Unraveled, Week 35/2023

It's that time again -- time to check in with Kat and the Unravelers! But first, thank you for all those good wishes for Mo for the new school year. We had a nice low-key day at home (the highlights were a trip to Target and baking zucchini bread) on Monday, and her first day seemed to go well. Of course, not all that much was done on the first day of school, but it was at least a return to the usual schedule. And it made the house very quiet for me!

Most of my crafting time recently has been devoted to spinning, including finishing the latest skein on Friday. It turns out that the reason it took me so long to ply is because there was a lot of yarn in this skein (a shocking revelation, I know!). I half expected it to poof up when I washed it and to shrink a lot, but it didn't, and my finished skein has approximately 448 yards of three-ply light fingering.

This bag of fiber was number 22 of my Southern Cross Fibre backlog, so my re-upped goal of 24 is well within reach and could easily be accomplished before the end of this quarter. I've already started the next spin, a two-ply fractal of this Bond in the colorway Thank You for the Music:

Naturally, I've had ABBA in my head every time I sit down to spin!

I've also made some slow but steady progress on the socks, finishing up the first one and starting the second over the weekend. I am able to knit on these while reading for work on the computer, so I'm getting in at least a handful of rounds a day.

As for reading this past week, I definitely took advantage of the extra day off to get some extra reading time in and as a result have finished three more books.

The first one is not terribly exciting because I wouldn't necessarily classify it as reading for pleasure. I'd heard Lisa Damour on a podcast earlier in the year talking about teens and their emotions, so I bought her most recent book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, on Kindle and finally got around to reading it this week. This book was informative and easy to read, and it gave me some good pointers for dealing with my emotional teenager (especially because it's been a long time since I was one myself). It doesn't contain anything that's particular earth-shattering in its revelations, but I think it was worth reading and the amount of time I spent with it (which truly was not much). I gave it 3 stars.

Next up was Pearl, my third book read from the Booker Prize Longlist. This is a strange little book that reads like a memoir but is a novel; the main character is a woman whose mother disappeared when she was 8 and her brother was a newborn, and the trauma from that loss echoes throughout her life. She struggles with mental illness, an eating disorder, and generally understanding what happened for years until she becomes a mother herself and finally comes to some realizations that bring her a sense of closure. There are some moments when I thought this book was going off the rails, but it comes together beautifully at the end. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, as I got to the end of last week and found myself in need of an audiobook, I decided to listen to the next selection in the Kingsolver-along, Prodigal Summer, even though I have a hard copy of the book. Although I had issues with the volume at times, the audio is read by the author, and it was great to hear this Appalachian story in her voice/accent. There are three stories/main characters in this book that eventually come together, and there's an overwhelming message of nature conservation, one that's fairly remarkable given that this book was written back in 2000, long before the urgency surrounding climate change. There's a lot to talk about in this book, but oh, the writing! I know there are readers who find Barbara Kingsolver to be very preachy, and she is, but the woman knows how to write a sentence! I gave this one 4 stars, and I'd definitely read it again with my eyes.

I'm currently reading another Booker selection, Study for Obedience, though I've only read a small number of pages, and a book by one of the speakers in the upcoming author series I subscribe to, An Immense World. I am hoping that work settles a bit this week and gives me some more reading time.

What are you making and reading this week?