Unraveled, Week 48/2022

Hard to believe that we only have four more Wednesdays left in 2022! I'm here as I am every Wednesday to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and to talk about making and reading.

Some of you might be double-checking the URL of this post because you might think you're reading Bonny's blog when you see what I've been working on this week:

Remember this Hitchhiker? I started it way back at the beginning of May. It's for Rainbow, and she picked out the yarn (a wool/silk heavy laceweight handspun). I knit on it a bunch initially and then lost steam, but right now there's a special challenge in one of the make-alongs I'm participating in to finish up a WIP, so I pulled it out again. Plus Rainbow's birthday is two weeks from tomorrow, so it'd be nice to be able to give her a finished shawl! I had 110 g of yarn to start, and I still have 40 to go -- and there are already 50 teeth on this shawl, to give you a sense of just how much knitting I've done.

Do you see that bulb safety pin in the photo above? When I held up the shawl to look at it over the weekend, I spotted what looked like a hole. I immediately panicked and thought that moths had gotten to it when I was ignoring it, but closer inspection revealed this:

Just a dropped stitch! Phew! I'm too far past where I dropped it to try to ladder it up, so when I get to a point in the remaining yarn where the colors match this section, I'll cut out a bit and secure this with a bit of duplicate stitch. The yarn is just sticky enough that the stitch didn't drop any farther, but just a bit of tugging would make it do so, so I'll be making sure it stays put.

I'm also working on another small project that in theory could have been finished in just a few days of knitting had I not decided to give the shawl all my attention. It's a baby sweater called Little Opa (Ravelry link):

You know that as of last week, I have a new nephew (and we finally get to meet him tonight!). But there's more good news -- I have another new nephew on the way! The two that have already been born belong to the Mister's brother and his wife, my brother- and sister-in-law. But my brother and his wife have been trying for a while and are now expecting a baby boy early next May. Rainbow is going to be kept very busy with all these little boys running around, that's for sure! This little sweater, which I'm knitting in a 6 month size for next fall, will be a holiday gift, and if the yarn looks familiar, it's because it's leftover from the sweater I made for my brother this past summer. I won't be lining the pockets of this tiny sweater, but I do have some buttons with a similar light blue that I may use to make this coordinate if not match.

As for reading, despite my desire to sit down with a physical book over the long holiday weekend, it never happened, and I've only finished one book this week.

I needed another audiobook to listen to, so I went back to the Maisie Dobbs series for another installment. A Lesson in Secrets finds Maisie involved with the British Secret Service as it investigates possible spies in the world of academia as the rise of Nazism looms in Europe. And of course there's a murder to complicate things. I found this to be entertaining and engaging, and it was interesting to hear about the seeming lack of concern about fascism knowing what we know now about what would happen not long after this story is set. I gave this one 4 stars.

I'm still reading Demon Copperhead (now about 120 pages in), and I've been reading a nonfiction book on my iPad: The Woman They Could Not Silence. This is by the same author of Radium Girls and is interesting without being too heavy.

Today is a gloomy, rainy day, and while I've decided to skip my run (because I hate running with wet feet), I do need to go out in it later on because I'm scheduled to donate blood later this morning. Keep your fingers crossed that my hemoglobin level is high enough!

What are you making and reading this week?