Begin Again

It was hard to get up when my alarm went off this morning after waking several times during the night and then having strange dreams (I was back at college, though not a college I recognized, and I was assigned to live in a room shaped like a giant tooth!?), so I am thankful for hot coffee in my favorite mug. We had a fun but busy weekend, and I could have used another day to rest (but isn't that always the case?).

Hamilton was great. I actually liked this cast better than the one we saw five years ago, although our Aaron Burr was having a little trouble during "Wait for It" and seemed a little off key to me. But in general I thought the actors were all extremely talented singers and did an excellent job of enunciating so that the lyrics could be understood. Molly loved the show and said that she was glad she didn't see it until now because she has now studied American history and could understand all the context.

I took my double-ended hat with me to work on during the show because it was the only project I had in progress that I could knit without looking. I totally forgot to put a marker in to see how much I knit, but I can tell that the ball of yarn is getting smaller.

My main fiber focus over the weekend was my spinning project. I did end up finishing the singles late Friday, and yesterday I wound them into a center-pull ball and plied them:

On today's to-do list is winding the yarn off and setting the twist. 

I expect it to be a busy week at work -- that big project that keeps threatening has to get done and off to print -- but at least there are things to look forward to. This afternoon the Booker Prize shortlist will be revealed, and tomorrow evening is the next Read With Us Zoom discussion. And union ballots are due this week! I hope your week is off to a good start, and I'll see you back here on Wednesday for an update.

Are We There Yet?

Happy Friday, friends. It's been a long week, so I'm happy to see it come to an end. The Mister had to do a bunch of work travel this week, and it got complicated by a diversion and landing due to a medical emergency on board yesterday (he's fine, and the passenger with the issue was being cared for by a nurse on board). Last night was also curriculum night at Molly's school, so I spent the evening meeting all her teachers and hearing about her classes for the year. On top of all this, the heat has come back and we haven't had rain in a while, so everything feels completely dried out.

On the plus side, I did get some good news from work this week: My job classification change has officially gone through! The change is effective at the end of the month, so I'll still have to submit weekly time sheets for a few more weeks and it will take about a month for my paychecks to catch up, but at long last this major headache is over. I'll also add that, thanks to the Mister's encouragement to ask for it, I am going to be getting an additional payment to make up for the increased pay I would have received if they'd put in this change months ago. It's not a huge amount, but it was bumped up a bit by my office to a nice even number (I suspect to placate me after all my complaining). It's really nice to be relieved of this extra stress after nearly a year.

I have been focusing mainly on two projects this week. The first is the baby blanket, which I think is in the home stretch. I finished the sixth main pattern repeat (of eight total) last night and slipped half of the stitches onto a spare needle to get a better sense of the size:

My 9.75 in. foot for scale

The body repeats are 10 rounds each, and the border is another 14 rounds, so combined with a good hard block to open up the lace, I think this will be a nice size for a baby blanket. I still have a little more than a third of the first skein of yarn left, and I'm hoping it will be enough (though I've got that second skein in reserve if needed).

I've also been spinning away at those Charollais singles:

I'm hoping to finish them today, if I can. Woolen-spun singles spin up a lot faster than worsted-spun singles, but the difference is that I need to keep an eye on them as I spin, which means it's not feasible for me to read while I spin. I know that I'm very spoiled in being able to spin or knit and read at the same time, but I've gotten so used to doing it that doing just one leisure activity at a time without doing something else has started to feel unproductive to me (yes, I know that's entirely ridiculous). I can, however, listen to something while spinning these singles, so that's mainly what I've been doing. And once I'm ready to ply, I'll be back to spinning and reading again.

We've got a fun weekend coming up -- Molly and I are going to see Hamilton tomorrow! This will be my second time (I saw it the first time in January of 2019, when she was a bit young for it). Sunday we'll both be tuning in to the Makers for Kamala livestream. And I'm hoping to take care of the laundry and cleaning today so that the rest of my weekend can be cleared for the stuff I want to do rather than the stuff I have to do.

Here's hoping your weekend is full of the stuff you want to do!

Unraveled, Week 37/2024

Hump day again -- time to join Kat and the Unravelers with an update on my making and my reading over the past week!

