Unraveled, Week 10/2023

It's a sunny but cold Wednesday morning here in Pittsburgh, and though there's snow in the forecast for the end of the week (boo), I am officially declaring it spring because I saw my first landscaper mowing a lawn in the neighborhood yesterday! Wednesday means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and to give you an update on my making and reading.

I've officially completed the yoke of my Love Note sweater, so now I'm at the point in the body where I just knit knit knit until it's the required length. It's going pretty quickly, given the big needles, but I'm needing to go a little slower than usual to make sure I get both strands of yarn in every stitch, and as you'd expect with four strands of yarn attached to the project, I also have to pause periodically to make sure they're not tangled.

I may be biting off more than I can chew, but it would be great if I could finish this before we leave for Florida (that's about a week and a half away). I was able to knit about an inch of the body in an hour last night, so that doesn't seem too ambitious, especially if I decide to do short sleeves.

My top priority right now, though, is getting the second of these socks past the heel turn, because I have an in-person board meeting tomorrow evening and I know I will need them to stay focused:

I have about an inch left to knit on the leg before I start the heel flap, so that shouldn't take me much time at all. The challenge will be tearing myself away from my spinning; I'm already on my third bobbin of my current spin and am so enjoying the colors that I don't want to do anything else!

I have only finished one book this week, but it's a big one!

It took me almost exactly four weeks of determined reading, but last night (past my bedtime!) I finally finished War and Peace. This was quite a brick, and I'm very glad I read it in digital format! I will say that I opted for the cheapest digital version, and it was very clear that I got what I paid for. There were no page numbers, just the dreaded "position" indicator, and periodically the print went from roman to italics and back for no apparent reason. Many of the character names were also Westernized (Andrei became Andrew, Marya became Mary, etc.), so I suspect I may not have had the best translation. All that aside, there were parts of this book that I very much enjoyed, notably the relationships between the characters and how they changed over the years. But there was a lot in here that was an absolute slog, especially the parts about the battles, and there's a great deal of Tolstoy's philosophizing about the meaning of war and why it happens. The entirety of the second epilogue, which was what kept me up late last name, felt completely irrelevant to the rest of the book and, in my opinion, could be skipped, and I think Jerry Seinfeld wasn't far off when he claimed that the original title of the book was "War: What Is It Good For." I am not sorry that I read it, but I also don't think it's the masterpiece that some claim it is. I think if you're interested in it, you'd be much better off watching the 2016 miniseries (which I plan to rewatch soon). I gave the book 3 stars.

I am still reading The Shipping News but hope to finish it up this week now that I'm done with the brick!

What are you making and reading this week?