Unraveled, Week 49/2022

Looking at that number in the post title is a scary reminder of how little is left of this year -- where has it gone?! But I am happy that it's Wednesday again, truly my favorite day for blogging because it means linking up with Kat and the Unravelers.

While there has been no actual unraveling, I've felt a bit unraveled this week because rather than finishing anything, I keep starting new projects! Given how much I have going on in my life right now, I wouldn't be surprised if any of you is shaking your head at me and wondering where I left my common sense. For reference, not including my spinning, here are my current projects:

 
The newest project is a pair of plain socks in self-striping yarn (Knit Picks Felici) that I cast on last night because we went to the middle school holiday concert at Rainbow's school yesterday evening and none of my projects was something I could do without looking (and if you've ever been to a middle school concert, you know that you can't really count on the music to hold your interest).

So here's my plan for the next week and a half-ish: Two current projects, the baby sweater and the charity hat, will be finished before we leave town (the sweater because it's a holiday gift and the hat because I'm already about halfway done). My Recalibrate and Rainbow's Hitchhiker will come with me on the trip, as will the socks and yarn for some other pairs. If I end up finishing everything, we can always swing by a Michaels and pick up some kitchen cotton for dishcloths.

Work has gotten busy again, so I haven't had a ton of reading time this past week, but I did manage to finish a couple of books.

I'd had The Woman They Could Not Silence on my want-to-read list for a while and then picked it up as a Kindle daily deal recently. It's by the same author as Radium Girls and focuses on Elizabeth Packard, a woman in the 1860s United States who was committed to an asylum by her husband because she dared to express opinions different from his. Inside, she discovers she is far from the only woman in this situation and makes it her personal mission to not only free herself but change the laws in the country that allow men to control women this way. It's a well-researched and thorough look at women's rights (or lack thereof), the changing views of mental health and what constitutes sanity/insanity, and how those with mental illness have been treated. I found the subject to be really interesting but couldn't help but be distracted by some of the writing (specifically, the overuse of sentence fragments for emphasis) -- it's just the editor in me I couldn't turn off! I gave it 3 stars.

Part of me feels like I should be saving the remaining books in the Maisie Dobbs series, but the more I read, the more I'm invested in her as a character and want to know how things end up for her. I listened to Elegy for Eddie, the ninth book in the series, over the weekend. I think what I enjoy most about this series is that we can watch Maisie grow and change, and that was certainly the case in this installment. As she is adjusting to her new and unexpected wealth, she begins to question whether she is overstepping in offering help those she cares about and her relationship with James Compton, even as her work is raising larger questions of whether the sacrifice of a few is worth it to safeguard the lives of many. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm now reading just one book, Demon Copperhead, and am absolutely loving it! I really want to finish it before we leave for Florida because it's an absolute brick of a book, but that's hard to do when I can only manage 10-20 pages per night before bed. Keep your fingers crossed that work cooperates and eases up so I can sneak in some more reading time!

What are you making and reading this week?