Unraveled, Week 37/2023

Good morning from the sick house, friends. Mo is feeling a lot better, but I've come done with my annual sinus infection and am feeling pretty miserable. I'm glad I'm already working from home and don't have to go anywhere!

Time to check in with Kat and the Unravelers about making and reading. If there's one good thing to say about being at home with a sick kid, it's that there's plenty of time for both! 

I'm still working on my C2C blanket, and though I haven't added much more since you saw it on Monday, I plan to work on it during two work meetings today, one of which is supposed to be two hours long (it's on off-site meeting, but luckily I'd already planned to Zoom in because school pickup time is right in the middle of it).

I'm in the middle of a wrong-side row at the moment, and based on the measurement I took just after snapping this photo, I should reach my target width after one more right-side row. At that point, I will start decreasing on the left-hand side of the blanket and it'll start looking like a rectangle.

I also have added a few stripes to my current pair of socks, and I'm really enjoying this Targhee base.

The main reason I haven't made a ton of progress on either of these projects the past couple of days is because I've been almost completely focused on spinning -- and I finished another skein!

It's still a tad bit damp and the skein got a bit mussed up so I'll have to rewind it to tidy it up, but this is about 187 yards of three-ply worsted. This was Southern Cross Fibre Polwarth from May 2022 in the colorway Maelstrom. I did a very quick-and-dirty spin on this for a change, and while I don't have a ton of yardage, I'm very happy with this one.

I just love a round, bouncy three-ply yarn! Normally I don't have a specific plan for yarn I spin, but as these colors are right up Mo's alley, I'm thinking this might become a hat for her. I'll likely knit it top down so I can use up as much yarn as possible.

Reading has been good this past week, even if it's not been especially plentiful. With all the illness in the house, I've been a bit distracted. But I did finish two good books.

When I was in need of an audiobook late last week, I decided to reread Rebecca, in part because it's on the Novel Pairings calendar for this month but also because it's been a very long time since I read it (I'm pretty sure when I was in eighth grade!). I watched the Hitchcock film a ton when I was a kid and saw the not-so-great more recent Netflix version, so I knew the basic story, but I'd forgotten just how amazing the writing is! The audio version was well done, too. I think I could appreciate it all a lot more now that I'm older and more well read, and it wasn't until yesterday, while I was listening to Novel Pairings, that I learned that it was inspired by Jane Eyre, but it makes total sense! If you've never read this book, I highly recommend it. I gave my reread 5 stars.

My other finish came from the Booker Prize longlist. How to Build a Boat tells the story of Jamie, a young man who we're led to believe is on the autism spectrum and who believes that if he finds a way to build a perpetual motion machine, it will somehow connect him to his month, who died shortly after giving birth to him. He's helped in this mission by two of his teachers at his Catholic boys' high school, a place where all three of them are outsiders in their own way, and the book is really a lovely story of how they find and help one another through their respective life difficulties. This is one of those books that has no quotation marks for the dialogue, making it a little challenging in parts to know when someone is speaking and when they're just thinking, but it's a beautiful story. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm still reading An Immense World, though I haven't picked it up in the past several days, and I've been reading my next Booker selection, A Spell of Good Things, at bedtime.

What are you making and reading this week?