Unraveled, Week 22/2022

Happy June, friends! Thanks to the long weekend, it's already Wednesday, and that means time to check in with Kat and the Unravelers. Let's take a look at the status of my WIPs:

This is not a particularly artistic photo, but it was meant to be informative. These are my three active WIPs. On the left is the first You're Mer-Mazing sock for Rainbow, which has just started to get its heel. In the middle is the first of the fronts of my brother's sweater. I have gotten to the split for the pocket (if you look closely, you'll see a group of stitches on waste yarn on the left-hand side of it). I'll admit I have not given this project much attention in the last few days and really need to focus on it to get it done in time. And finally on the right is Rainbow's handspun Hitchhiker.

Do we see a theme here? No current projects on the needles for me? That may be why I've been spending a lot of time lately on spinning.

I think I'm about halfway done with the merino/rose singles, which I'm able to spin while reading an ebook, so that's another explanation for why this project has gotten more attention lately.

Speaking of reading, although I just did a big update on Friday, I have two more finishes to share since then!

I was still waiting patiently for Sorrow and Bliss as an ebook from the library last week when, on a whim, I checked to see if it was available on Hoopla (which has a more limited selection overall but no wait for what is available). To my delight, it was there as an audiobook, so I borrowed it immediately and listened to it over the course of a few days. I loved this book, and it felt like an excellent one to wrap up my reading of the Women's Prize short list. I know many of you have read this already and already know this, but the book centers around Martha who suffers from an unnamed (and, the author says, wholly invented) mental illness that causes her to have difficult interpersonal relationships. I don't think it's just that Martha and I are the same age or that I also have a history of mental illness, but I identified with her a great deal. I thought the writing was witty and that the author did an equally good job of describing the highs and lows of Martha's life. I gave it 5 stars.

Just yesterday I finished my latest Louise Erdrich, Tracks. This book was written before The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse, but I'm glad I read it after. This shorter novel alternates chapters between two of the characters at the heart of the later novel, Nanapush and Pauline (aka Sister Leopolda), and gives us further insight into them and into the character of Fleur Pillager. There's also more detail given into two surprise revelations in Last Report, though I suppose if I had read the books in the order in which they were written, they would not have been surprises after all. As per usual with Erdrich, the writing is phenomenal, and it took me a little more than a week to read this 226-page book because I was taking my time to fully savor the language. It did not disappoint. I gave it 4 stars.

It appears that I am having a moment in my reading with Ojibwe writers, because in addition to getting ready to begin my next Erdrich novel, I'm fully immersed in Firekeeper's Daughter, a more recent novel by an Indigenous author. I'm about a third of the way through and can't put it down, so here's hoping work cooperates and gives me plenty of time to read!

What are you making and reading this week?