Unraveled, Week 31/2023

Whereas last week seemed to drag, this week is speeding by -- I was surprised it was already Wednesday when I woke up this morning! As per usual, I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers today.

This photo represents my main crafting activity this week. I'm working on finishing up this pair of socks for my mother (working ahead for a holiday gift) and also spinning yet another Southern Cross Fibre club shipment. This colorway is called Coastline, and it's fairly neutral, so I have split it up in order to break up the colors as much as possible. I am spinning my usual three-ply fingering, and though I don't have a specific project in mind, I am thinking that this would be a good background color for some kind of colorwork. I'm almost halfway done with the singles (what you see here is the fiber still to be spun) and am hoping I can wrap up the rest by the end of the week.

I also finished up my test knit over the weekend and am delighted with how it turned out:

I used three colors of Knit Picks Dishie -- white, Honeydew, and Conch. This bag is pretty simple to knit but so clever. I'm definitely going to be making another one (or more). I tested the second size, which is about 8 inches wide and 8 inches high, but the pattern has four sizes, the largest about twice this size. I think this makes a great market bag; you can easily adjust the size of the straps, so it would be easy to make it into a bag you can put over your shoulder. The testing deadline for this is later this month, so I expect Shana will be releasing it in early September.

I haven't been able to do a ton of reading in the last week because of all the catching up I had to do at work, but I have managed to finish two books.

When Hoopla decided not to work for me on the plane, I turned to what was in my Kindle library. Matthew Desmond is part of the upcoming local speaker series I subscribe to, specifically talking about his latest book, Poverty, by America. This nonfiction work is easy to read and understand, even as it's utterly demonstrating. Desmond lays out how our society has been constructed to keep poor people in poverty despite some pretty easy ways to help them that would harm very few people (read: the ultra-rich and corporations). I do recognize that his viewpoint is likely biased, but I happen to agree with him, and I think he does an excellent job of laying out the issues in a way that's very accessible. I gave this book 4 stars.

Ninth House was a very buzzy book a few years ago, so I'd bookmarked it on Hoopla when I saw it was available but really didn't know much about it when I borrowed the audiobook over the weekend. This is a fantasy novel set in the world of Yale's secret societies, in which the titular house is the one in charge of overseeing the others and ensuring that their magic doesn't get out of hand. It's an interesting concept -- that these societies use magic to ensure their members' financial and professional success -- but it wasn't really to my taste. There's a fair amount of violence and gore in this book, which aren't things I usually care for. I think it was well done, though. I gave it 3 stars.


I'm currently reading something much lighter, Emily Henry's Book Lovers, which I found in one of my neighborhood's Little Free Libraries. It's a bit predictable but is easy to read and a nice mental break from heavier things.

What are you making and reading this week?