as much calm and warmth as you can find.

A Conundrum

Happy Friday, friends, and happy Valentine's Day! My original valentine has just landed from his trip across the country; my other valentine is still sleeping (she is off for an in-service day today; yesterday was the last day of her second trimester at school, so the teachers are busy working on grading). We got a very light dusting of snow overnight, and we're expecting snow changing to wintry mix changing to rain tomorrow -- we're actually under a flood watch. Today, though, will be dry and cold, and even though I'm working today, it feels a bit like the start of the weekend.

I finished and blocked my vest/slipover swatch on Wednesday afternoon, and now I'm trying to decide what to do next. Amazingly, I had perfect stitch and row gauge on both sections before blocking, but of course the fabric changed after. Here's the blocked swatch:

On the left is the handspun held together with the lace yarn. On the right is the handspun alone. I am pretty close on gauge on both -- 20 stitches over 4 inches on the left and 20.5 stitches over 4 inches on the right compared to the pattern gauge of 21 stitches/4 inches. There's a fair amount of positive ease built into the pattern, so I think I could make both work. The conundrum is that I'm not sure which way to go. Certainly the handspun alone is closest to gauge, but the fabric is also a bit thinner. The handspun plus lace creates a sturdier fabric, but the gauge isn't as close and I think the lace yarn obscures the colors in the handspun a bit. I could go down a needle size with the handspun alone and see if I can get closer to gauge (though I suspect I'd then have too many stitches per inch), but I think my fabric would be too stiff with a smaller needle using the two yarns together. So what would you do?

Unraveled, Week 7/2025

Good morning and happy Wednesday, friends! Another winter storm is moving through, though thankfully it doesn't look like we're going to be much impacted (a little snow overnight and this morning and then rain later today). My sinuses aren't a big fan, but at least I won't have to dig out the driveway and sidewalk this time. I am happy to report that I am feeling loads better, if a little sleepy -- I love tea, but it just doesn't wake me up as well as coffee does. But without anyone snoring next to me in bed, I'm sleeping better, so I think it all evens out right now. Time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers!

I did manage to finish one last charity hat Monday night, so my total for this particular hat-knitting fever is six, which used up a total of a bit more than 2,400 yards of yarn, or about six average skeins of fingering weight. That's a lot!

These will get washed and then safely put away for donation the next time they're needed. And now I can move on to new projects.

There's not much to see at this point, and the terrible lighting doesn't help the fact that there's a lot of gray here. On the left is the start of my swatch for my vest, knit by holding a strand of very old Knit Picks laceweight alongside my handspun. I'm going to continue with the handspun alone because I think the two strands held together might actually be too thick, but I do like the look of the combination. We'll see what happens after blocking. In the middle is a swatch for the hat I'm testing. I normally wouldn't swatch for a hat, but the needle size called for in the pattern is a lot smaller than what I'd normally use for worsted, and the gauge listed is also in the textured pattern rather than stockinette, so I didn't want to just guess on the needle size. Finally, the cuff on the right is a new pair of socks for Molly using Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed in neutrals (you saw the skein earlier in the week). I am hoping that by the end of the week the swatching will be complete and I'll have actually cast on those new projects.

It's been a good week for reading, with four solid books completed.

The longest of the four was an audiobook, The Unseen World, written by the author of The God of the Woods and Long Bright River. Most of the story is about Ada, a young woman raised by her single father, David, a computer scientist in the 1970s and '80s at the "Boston Institute of Technology" (presumably a stand-in for MIT). Her childhood is unconventional in that she is home-schooled by her father and is a regular in his lab, where he and his team are working on the precursors of artificial intelligence. But when Ada is entering her teen years, it becomes apparent that something is wrong with David, as he becomes more and more forgetful and confused as dementia tightens his grip on his mind. Ada eventually moves in with one of David's colleagues when it's clear that David needs full-time care, and then a new mystery arises when none of the details of David's life seem to be true and all she has left of him is a disk with a string of letters he has left her to decode. In near present day, Ada is a computer scientist herself working on virtual reality, but she is still haunted by the code she could never solve. I could have done without the repetition of those letters and some computer code in the book; had I been reading with my eyes, I probably would have skipped over them. But the story was really intriguing, and even though it's told against the backdrop of computers and AI, at its heart it's a story that raises questions about how well we can know people and when the stories we tell ourselves become the truth, even if they're not actual facts. I gave it 4 stars.

