Unraveled, Week 8/2021

Last week, when I had a "short" work week because I took Monday off, felt really long. This week, I'm surprised that it's already Wednesday. Time is such a fickle thing, isn't it?

But it is Wednesday, when I link up with Kat and the Unravelers to talk knitting and books, so let's get to it.

My primary WIP has been Rainbow's Little Boxy, which suddenly seems to be growing! As of last night, I've knit 11 inches of the body; I need to get to 14.75 inches before I divide the front and back. Although it's somewhat slow going because there are so many stitches on the needles, it's mindless knitting that's easy to do while watching TV, listening to something, or sitting through a work meeting.

Yes, that is sunlight illuminating the photo!

I am eager to finish this up not just so that Rainbow can wear it but also because I made a discovery this morning in the stash room. After weeks of looking, I finally found that bag of handspun I'd mentally designated for my Ramona Cardigan (Ravelry link)! Didn't I say it would just show up when I'd stopped looking for it? It was all in one bag that had fallen behind another one, so it was just out of my line of sight.

I've finished one book in the past week, but it was a good one.

I am working my way through that stack of three print books I blogged about last week, and the first one I read was Natasha Trethewey's memoir, Memorial Drive. What a gut punch this book was! In terms of total pages, it's not very long, only a bit more than 200 pages. But this is not a book you can rush through; every single word carries so much weight. Trethewey's memoir covers what it was like to grow up as a biracial child in the South whose parents divorced when she was young and then who had to deal with a new reality when her mother remarried a man who would end up killing her. She reflects as an adult what it was like to lose her mother to an act of violence, a trauma she has lived with for decades. You can tell that she is a poet by how beautifully she puts together words that so painfully convey her heartache. I rated this 4 stars on Goodreads, but it's probably closer to 4.5 stars. Highly recommend.

I am now reading two books. The first is an audiobook from the library, Barack Obama's A Promised Land. A number of you urged me to read this with my ears rather than my eyes, and you were so right. I'm sure I would be enjoying it in any format, but it's been an absolute delight to listen to him read it. I have been listening on my walks and a bit at other times, and even though I've put in extra time since I started it on Sunday and am listening at 1.25 speed, I'm still not quite a quarter of the way through with it! I usually like to get my library books back before they're due, but this is one I might need the full three weeks to finish.

My other current read is the second in the stack of print books, A Thousand Ships. I am getting through this one a bit faster, and I'm enjoying it immensely. Reading this account of the Trojan War from the point of view of the women on all sides of it is taking me back to my college days (did I ever mention that I minored in classics in college?). Aside from the fact that my hands are not used to holding a book open, I am not missing being able to do something else while I read with this one.

One other reading-adjacent rabbit hole I've gone down this week is listening to author interviews. Someone in my Sunday Zoom group shared an interview with Barbara Kingsolver, and then Mary gave us links to two sessions with Colum McCann about the book Apeirogon in preparation for a discussion we're planning to have this coming weekend. One of those was from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and as I was watching and listening to that one, I saw a suggested video off to the side with an interview from the same event with Maggie O'Farrell on Hamnet. It's about an hour long but well worth your time if you loved the book as much as I did.

I hope your reading and crafting has giving you as much joy this week as mine has!