Unraveled, Week 17/2024

What a week it has been -- and we've only reached the midpoint! I'm happy to report that our Seder went well, even if it was an exhausting night. The little ones all reached their breaking point before we reached the meal portion of the evening, so we were down to a dozen people around the table fairly quickly. Because we had started so early, we had finished dessert and said goodnight by around 8, and by 9 we had finished doing all the dishes and put away the extra tables and chairs. I'm pretty sure we all fell asleep very quickly Monday night. And then last night Mo and my mother went to Seder at my brother and sister-in-law's house (they also hosted their next-door neighbors) while the Mister and I attended an event with Baratunde Thurston hosted by our local PBS station. I'd say we're all looking forward to having a normal evening tonight!

Before I give an update and link up with Kat and the Unravelers, I have to share a photo from last Friday, which I forgot to do on Monday. I mentioned last week that we'd gone dress shopping, in part because Mo had a school dance on Friday, and several of you wanted to see the dress she picked. So here's a photo of the three of us:

Yes, she is wearing heels and I'm in flats, but she's quickly threatening to overtake me in height!

But back to the knitting content! This week, it's a tale of two socks:

On the top is the one using the yarn from String Theory Colorworks that I shared last week. I decided to make things a little more exciting and am doing some faux colorwork by slipping every other stitch on the round when the color changes. I'm also doing a forethought afterthought heel on these (if you look closely, you can see the white waste yarn near my needles) because I didn't want to change the width of the stripes by working a flap and gusset. On the bottom is the sock I started on Saturday for my theater knitting. We got there about an hour before showtime (we've been going early to deal with a ridiculous amount of construction downtown and to ensure we find a parking spot in the closest garage), so we sat on a bench before the house opened and I cast on. I got through a full stripe repeat over the course of the show. The yarn is Knit Picks Felici in the colorway White Russian; it was purchased back in 2022, which I know because I had the foresight to write the date it entered the stash on the ball band. I did rewind the yarn into cakes before casting on because I didn't want to risk the skein getting yanked out of my project bag in the dark in the theater.

My other active project is my design project:

I've been meaning to cast this on for a very long time, and in fact the colorwork pattern is one I've been playing around with for years. I'd originally tried it out in a sock, but stranded work in socks is always a little risky, so I decided to use it in a cowl instead. This is one of those cowls that is knit as a long tube and finished by grafting the two ends together. I've now completed a little more than one repeat of the pattern, and I'm very happy with how this is working up. I'm still deciding just how long to make this, but the beauty of this construction is that you can basically decide to make it as long or as short as you want.

I have only finished one book in the last week, but it was an excellent one!

The memoir How to Say Babylon is the next Read With Us selection, but I actually already had it on hold at the library when it was announced, and finally it was my turn last week. I decided to get the audiobook, read by the author, as I always seem to get more out of memoirs when I hear them in the author's own voice. Safiya Sinclair recounts growing up in poverty in Jamaica in a strict Rastafarian household, with a father who was occasionally abusive and whose beliefs governed what she could wear, what she could eat, and what she could do with her life. Eventually, Sinclair began to question those beliefs and to want a different life for herself, one that would allow her to not only make her own choices but also to pursue a career as a poet. Although this is a memoir and not a poetry collection, you can tell from her prose that she is a poet; even in describing things that are hard to read, her writing is beautiful. It's hard to say that I truly enjoyed all of this book; there were times when I forgot that the events she described had actually happened. But I found her skill as a writer to be astonishing, and I am hoping to find some of her poetry to read soon. I am really looking forward to the RWU discussion! I gave this book 5 stars.

On my to-do list for today is finishing Long Island Compromise (my Kindle app tells me I have about an hour of reading left), and I have about 100 pages remaining in When I Lived in Modern Times.

What are you making and reading this week?