Unraveled, Week 8/2023

It's a very gloomy morning here, so I ask your forgiveness for the quality of the photos in this post. We are expecting rain all day, off and on. Then tomorrow they're predicting a high of 72, followed by a retreat to the 30s on Friday. I can't remember such a roller coaster of an end to winter before!

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my hat pattern on Monday -- and many thanks to those of you who purchased the pattern as well! I really had not expected much because the pattern is so similar to others out there, but I've been very pleasantly surprised.

It's Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and to give an update on my making and my reading! I am very happy to report that I have an FO to share today:

Pattern: Hive Mind (Ravelry link) by Adrian Bizilia from Yarnitecture by Jillian Moreno
Yarn: my handspun, a combo spin of two Southern Cross Fibre colorways
Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm)
Started/Completed: February 13/February 21
Mods: corrected the errors in the pattern

These are technically not finished finished finished because they still need a good blocking (as you can tell from their slight wonkiness), but the knitting is done and all the ends have been woven in. And I am very glad to have them done, because they were not the best knitting experience. I've already expressed my frustration with the errors in the pattern, though those were easy to correct. The other issue was just the general fussiness and discomfort. I generally enjoy stranded colorwork, but the small circumferences and dealing with some tension issues meant that these were physically uncomfortable to knit when it came to the thumbs and the tops of the hands. While the patterning on the thumbs is very clever in that, if you look closely to see it, the pattern is uninterrupted from the hand, there are some stretches of the background color across the transition from front to back of the thumb that can result in some tension issues if you're not careful.

I also generally don't love the placement of the thumb on the palm side of the hand like it is in this pattern. I know that's a sort of feature of a certain tradition of mitten knitting, but anatomically, that's not where my thumbs are. I much prefer a thumb that comes out of the side of the hand. But they're done; they fit Rainbow (so she'll get them once they're blocked); and I still have a bit more than 300 yards of yarn left of the combo spin, so I can use the remainder for some other mitts/mittens or even a pair of sock for me. I've posted specifics about the errors I found on my Ravelry project page, which is one of only a handful. No one else seems to have noticed the issues, though one other crafter did note that the ribbing should be longer (and, in my opinion, done on a smaller needle) and the hand shorter, and I agree with those assessments. I also did a tubular cast-on for 2x2 ribbing for the first time with these, and while blocking might help, I'm not terribly impressed with it at the moment.

Now that those are done, I'm still working on a pair of Felici socks for Rainbow, but one knitting project is never enough, so I'm planning my next cast-on. I've been craving some sweater knitting, so I think the time is finally right to cast on a Love Note sweater. This seems to be one of those patterns that everyone has knit, and I've certainly had my eye on it for a long time. I've even had some yarn for it for quite a while!

The four darker skeins are Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles, a fingering-weight 100% superwash merino yarn. I won them a number of years ago in a giveaway that Bonny had on her blog. They've been waiting for just the right project to come along, and when I got these two skeins of Fibernymph Dye Works mohair/silk laceweight, I knew the two combined would be perfect. So I have some winding and swatching in my future.

Reading has been a bit more plentiful this week thanks to some audiobooks. I've finished three books

Over the weekend, I finally finished up the interconnected short story collection The Tsar of Love and Techno. I have not read a ton of short stories over my reading career, mainly because I find them to often be unsatisfying -- either because they're not fully formed enough or they are really good and end too soon for me. But I think this may very well be the most perfect short story collection I've ever read. While each story can stand on its own, there is a thread that runs through all of them that ties them together in a really interesting way. They aren't chronological, but in reading all the stories you can see the evolution of the Soviet Union to (nearly) modern-day Russia and how the political climate shaped its inhabitants. The book is incredibly well written and thoroughly enjoyable. I gave it 4.5 stars.

When I needed an audiobook for my exercise listening, I decided to try one that many of you have read and recommended (and that was very short to boot). Grief Is the Thing with Feathers imagines a family's grief at the sudden loss of its wife and mother as a physical manifestation, a loud and troublesome crow that takes up residence in their home. I thought it was a really original and clever way to think of grief as something totally illogical and completely disruptive, but it was all a little weird. I think perhaps audio was not the best format for this, and perhaps I'll have to give it another go in print sometime. I gave it 3 stars.

As I said, Grief was a very short book (I think less than 2 hours on audio, which took even less time than that when listened to at faster-than-normal speed), so I started another book right away. This time, it was another Gabrielle Zevin novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. This novel about a widowed bookstore owner on a fictional island off Massachusetts who finds a toddler left in his store is a bit predictable and a bit unrealistic, but it's also just a lovely story that, at its heart, is a love letter to books and stories. It's no Tomorrow x3, but it was thoroughly enjoyable to listen to (even if the narrator sounded a bit snooty). I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading -- still -- War and Peace, though I have officially passed the 50% mark, and I've started The Shipping News for the next Read With Us discussion. This is technically a reread for me, but the first time around I was 14 or 15, so it's a very different experience in addition to my not remembering much of it!

What are you making and reading this week?