Unraveled, Week 43/2024

Goodness, it's Wednesday again, already? I will say that when work is busy, it makes the days go by quickly, so here I am ready for my weekly check-in with Kat and the Unravelers.

I'm getting very close to a critical moment in my handspun sweater -- that moment when the sleeve stitches are split from the body and it's possible to try on the sweater for fit. I've completed all the circular yoke increases and have just another set or two of raglan increases remaining before I put the sleeve stitches on waste yarn. It's hard to get a sense for the size of the sweater at this point because all 300+ stitches are crowded onto one needle, but it has grown a lot and I will feel much better about things if it fits as I want it to. By this time next week, I should know if I'm continuing on with it or frogging and starting over.

In other blue projects, I've done three repeats of my new sock/swatch and am pleased with how the pattern is progressing:

I had charted out the stitch pattern using my charting software but saw I had to made some adjustments once I had worked up the first repeat (including dropping a couple of knit columns and picking them back up as purls). There's some wonkiness in there that should block out, but I'm happy so far.

I mentioned on Monday that wrapping up my mother-in-law's socks meant I was without a mindless stockinette project to work on in meetings or while reading, so naturally that meant I needed to cast on an additional project. What I neglected to mention was that I was expecting yarn in the mail on Monday from my favorite yarn pusher. I had preordered Lisa's suicide prevention fundraiser colorway, and I'd added on another skein to keep it company. This one, called Wild Atlantic Wildflowers, is pretty much perfect for my sister-in-law, who always gets a pair of socks at Christmas. I cast on and got the cuff knit while I was at the office yesterday morning:

That pale gray stripes narrowly between each of the colors.

I have not yet cast on the gnome yet, but that will be happening soon! Thanks again to all of you who chimed in on the color choice. The majority seems to be for the more muted skein, which I think will create a more matchy-matchy look in any case, and then I can use the more colorful one for me.

It's been another week of good reading, even if work has kept my eyes busy during the day. I've finished two really good books.

It was Kat who put Awake in the Floating City on my radar, and I requested an ARC based on her review. In the not-so-distant future, San Francisco has become a place where it rains all the time, where the water has washed away much of the city (taking with it plenty of people), and where those who remain live in high-rise apartment buildings with markets and pathways to other buildings on their roofs. Medicine has allowed people to live much longer, but humanity has not been able to stop climate change. Our main character, Bo, feels adrift in her life. A onetime visual artist, she is grieving the disappearance and presumed death of her mother in a flood yet cannot bring herself to leave and join her cousin and uncle -- her only remaining family -- in the relative safety of Canada. She agrees to take on the role of caretaker to Mia, a supercentenarian living in her building, putting off at least temporarily the decision to leave. The two soon form a bond, allowing Bo to reexamine her relationship with her mother and find inspiration to create art again. Some might call this a dystopian novel to the environmental setting, but the relationships at its core make it timeless. This is a beautiful novel about relationships between mothers and daughters; the need to create art and memorials, even at a time when it might be considered superfluous and even wasteful; and the selfless beauty in the act of one human being caring for the physical needs of another. It asks the reader to ponder what connects us to a place, even when the place no longer looks as it once did, and to consider what we leave behind when we leave a place, either to go somewhere else or by the ending of our life. I gave it 4 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published May 13, 2025.

I had preordered Louise Erdrich's newest novel, The Mighty Red, from Birchbark Books earlier this year, so my signed copy arrived right after publication. I didn't really know much of anything about the plot of the book before I started reading, and it did feel quite different from the Erdrich I'm used to. There are lots of short chapters, lots of characters, and a lot of threads that seem to be going in every direction. What ties it all together is the land and the river of the title, with frequent stark reminders of what the Earth can give and what it can take away. I don't want to say too much because trying to describe the plot pretty much tells you everything; you can look up a synopsis if you need one, but I think there's a lot to be gained from going in blind. I wouldn't say this is my favorite of her works, but I loved getting more of her flawed yet lovable characters and her humor that comes through even in moments of great stress or sadness. I gave it 4 stars.

Now I am reading, on paper, How to Be Both for the next discussion of past Women's Prize for Fiction winners and Playground on Kindle. I also expect I'll be starting a new audiobook today, as I'm just about caught up on podcasts.

What are you making and reading this week?