Over the course of Monday I was able to ply up my two bobbins of singles, wind the finished yarn into a skein, and give it a soak. It took almost a full day to dry (even though I squeezed out as much water as I could, then rolled it in a towel and stomped on it!), but I think the wait was worth it.

The green-to-pink gradient turned out pretty much just as I wanted it to, and though I was hoping for fingering weight, I was also pretty much just going with the flow as I spun, so the finished yarn is generally sport to DK (though there are definitely some much thinner spots in there). I ended up with approximately 296 yards, so enough for a small shawl, a cowl, or a hat. Or I could use it in the yoke of a sweater with other yarn. There are many possibilities!

After using up one batch of fiber that came home from SSK 2023 with me, I decided to spin the other one next. It was also fiber that I won as a door prize, some Charollais wool from Into the Whirled. I've spun this breed once before and wanted to try it again, so it was a nice surprise when my ticket was drawn for it.

Though this fiber came as combed top, I'm spinning it using a supported long draw, so my singles are very fuzzy and there's a fair amount of color blending. It's also a very fast way to spin! I'm planning to spin the fiber end to end on one bobbin, wind the singles into a center-pull ball, and ply from both ends.

My knitting time over the past several days has almost exclusively been focused on the lace baby blanket, and it's growing quite quickly!

I've got it on a set of 40 inch circular needles, and as you can see, I've already surpassed that measurement in the perimeter. I've completed five of the eight recommended repeats of the main chart; the pattern says you can do as many as you'd like, but I plan to put stitches on a spare needle when I reach that point so I can fully stretch out my work and see how big it is. I'm sorry to say that although the yarn has been mostly nice to knit with, I've already encountered two knots in this first skein. Yes, I know a few knots is considered acceptable in the industry, but I still don't like them -- especially when I'm buying a large skein with the expectation that it will mean fewer ends to weave in!

I've done some excellent reading in the past week and finished four books!

After both Mary and Katie raved about it, I ended up buying Held (on Kindle) and was eager to read it. This is a book that I suspect is going to be very divisive: The writing is beautiful but very spare, and there's a lot that is going on in the story that is not on the page. It also jumps back and forth in time, and I noticed that there are some character names that appear in different times but that may not be the same people. This is one of those books that I think would really benefit from more than one reading and would likely be understood better if discussed with others (and if you'd like to discuss it, let me know! I still have a lot of questions!). I already the author's earlier novel on my "want to read" list, and now I am even more interested. I gave this one 4 stars.

On the same day, I finished The Road Home, which was the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2008 and was this month's book to discuss in our little group reading earlier winners of the prize. This book follows Lev, a widowed middle-aged man from an unnamed former Soviet republic who has made his way to England to try to find a job and make some money to support his young daughter and aging mother. He soon finds that doing so is a lot more complicated than he anticipated and that he has to deal with guilt over being abroad in addition to the challenges of being a foreigner seeking to make a living. There were some things about this book that frustrated me, namely that Lev's native country is never specified and the time in which the book takes place is a little vague, but the characters are well written and Lev's humanity and determination are heartwarming. I gave it 4 stars.

If you're the sort of reader who can appreciate gorgeous writing that makes you think about all sorts of philosophic questions and your place in the world and can tolerate a book where there's not much of a plot, then I'd highly recommend Orbital. This slim novel (I read it in a day!) follows the multinational crew on the International Space Station over the course of 24 hours, during which they complete 16 orbits of Earth. As they go about their schedule of conducting experiments, exercising, performing maintenance on the spacecraft, and photographing different views of the Earth, we also get a window into their thoughts on all sorts of things -- climate change, loss of loved ones, wars, religion and faith, the possibility of intelligent life in other galaxies, the knowns and unknowns of space and time. It's another one I want to reread. I gave it 5 stars.

Finally, after a surprisingly long wait given that the book is more than a decade old, I listened to Rules of Civility. I had previously read only one book by Amor Towles, though I have his two most recent on my bookshelves. Kym encouraged me to read this one before Table for Two, so I put it on hold at the library. I suspect many of you regular readers have already read this book, so I'll keep my summary short: In the late 1930s, twenty-something Katey Kontent is finding her way in the various worlds of New York City -- the jobs available for working women, the club and bar scene, and the social world of high society. She encounters memorable characters (and is rather one herself) and finds herself in surprising situations. And the writing is superb! I gave this one 4 stars -- and am looking forward to getting to those Towles books I already own!