Next was the first in the next series of books that a small group of us is focusing on this year -- women in translation, translated by other women. Boulder was short-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023 and follows our nameless narrator (the title is her nickname), who goes from being a cook on a merchant ship to living in Reykjavik when she falls in love with Samsa. All seems well until Samsa decides that she needs to have a baby. Boulder, in contrast, doesn't want to be a mother, but ultimately her love for Samsa wins her over. The pregnancy and the baby change Samsa and ultimately the relationship in a dramatic way, causing the narrator to reassess her life and her partnership. Eva Baltasar is a poet, and this comes through in the prose and the translation. I gave it 4 stars.

Colum McCann's Apeirogon is one of the most memorable books I've read in the past several years, so I was delighted to be invited to read an ARC of his forthcoming novel, Twist. In three sections, we learn about an experience the narrator of the book, Irish writer Anthony Fennell, has had and his struggles to make sense of it. In the first, he travels to South Africa after he learns about the crews that repair the undersea cables that enable transcontinental communication and proposes an article about one of them. He is connected with John Conway, a fellow Irishman who is chief of mission for a repair ship, and through Conway meets his partner, Zanele, an up-and-coming South African actress. In the second part, the two men get on board the boat to embark on a repair, and Fennell learns about the hierarchy of the ship and the process of the repair. But something dramatic and unexpected happens at the end of the mission, and in the third part of the book, Fennell grapples with making sense of what happened then and afterward. I thought the writing in the book was spectacular and the characters intriguing, but I also felt a little at a loss for why the story was being told. There is, of course, some pretty big symbolism in the need to repair connections, but I also felt that there were a lot of things that weren't explained. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published March 25, 2025.

Finally, I read The Message, a collection of four essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I enjoyed the first three very much, but the final (and longest) essay was a difficult read. It discusses his trip to Israel and Palestine and his efforts to make sense of the long conflict and the current state of affairs. Though he opens his essay by recounting the impact of his visit to Yad Vashem, it is clear that he sides with the Palestinians and believes Israel to be an apartheid state and a colonizer. While I admit that much of the knowledge of Israel I was raised with was very one-sided, I have to disagree with Coates' position that Zionism is about colonialism and subjugation. I think that like so much about this conflict, there are many sides and any opinions -- lots of shades of gray and no black and white. His position did make me think a lot, though, and I think that's a good thing when it comes to writing. I also gave this book 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

I'm currently reading Eva Baltasar's debut novel, Permafrost, and plan to start something new on Kindle soon. What are you making and reading this week?

Bring On All the Tea

I suspect many of us are dragging this Monday morning, though unlike many people, I am not tired because I stayed up watching the Super Bowl. I turned it off after the halftime show and opted to read until bed instead, but the Mister was up at 3:15 to catch a 6:30 flight -- and because he had to get up so early, he went to bed early, which meant the nighttime "symphony" of snoring started early. Fortunately, I'll get a break from that soundtrack tonight, so if I'm dragging a bit today, I can catch up on the sleep later on.

Thank you for all your kind thoughts last week. I felt better on Friday but then had a terrible reflux attack on Saturday morning, so I am off coffee for the time being (hence all the tea). I had thought I was handling the general state of the world well, but apparently that was not the case. For the time being, I'm off coffee and alcohol and anything else that's really acidic or spicy. It makes for a boring diet, but I'll take boring if it means not feeling sick.

