Holding It Together -- So Far

Well, we made it through yesterday. I think I did a pretty good job of staying calm for the majority of the day (though I did have one slightly scary moment that I'll refer you to my Twitter feed to read about, because I really don't want to rehash it here), but this morning I'm definitely feeling the nerves. Rainbow's school has a delayed start this morning, so at least I get a little bit of extra time with my girlie. After I drop her off, I'm planning on going for a long walk to (I hope) clear my head and maybe work out some of the jitters.

I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers today to talk about crafting and reading -- because really those are the things keeping me sane right now!

The two knitting projects I'm mainly focused on right now are my Radiate and the socks for my mother. Radiate mainly gets worked on in the evening while reading or watching TV, and at the moment I am cruising toward finishing the first sleeve:

Hi, here I am in my workout clothes and with bed head -- I am being very real for you today! It's a bit hard to see where the sleeve ends because I'm wearing a black shirt and the end of the sleeve is dark blue, but if you look closely at my right arm (the arm holding the yarn) you can probably see the little flare of the knitting and the cable of my needle. I've been following the same fade progression with the sleeve that I did for the body, but the sections of each color are a little different because I only estimated how much yarn I'd need for the sleeves and in some cases didn't have quite enough to work the same number of rounds in each color on the sleeve as I did for the body. I'm not too concerned about that; I split the remaining yarn for each other in half, so at least I can make the sleeves match each other. It's still possible that might need to dig into the darkest blue skein, which I didn't touch for the body, to finish the sleeves, but I think I'm also likely to make the sleeves quite a bit shorter than called for in the pattern. The instructions say to start the 2.25 inches of cuff ribbing when the sleeve measures 17 inches from the underarm, but my best-fitting sweater (my Humulus) has sleeves that measure a total of 17 inches, including the cuff. As much as I enjoy a cozy sweater, I also don't want my sleeves trailing through my dinner plate when I wear it.

My mother's socks are now more than 50% done, as I finished the first one and started the second on Sunday.

There's a bit of pooling around the gusset, which I expected but otherwise I got that great micro-striping effect for the whole sock, and I'm quite happy with that. I know that if I sit down and focus on the second sock, it won't take me too long to finish (and I have two work meetings tomorrow that will provide some time for just that). Once these are done, I have some father and father-in-law socks to knit; I placed an order with Knit Picks that arrived in the past week with some fairly sedate sock yarn for those.

Reading has been continuing at a steady pace the past week, and I've now finished 90 books this year, so I think it's definitely realistic to think I can finish 100 by year's end. I'm in a bit of a lull in my library holds (the three books I'm still waiting on are expected to be available in the four-to-seven-week time frame), so I've looked at books I've tagged as "to read" in the Libby app and have borrowed some that didn't have any wait. I've read two of those books in the past week:

 

Someone mentioned Late Migrations during one of the Sunday Zoom sessions a while back, and I'd added it to my list. It ended up being the perfect thing to read during an anxious week. It's nonfiction, part memoir and part nature study, that takes the form of what are essentially short essays. The chapters are short and easy to read, and though the memoir-type sections do have some sadness in them, I found the book as a whole to be refreshing and uplifting. It was really a delight. I gave it 4 stars.

I know many of you have been on the Ali Smith four seasons train for a while, but I hadn't yet read any of the books and jumped on Autumn when I saw there was no wait. Technically I started it Monday night before bed, but I only got through one chapter and essentially read the whole thing yesterday. I didn't have any idea what it was about before I started it, and to be honest after finishing I'm still not sure I could adequate describe it, but I did enjoy it. It's quite different from anything else I've read in style and format, and it took a bit of getting used to, but I think it says a lot about the quality of the book that it successfully distracted me from the news yesterday. I gave it 4 stars as well.

I hope you're all doing okay today. Remember to breathe and take care of yourself. It's out of our hands now, so let's try to keep our spirits up with the things that bring us joy!