Unraveled, Week 49/2021

Can you believe there are only three more Wednesdays in 2021? I don't know where this year has gone, but it's been a great comfort to have the consistency of checking in each Wednesday with Kat and the Unravelers.

This Wednesday finds me still being monogamous (at least for the time being) to Green Blankie 2.0. It's been a Zoom-heavy week, with three more Zooms still to go, so it's gotten a lot of attention. Here's where it stands as of this morning, with the marker showing where I was yesterday morning. I will move it again when I pick it up during today's first Zoom.

I have completed five full repeats of the lace pattern, and I'm not sure exactly how many I'm going to do, but my plan is to try to use up as much of the yarn as I can. If I'd had the foresight the first time I knit this pattern, I would have noted how many repeats I worked so I could recreate it exactly; I'll be sure to make a note this time, just in case there needs to be a third blanket at some point in the future.

I got some new yarn in the mail over the weekend, the second of my three Encore club shipments from Fibernymph Dye Works. This encore was from the Happy Hour club, and Lisa calls this colorway Galaxy Cocktail. It was a lovely surprise to get when the weather has turned colder (we woke up to a dusting of snow this morning) because these colors just scream spring to me!

As with the previous Happy Hour club shipments, this skein came with a coordinating stitch marker, and I just have to share a closeup of this one:

The whole charm is about the size of a fingernail, which I'm telling you so you can fully appreciate the size of that tiny slice of kiwi fruit.

I've finished three books since last week, too, a feat I'm not likely to repeat in the next week given that I have six more days of work this year and a lot of stuff has come in!

I had put Louise Erdrich's latest, The Sentence, on hold at the library without knowing anything about it other than several of you had read it and enjoyed it, and I specifically requested the audiobook because it's read by the author herself. I can now say that I'm really looking forward to reading it again next year as part of the Erdrich-along -- I absolutely loved this book! It's set in the Minneapolis area against the backdrop of the pandemic and the racial justice demonstrations in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, but it's not really about either of those things. It's sad and funny and heartbreaking, and I particularly loved the fact that the author is a character (though not the main one) in the book and her real-life bookstore is a major setting. I gave it 5 stars and highly recommend it!

I spent a couple of evenings reading The Westing Game to finish it and catch up with Rainbow so I could help her with her last English assignments on it. I don't think I'd reread this since I was in grad school (I know that's when I bought my copy, as I'd stuck an address label inside the cover that had my address from my apartment in Philadelphia), and I'll admit I was a little disappointed in it this go-round. The language is a bit dated and even a tad offensive in some spots now, and I guess I've become more critical as a reader because I found the writing just a little too sparse and abrupt. But the mystery itself is still fun, and I was pleased that although I remembered a few things, I'd forgotten enough to still get a surprise at the ending. I gave it 3 stars.

I'd put We Are Not Like Them on hold when I heard the authors interviewed on the What Should I Read Next podcast (this episode) and finally got to it in the past week. This is a very timely novel about two best friends -- Jen, a white woman who is married to a police officer involved in the shooting of an unarmed young Black man, and Riley, a Black woman who, as a news reporter, finds herself reporting on her friend's husband. This book goes exactly where you'd expect, and while it doesn't shy away from the difficult issues, I found it also doesn't go very deep. This had the feel of an easier book club-style read to me -- and by that I mean book clubs that are less about reading and more about socializing. It's not a bad read, but it's not a serious exploration of race and privilege. I gave it 3 stars.


This week, I'm trying my hardest to finish The Madness of Crowds, and I'm trying not to start anything else until I'm done with the 200 or so pages I have left! But I'd also love to hear about what you're reading or anything wonderful you've finished lately, because I do have a vacation coming up!