Unraveled, Week 40/2024

Good morning and happy Wednesday! Can you believe it's October? I'm not sure where this year has gone, but the end of it is quickly approaching. Before we get there, it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers for our weekly check-in.

I am very happy to have another FO to share today, though it's not one that's terribly exciting -- just another ribbed hat for the charity pile:

I used a free pattern (Ravelry link) that I knit once before a number of years ago, though the first time I made it in solid gray yarn and it was a much more boring project. This one was made using some of the leftovers from the recent baby blanket (which, by the way, was received over the weekend and was a big hit). It's a cotton/acrylic blend, which isn't as warm as wool, but I hope that deep doubled brim will help. The only modification I made to the pattern was to do one more round of decreases as the top; the pattern tells you do decrease to 16 stitches and then pull the tail through all of them, but I decreased to eight. It looks just fine -- probably better, in fact, because the hole closed up much more easily than if I'd had twice the number of stitches to work with.

Something else I finished this week, but which I can't show you because it's already been frogged, was a swatch for my handspun sweater. I used the US 4/3.5 mm needles recommended in the pattern but was way off in gauge. The pattern calls for 23 stitches over 4 inches, and I got 25.5 stitches. So now I'll be trying again with a US 5/3.75 mm needle and hoping that I not only get closer to gauge but also have a fabric that's not too loose. If it is, I'll have to do some calculations to see if I can go up a size and use the US 4's to get the right fit. Stay tuned.

I finished two quick books in the past week, both quite enjoyable.

I was a psychology major in college, and my favorite things to learn about were the case histories of patients whose unusual symptoms and circumstances revealed fascinating things about the workings of the mind and the brain. So when I was invited to review The Strange Case of Jane O. on NetGalley and read the description, I was immediately hooked. This novel tells the story of a woman with a perfect memory who begins to experience strange symptoms -- hallucinations, blackouts lasting hours to days -- and as a result starts to doubt her memories. It's told in alternating sections in the form of case notes of the psychiatrist treating her and of her own letters to her young son, which she writes for him to read at some point in the future and which reveal her struggle to understand what is real and what is not. But the reader soon realizes that neither narrator is completely reliable, Jane because of her symptoms and her doctor because of his past efforts to research phenomena that can't necessarily be proved through science. The result is a fascinating, propulsive story that will leave anyone questioning their memory and whether someone with a seemingly perfect memory can remember things that never happened. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published February 25, 2025.

The last title I had yet to read from the Booker Prize shortlist was Stone Yard Devotional, which wasn't available to me through my library, but luckily Margene was kind enough to send me her copy as long as I promised to send it back when I was done. This is a quiet novel, with an unnamed middle-aged female narrator who, frustrated and burnt out by her life, returns to her rural Australian hometown and comes to live with a small community of nuns. Though the book clearly takes place during the COVID pandemic (references are made to travel restricts and masks), it's never directly named. Instead, the narrator focuses on the tasks in front of her: cooking for the sisters, dealing with a plague of mice brought on by drought, and addressing her memories of her youth and her grief at losing both her parents. Despite the fact that there are some Big Issues that arise for the narrator, there isn't really a lot of drama, and they're dealt with quite beautifully. I really enjoyed it and gave it 4 stars. And I have already sent it back to Margene, just in case you're wondering!

I'm still trying to finish up September -- in October -- and have a little more than 100 pages left, and I'm contemplating which of the two other Booker Prize longlist titles on my Kindle shelf I want to read next.