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Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Unraveled, Week 26/2023

I am getting this post up a little early this morning because I actually have to go into the office for a meeting at 9 (when the new big boss wants to meet in person, you go in) and work on the road I normally walk along to get there means I have to take a detour, so I figured I'd make things easier for myself by getting a head start on typing. I have no idea if Kat is hosting a link-up this week for Unraveled Wednesday, as she'd said she was going to take a little blog vacation, but I'm still checking in on crafting and reading here!

I have been very focused on spinning the past week and have finished the first bobbin of singles for my three-colorway combo spin:

and have started on the second (this is Woodland Stream):

Apologies for the bad photo; we have a combination of fog and smoke here today.

I am spinning my default singles, which means that the finished three-ply yarn should be in the range of fingering weight. Obviously for a fairly fine finished yarn, that means the singles are even finer, so this is somewhat slow spinning. I'm trying to finish this project as quickly as possible, but we're also headed into a spinning-heavy time of year -- that would be Tour de Fleece, which coincides with the Tour de France and begins July 1 -- so I anticipate that it very well could be a finished yarn by this time next week. We'll see!

I've also made some progress on my current sock WIP, as it came with me to dinners all weekend:


These socks were originally intended to be for my mother, but after seeing the full stripe sequence, I don't think they're her colors, so now Mo will be getting them. I have plenty of other options for my mom in the stash.

It has been an excellent week of reading, with three great finishes!

Happiness Falls is a book that is impossible to classify when it comes to genre. It's a mystery. It's a family drama. It's a pandemic novel. It's a work of philosophy. It's a political book about disability and society. It's a study of identity. It's an examination of nature vs. nurture. It's a work of cross-cultural and social commentary. Regardless of how you describe it, it's a compelling and well-written read. It's a book that I couldn't put down once I got started. It's a book that made me laugh and cry. It's a smart and emotional story of a family dealing with the mysterious disappearance of their father in the middle of the pandemic and the revelation that their nonverbal son and brother may be capable of more than they realized. The characters are three-dimensional and complex, people you will come to care about and root for. More than anything, this book tells the story of the love between members of a family. I gave it 5 stars -- highly recommend!

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and Random House in return for an honest review. The book is due to be published in August, and if you're quick, you can enter the Goodreads giveaway for a hard copy (just click on the link to the book above and look under the cover image for a link to the giveaway).

If you've read Jesmyn Ward's novels, then you know how her writing is simultaneously gorgeous and devastating. She has previously written about how this country has failed people of color in more recent times, but in her newest work, she goes back to one of the ugliest eras of its history. In Let Us Descend, she takes us back to the South before the Civil War and gives the reader an unflinching portrait of life as an enslaved person. In her portrait of Annis, a young enslaved woman, Ward shows the suffering but also the humanity and gives the reader an idea of how it was possible for so many to continue to willingly live each day and find some hope for the future even as they were starved, beaten, and worked to death. I gave it 5 stars, and I do recommend it, though be aware that it's a hard read for many reasons.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and Scribner in return for an honest review. This book is expected to be published in October.

It had been a while since I last listened to a Maisie Dobbs mystery, in part because the audiobooks disappeared from Hoopla for a while, but they're back now, so I listed to the 15th in the series, The American Agent, over the course of a few days. This one had everything I love about the series -- a case that kept me guessing interspersed with scenes from Maisie's personal life -- set against the backdrop of the London Blitz. Things are starting to come together, and knowing that there are only two more books in the series that I have still to read, I have a general idea of where things may be going. This was a great listen while I was running -- 4 stars.


I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, which wasn't originally on our schedule for the Kingsolver-along, but so many of us were picking it up right now that we've decided to make it our next book to discuss. I'm about a third of the way through it and am enjoying it -- particularly the part I recently read about shearing and skirting the fleeces of a flock of Icelandic sheep!

6 comments:

  1. Your spinning is so pretty Sarah - is the 3rd color also a shade of green? The socks that will now be for Mo remind me of Halloween. Fun! A good week of reading for you. I'm looking forward to the first two being published. And, one of the books I picked up at the library yesterday is Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. For now, though, I am thoroughly enjoying Hamnet!

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  2. I love those stripes! You do find the BEST striping yarn . . . I loved Happiness Falls. I rarely find a book I absolutely can't put down -- but that one? I was obsessed! (I loved Flight Behavior.)

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  3. The spinning is gorgeous, the socks are eye-catching, and the books are intriguing! I don't think I've ever read anything like Happiness Falls and think maybe I'll re-read it in a couple of months. I've never read a Maisie Dobbs novel but every time you review one, I think I should put them on my list. I hope the new big boss is a person that you like and like to work for.

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  4. What a rich reading week! Prior to Demon, Flight Behavior was my favorite of hers. (In fact, I may have mentioned that it was the book that made me love Barbara Kingsolver.)

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  5. Shearing sheep! My copy of Flight Behavior should arrive shortly and I can't wait to start. How is it possibly time for Tour de Fleece ... I'm thinking you could hit your 2023 spinning goal before it's over? and :-) I'm hearing so many good things about Jesmyn Ward's new book; I started her debut (Where the Line Bleeds, 2006?) this morning and might need to re-read her other two as well.

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  6. I love those socks and I think Mo is a lucky girl to receive them. And even *I* have been counting down to Tour de Fleece because I can't wait to see all of the fibery goodness that's going to pop up in my blog feeder and on YouTube!

    And the books this week. Wow! I'm definitely putting Let Us Descend and Happiness Falls on my TBR for the fall -- they both sound so good! And yay for Maisie Dobbs. I will probably pick this series up again the fall too -- there's so much to look forward to!

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