I'm now in the middle of another Booker Prize longlisted title, My Friends, and am doing a buddy read of September with Kat.

What are you making and reading this week?

Feels Like Fall

Though we're due to have highs in the upper 80s later in the week, this past weekend felt decidedly fall-like. We had some much-needed rain overnight on Friday, with some lingering sprinkles and a chilly breeze on Saturday morning. And it was in the mid-40s when we got up on Sunday! But the sun came out both days and warmed things up enough.

On Saturday morning, the Mister had to go help a friend with some computer/internet stuff, so Molly (she's said I can now use her full name on the blog!) and I went to the art festival and met up with my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. There was a lot of good stuff to see -- including my high school U.S. history teacher, who retired from teaching a couple of years ago and now makes jewelry! I did find the potter I was looking for and picked up a couple of pieces:

The lighting isn't doing these pieces any justice, but it was the best of several attempts. The one on the left is a spoon rest; I accidentally broke the one we had several months ago, and we'd been making do ever since with some silicone ones the Mister found on Amazon. This sweet one with the goldfinch is so much nicer and coordinates with the mug I already had (it has the same branches and leaves without any birds). The one on the right is a small-ish serving platter, about the right size for a wedge of cheese and some crackers or clusters of grapes or a selection of cookies, for example. I have quite a few large serving platters but very few smaller ones, and I thought this was such a pretty design.

We also found an artist who makes some really gorgeous batik pieces and bought a couple prints:

The photographer was slanted, not the artwork.

Molly loved the one on the left, so we will likely find a frame for it and put it in her room. I picked the one on the right -- definitely click the photo to enlarge it so that you can see that those lines in the top two-thirds of the image are tree trunks!

Much of my crafting time over the weekend was spent at my wheel, and I have two finished bobbins of singles to show for it:

This was a pretty quick spin, one in which I wasn't too concerned about consistency or smoothness (though I did pull out some of the add-ins when they were too bulky or rough). I have no idea what weight of yarn this will ply to or how much I will have, but it doesn't really matter; this is an instance of spinning the yarn that the fiber wanted to be and then finding a suitable pattern to go with it.

I also came into some new yarn this weekend. Now, you all know that I've been trying to work from stash whenever possible, and I've actually bought very little yarn in the past year or so. But I suddenly have a lot of baby gifts to knit, and as Molly has used up nearly all of my solid and semisolid partial skeins and leftovers in the scrappy granny square blanket she's been crocheting, I did have much suitable on hand. Fortuitously, Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works was running an end-of-summer sale last week, so I ordered three skeins of DK in baby-suitable semisolid shades. The order was placed Wednesday afternoon, it was in the mail by Thursday, and it was delivered Friday evening. Occasionally the USPS does something right!

In addition to knitting for my niece, I have a coworker expecting a baby around the same time, I still haven't knit anything for a cousin who just had a baby this summer (I sent a board book about Andy Warhol because I didn't have anything on hand to knit at the time), and some of our neighbors also recently had a baby. For the sake of simplicity and speed, I expect all will be getting hats, which will also leave me some of these three skeins for future needs.

I expect the big work project to return this week (though apparently it's being cut in length by about half), and I also have Curriculum Night at Molly's school to look forward to on Thursday evening. I'll be continuing to work on the lace baby blanket whenever possible, and with any luck, I'll get to ply those singles in the next couple of days. Have a good start to your week, and see you back here on Wednesday!

Wrapping Up and Casting On

Why is it that the short weeks seem to last longer? That's certainly been the case this week. In addition to an important project at work (which I started and then was told abruptly to stop because major changes needed to be made), I donated blood on Tuesday and then went to get my annual breast MRI on Wednesday (all good!). And I've generally felt a little off all week -- nothing major, just not feeling quite 100%. So I'm glad it's almost the weekend and there will be some extra sleep in my future.

Thanks to the stoppage of that work project, I had some extra time on my hands the past few days and wrapped up some knitting. On Wednesday afternoon and evening, I finished up the hat to go with the Newborn Vertebrae and the first sock of my current pair.

