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?