Unraveled, Week 30/2022

Good morning, friends! It's Wednesday, and that means it's time for the weekly link-up with Kat and the Unravelers, quite possibly my favorite day of the week!

I have some pretty exciting news to share today: This Wednesday is the last one you will see the big gray sweater because it's DONE.

We had our family dinner this past week on Sunday (we normally do it on Friday nights, but last Friday was Rainbow's performing arts camp concluding performance), so I took the sweater in progress with me to present to my brother. At that point I had completed the collar and button bands and sewn in one sleeve cap. I think he didn't fully understand how it was going to come together and so his reaction was quite as enthusiastic as you might expect. But that's okay. I did some additional seaming while we were at my parents' and then finished it up that evening at home. Yesterday I soaked it and laid it out to dry (I'd blocked the individual pieces before seaming, but the collar/button bands hadn't gotten the treatment yet and I also find a blocking after seaming helps everything to settle into place), and the buttons I ordered should be here tomorrow. So when we see him again on Friday night, I'll be able to present my brother with a completely finished sweater. Of course I'll be getting some modeled shots to share so that I can do a proper FO post.

It's been a good week of reading, with three books finished -- two of them just yesterday!

I'm still on a quest to be a Maggie O'Farrell completist, and it had been a while since I'd read one of her books, so last week when I was between library holds I picked up Instructions for a Heatwave, which felt appropriate given the record high temperatures around the world. This story takes place over few days in July 1976, when a family comes together after their father leaves one morning to pick up a newspaper and doesn't return. As they try to figure out his whereabouts and his reason for disappearing, we learn that every member of the family has a secret they've kept from the others. The writing is lovely and the character development is superb. I really enjoyed this one and gave it 4 stars.

The next library hold I was waiting for was You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, the latest book from the author of The Death of Vivek Oji, which I loved. The author has been amazingly prolific in the last few years and, what's more, has published books in a number of different genres. This latest book is romance, a genre I don't typically read, and I suspect it's because of that that I didn't really enjoy this book. Someone who is a fan of this genre might have a totally different reaction to this book, but I didn't really like the main character and also didn't think that the writing was particularly good (it certainly wasn't the gorgeous writing that I so loved in Vivek Oji). I gave it 2 stars.

Finally, I finished another audiobook. I found myself caught up with podcasts again over the weekend, so I borrowed the next book in the Maisie Dobbs series, An Incomplete Revenge. This series has become my go-to when I need something entertaining to listen to while I'm out exercising but that doesn't require too much thought. In this installment, Maisie is investigating a series of petty crimes and small fires that seem to occur about the same time every year in a town where no one seems to want to talk about them. It deals with themes of prejudice against outsiders and the changing social structure in post-WWI Britain, and there are even some hints about the next war. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm currently reading the Toni Morrison short story Recitatif, which I picked up earlier in the summer at my local independent bookstore, and I expect I'll be able to finish it later today. Then I plan to start something from my very big TBR pile!

What are you making and reading this week?