The hat is a free pattern that I have made many times before; I often refer to it as the "rude baby hat" because that strip of fabric that's knotted on the top looks, well, rather phallic before it's tied up. The sock is a pattern that I've basically made up myself by looking at another pattern; I could have bought the pattern, but it was easy enough to reverse engineer, and I would have had to make adjustments to it anyway because it's written for a larger gauge. The biased fabric on the front of the sock definitely makes for snug fit and a little difficulty getting it on over my heel, but it does fit once it's on. I'll be casting on its mate soon.

The Pigskin Party officially kicked off yesterday, so I started two new projects. The first is a spinning project, one that's a big contrast to the spin I just finished.

These two batts were a door prize that I won at SSK last year. They're from Bricolage Studios and called Luna Moth, and they're a blend of Rambouillet, mohair, CVM, tussah silk, and silk noil. Each batt is 2.5 ounces, so I figured I'd spin each one on its own bobbin and ply them together. I started spinning the first batt yesterday and got about halfway through it. I've split up the batt so that it's kind of being spun in a gradient of green to pink, though there's quite a lot of blending. I'm hoping that the finished yarn will have the same subtle color shift.

This spin is a departure from what I've been doing all summer because, for one thing, I'm using a woolen prep rather than worsted. And though I'm still using generally my same short forward draw, with this prep and the chunky bits of silk noil in it, it's pretty much impossible to get an even, smooth single. I'll admit that I am pulling out some of those chunky bits when they're excessively clumpy and/or rough, but I'm generally letting this yarn be more textured.

I also cast on a new knitting project last night, and I'm doing some lace knitting for the first time in a long time.

 

I only just found out recently that my college roommate (who was also my maid of honor in my wedding) had a baby over the summer, her second daughter. I knit her first daughter a lace blanket five years ago that was apparently much loved, so I decided to do the same for the second. As with the first one, I've adapted a triangle lace shawl to be a square, using thicker yarn and larger needles to up-size the lace. I'm using this free pattern (Ravelry link) with -- don't be shocked! -- Caron Blossom Cakes, a 61% cotton/39% acrylic yarn purchased at Michaels. My top priority when I knit for babies is to make sure that what I make is easy to care for, and the big box store acrylic blends have come a long way. I wanted this to be something my friend could toss in the washer and dryer without having to worry about messing it up, and having felt this yarn before (my mother just used it to make blankets for my nephew and expected niece), I can say that it's very nice. Mo also picked up some of this yarn to make herself a blanket.

After I post this, I'm going to attempt a run (always a challenge after donating blood), and if my inbox cooperates, I'm hoping to do a little cleaning and laundry. Today is my sister-in-law's birthday, so she and my brother are going out to celebrate and my parents are babysitting my nephew, so dinner will be just the three of us. At some point this weekend, I'm hoping to make it over to A Fair in the Park -- the potter who made my favorite coffee mug will be there, and I'd really love to pick up another piece or two (I missed out on the fair last year because I had COVID).

I hope you have a restful, enjoyable weekend full of the things you enjoy!

Unraveled, Week 36/2024

A short week means that Wednesday comes sooner than expected! It's time to link up again with Kat and the Unravelers, as per usual. Before I get into the crafting and the reading, though, I have a little update on Monday's festivities. We had a gorgeous day for the parade and found a spot to watch just a little down the road from the starting point.

We didn't see the president and vice president, but we did see one of our senators!

Sen. Bob Casey is the guy right in the center.

The president and VP did come to town, but not until almost dinnertime, and they were at a union hall for a rally. Mo was watching a livestream of it and came running to show us:

See the girl with the dark hair just over the president's shoulder? That's one of her former classmates! It turns out that the girl's father is president of one of the unions there, so she got a prime position for the event.

Since Monday, I've managed to finish spinning and plying the last skein of yarn for my sweater. I started this project at the beginning of May, and though it's taken me quite a long time to finish, I feel like savoring the process was appropriate given how precious this fiber has become.

My second sleeve skein, despite weighing a gram more than the first, is also about a dozen yards shorter; clearly I was in a hurry to finish! In total, I have just shy of 2,000 yards of yarn, more than enough for the sweater I have planned.

My knitting the past few days has been entirely focused on finishing up the hat to match the Newborn Vertebrae, and I'm now at the point where it looks a little rude:

I have to knit that tube at the top to five inches, at which point it will be closed off and knotted. I expect I'll finish today or tonight, depending on how busy work is today.