Partly because of the reflux and partly because it was just gloomy winter, it was a quiet weekend. I did get out for a walk, my first one in a while, on Saturday morning before wet weather moved in by the afternoon (we actually had a thunderstorm!). I spent most of the weekend knitting hats and reading, and I've just about gotten this multi-stranded hat thing out of my system.

I've got one last blue hat on the needles that I'm trying to finish up today and then I will take a break from this particular hat for a while. Six hats in about a week isn't bad, though! They were just the right break, but now I'm ready to start some new projects, which today will require winding some yarn.

This is a terrible photo (it's very overcast here today, as per usual for winter), but those two skeins on the left are handspun that I'm planning to use for an All Season Vest (Ravelry link). Of course, I've got to swatch to see if it'll work because the pattern calls for DK or worsted and this yarn is probably sport to DK. I may need to carry along a strand of laceweight to get gauge, but we'll see. The skein on the right is for some socks for Molly, at her request. I also just got approved to test knit a hat for Kerri Blumer, so I'll be digging in my stash today for something for that. I guess I'm not entirely done with hats!

I hope your Monday treats you kindly! See you back here on Wednesday.

Can I Get a Break?

We've made it to Friday -- thank goodness! It's been a long, exhausting week. I've spent a lot of it not feeling well, first thanks to an IBS flare and then, I suspect, due to the wild fluctuations in the weather. I've had terrible sinus pressure, haven't been able to get warm, and have been exhausted. And the Mister was traveling for work this week, which meant I had to do everything to keep our household running. This morning I'm finally feeling more like myself and keeping my fingers crossed that I continue to feel okay. At least there is a weekend coming up and I can get some extra rest!

First up, I want to share with all of you that I published a new pattern this morning! Or new-ish, I should say -- it's a lightweight version of a previously published pattern.

This is Funnel Vision Light (Ravelry link; Payhip link), a fingering weight version of the Funnel Vision Cowl I published with Knit Picks back in fall of 2023. Although I'd proposed the pattern for a heavier yarn (I had DK or worsted in mind but was given bulky), I'd always thought of what this design would look like in fingering, and I actually knit this sample nearly two years ago. It wasn't until late last year, though, that I finally decided to write it up as a pattern after I wore it in public and was asked about the pattern several times. It's all knit it brioche, so it's super squishy, and I knit this one in an MCN yarn, so it's extra cozy. I'm thinking I might need to knit myself another one in two colors.

The knitting this week has been pretty boring -- it's all scrappy hats, all the time! I finished my third yesterday (the one on top of the pile):

This latest one is the scrappiest of the latest bunch, with five different yarns represented. Though I started out knitting the largest size in the pattern, I'm now making the next size down because its stitch count plays more nicely with the adjusted decreases I'm doing for the crown (the original pattern decreases rapidly, leading to a sort of rumpled top, so I've changed them to a more standard eight decreases every other round). Would you believe that these three hats have used up more than 1,200 yards of yarn? That's more than I used in my most recent sweater!

I'm clearly not done with this current spate of hats, either, because I dug into my bin of full fingering skeins and wound up three blues to start some more:

That deep royal blue on top is Socks That Rock Lightweight that I bought at my former LYS, which closed more than eight years ago. The blue/gray variegated on the bottom left was purchased on our trip to Cape Cod back in 2017. And the light blue/white is from Knit Picks, purchased who knows when. I'm still feeling quite overwhelmed by the size of my stash -- each time I go digging, I swear it's gotten bigger -- so these hats seem like a great way to use up a bunch and do some good in the meantime.

The weekend ahead is looking pretty wide open, which is quite welcome. I think we could all use some extra down time. We'll be watching the Super Bowl (me because I like the commercials, Molly because she's cheering for Taylor's boyfriend) but otherwise laying low. There's been a lot happening the past several weeks, much of it terrible, so I think all of us could benefit from rest and self-care. Be well, friends, and keep looking for the good -- it's still out there.