Unraveled, Week 6/2023

Happy hump day, friends! I'm happy to report that while the man cold hasn't fully left the house, the Mister is mostly feeling back to normal. He's gone back to work and has resumed his daily runs, both of which are key indicators of how he's feeling. I'm still sleeping in the guest/stash room for the time being, however, both to keep myself free of germs and because I know the snoring will continue to be unbearable for a while, and being in the other room has resulted in two good nights' sleep in a row.

It's Wednesday, and that means linking up with Kat and the Unravelers. I've been fairly monogamous with my crafting this week, focusing on my knitting project and one spinning project. The former is my hat, which has grown since Monday:

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see the progress keeper that I placed at the beginning of my time working on it yesterday; I got at least three inches knit up just yesterday. The scale is showing that I have 44 g of yarn left, but considering that the skein was 108 g to begin with, I am well past the halfway point. I have used the pattern that's currently with my tech editor but combined it with another that I still have to write up and get to her that is more of a recipe for a top-down spiral-crown hat using any yarn/any gauge. Writing that up is on my to-do list for this weekend.

What I've really been into this week has been my combo spin -- I've already finished half of the singles!

I'm really excited to see how this looks plied, and it's highly likely that plying will happen today.

I've finished two books since this time last week, one hit and one miss.

Chouette had been on my radar for a while; I know many of you have already read it, and I'd heard some good reviews. So I borrowed the audio from Hoopla. I was really confused at first. I didn't know if the main character was meant to be having a psychotic break, if having an owl baby was meant to be a metaphor for having a baby with several disabilities and special needs, or if the story in general was meant to be a rather extreme metaphor for how becoming a parent changes you. The author's note on Goodreads explained a lot to me, but I can't say it helped me to enjoy the book much more than I was. I will say that it was inventive and the writing was good, but I found it to be just too weird for me. I gave it 2 stars.

A much better read for me was Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. I had bought the Kindle version of this book when it was on sale a month or so ago, and I'd been waiting for the right moment to get to it. This book was pure delight. May talks about the concept of "wintering" -- allowing the body to rest and replenish at difficult times, just as nature does during the winter -- in the context of challenging times in her own life. I found her writing and her stories to be so soothing. It felt like the reading equivalent of sitting with a cup of hot tea, wrapped in a warm blanket, and watching the snow fall. I am glad I purchased it, because I can easily see myself rereading it multiple times. I gave it 4 stars.



I am currently reading two books. First, The Tsar of Love and Techno, Anthony Marra's collection of interrelated short stories, which came highly recommended by Kym and which I purchased a copy of at my local bookstore last summer. That's my bedtime reading, and it's been delightful thus far. And I've also finally started my Big Russian Buddy Read with Katie by starting War and Peace. I'm reading the Kindle version, which annoyingly does not give page numbers, only "position" in the book (I hate that!), but supposedly I am 14% through it. 

Yesterday I also finally signed up for StoryGraph, something I've been meaning to do for a while. Are you on the site? I'm there as fiberreader -- feel free to connect with me if you are.

What are you making and reading this week?