I've also finished three more books in the past week.

I'd been waiting a long time to get Clear from the library; my library only had it available as an audiobook, and I could not figure out what was taking the people ahead of me so long because the book is only 3 hours long! I think I started out 10th in line, and I waited at least a month to get it. And when I did, I managed to get through all of it in a morning (I listened to most of it while on a run and finished the rest while I was getting my lunch ready). I think I will likely want to reread this book with my eyes at some point because I think there are things I will appreciate more in print, but even in audio I was able to appreciate a beautiful story of two people seeing the humanity in each other and overcoming their differences. I gave it 4 stars.

I was very excited to read Sarah Perry's newest, Enlightenment, because I loved her earlier The Essex Serpent, so I had high expectations for the new release, particularly because it was named to the Booker Prize longlist. This novel follows two people, Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley, who have in common a Strict Baptist church. We see them and the others in their orbit at three points in time and how their actions and decisions lead to serious consequences for their friendship. There is an element of a mystery in Thomas's search for a female amateur astronomer who lived in their village in the late 1800s and an examination of faith on both their parts. There are discussions of physics and love and fate and time. There's a lot going, and much of the time, I felt like there was a subtext that I was missing. The writing is excellent, but I still prefer the previous novel. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, another short audiobook that came on my radar thanks to Mary: The Order of Time is mentioned by Sarah Perry in her acknowledgements at the end of her book as a text that greatly informed it. The audio is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, which makes it quite enjoyable to listen to, but this is a nonfiction book about our understanding of the concept of time and what physics has to say about it. Though I took physics in high school and astronomy (which ended up being more like astrophysics) in college, most of this book was over my head and I found myself losing interest. There were some fascinating points that were made, and I did stick with it because it was short, but I would not call it a favorite. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm still trying to finish up The Road Home ahead of Saturday's discussion, and I started Held, another title from the Booker longlist, yesterday.

What are you making and reading this week?

Sleeping In, Cooling Off, and Celebrating

Happy Labor Day, friends! It's a day off for all of us, but it's also a day of celebration. For one thing, the Mister and I are celebrating our 17th anniversary today. But Labor Day is also taking on some special significance for me as my union ballot is in the mail and I could be a union member by the end of the month. This morning Mo and I are going to the annual Labor Day parade downtown with my parents. It's one of the biggest in the country, and in the past it's featured some pretty high-profile guests. There was talk that the president and vice president might appear, but now it's sounding like they're going to be doing another campaign stop. Still, it should be a good time.

Personally, I'm also celebrating the fact that the heat and humidity have broken again! As I type this, it hasn't yet hit 60ºF, and the high today is only 73ºF. I can't wait to run in this cool weather!

I got an early dismissal from work on Friday afternoon and took full advantage of the long weekend to get some crafting and reading done. We got some rain on Saturday afternoon and evening, though not the thunderstorms I was hoping for (they ended up north and south of us), but Mo and I spent the afternoon bingeing Gilmore Girls and crafting in any case. She's been working on a pretty epic crocheted blanket, which I will share at some point in the future, and I finished up the Newborn Vertebrae!

I know it looks like the sleeves don't quite match, but they do, even down to a few stitches of gray in the bind-off. The thin brown stripes that appear on the right side were all in the yoke; because the stitch count was at the largest right before the sleeve stitches were split off and that color is a thin stripe, it just didn't make it across the whole yoke. I'll admit it bugs me a little, but this is what happens when you use a self-striping yarn for an item with variable stitch counts -- and I highly doubt my niece is going to care! Now I'm working on a hat to go with it that should be finished up in a day or two.

I also worked on my sweater spin and finished up the first sleeve skein:

This ended up approximately 183 yards for 46 g, and I've now spun more than 1,800 yards for this sweater! I am nearly finished with the second sleeve skein, the final one for this spin, and should finish the singles today. I'm hoping I can find time in the next several days to swatch for the sweater because the Pigskin Party is kicking off on Thursday, and I'd love to start a new sweater!

Today's plans, other than the parade and a run, include doing some laundry and trying to finish a book. We're making dinner at home tonight, and then tomorrow it's back to the grind. I have a big work project waiting for me that I'm trying not to think about today. If you're off today, be sure to thank a union member! See you back here on Wednesday.