Unraveled, Week 40/2025

Hello, friends, and happy Wednesday! And happy October! Even though it's the middle of the week, I feel like it's been forever since I did a catch-up post because of Monday's OLW post. So I've got a lot for you in today's Unraveled post, and as usual I'm linking up with Kat and the other Unravelers.

For starters, how about a pair of finished socks?

I used my SHaGS pattern (Ravelry link) and 95 g of a skein of Woolens and Nosh Targhee fingering, one of two that came home with me from SSK this year. The colorway name is Penwings, which is a strange name, so I did some digging and it turns out that it has to do with Benedict Cumberbatch and his apparent difficulty with pronouncing the word "penguins" (thank you to Bonny for directing me to this video that explains it all). I used my usual US 0/2.0 mm needles for these, magic loop, and I'm quite pleased with myself for getting them to match pretty much perfectly:

I'm typically pretty successful in getting striped socks to match through the leg, but sometimes something goes off kilter in the heel and the toes end up being slightly mismatched. Not so with this pair (though it may appear that way just because of how they're stacked in the photo). I also grafted the toe of the second sock in a moving vehicle, so I think I earned some sort of knitter's merit badge with these? We're supposed to have some cooler weather for a couple of days, so perhaps these will get their inaugural wearing.

As for WIPs, here's where things stand:

I have a third of the current repeat and two more full repeats on my shawl remaining in the pattern as written, but it's looking like I will have enough yarn to knit some more. I also discovered four more balls of Felici in my stash, despite thinking I had used up the last of it earlier this year, so they are becoming socks for my sisters-in-law for Christmas. I've already started on the first of these.

On to reading! Last week was kind of chaotic, with not as much downtime, but that's life. I've finished two books since this time last week:

Flashlight is on both the longlist for the National Book Award (fiction) and the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize, and it was highly praised by some readers I admire, so I'd been waiting rather impatiently for my hold to come up from the library. It turns out to have been well worth the wait. This is a family drama at its core. At the outset, we learn that Louisa and her father have gone for a walk on the beach; he is carrying a flashlight and cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found alone, her father presumably having drowned. But then we go back in time and learn about her father's life, from his time growing up in Japan as the son of Korean immigrants to his emigration to the United States to his disappearance in the sea, and we go forward with Louise and her mother, Anne, as they navigate their new reality and their difficult relationship. This is a big book, with a twist I did not expect, and writing that requires one to read slowly. I loved it -- 5 stars.

The Listeners is a work of historical fiction set in West Virginia in the early days of the United States' involvement in WWII. It takes place in a fictional luxury hotel called the Avallon but has its basis in reality: When the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, and its citizens were detained in those countries, the government decided to sequester diplomats and their families from those hostile countries in resort hotels. At the Avallon, June Hudson is the general manager, trained for the role by the recently deceased patriarch of the family who owns it, and she must walk the fine line between maintaining the high level of service the hotel prides itself on and cooperating with the state department and FBI officials who are overseeing the unusual guests. There is also a special relationship between June and the "sweetwater" the hotel is known for, water that is reputed to have therapeutic powers and that somehow enables the hotel to be a success but also is somehow influenced by the events that take place in the hotel and the emotions of those involved. I thought this was a really interesting read in the sense that I learned about an aspect of WWII that was previously unknown to me, but I was also frustrated by how much was left unexplained or skipped over. I gave it 3.5 stars.

As I should have expected, I've gotten a bit overwhelmed by my library holds right at a time when work is going to get busy, so I've had to suspend some holds for a bit while I get a handle on things, particularly as I also have a couple of ARCs on my Kindle shelf. I'm still trying to get through Mrs. Dalloway, though I haven't read more than half a page or so in the past week. Perhaps this weekend there will be more reading time.

Also, by way of a life update, I took a sick day on Monday (which ended up being a good thing, as I really needed to recover from both the race and my COVID shot) primarily because I was going to the eye doctor for a much-needed checkup, and I'm here to report that I am officially middle-aged because I came home with a prescription for reading glasses!

Less in 2025: September

Dear friends, can you believe that we are almost finished with the wonderful month that is September? It's usually one of my favorite months because of the weather, the holidays, the start of the school year, and all that. It was a busy September this year, but I'm not letting it pass by without checking in on my One Little Word. Thank you to Kat for hosting our link-ups this year.

Less has shown up in a few different ways this month, but the biggest is that there has been a lot less in my checking account -- it's been a very expensive month! First, there was Ruthie's spay surgery, which was planned for and expected but still a big bill. Then, I did something I'd never done before: I dropped my cell phone and smashed the glass. Molly said it was the universe's way of telling me that it was time for a new phone; I'd actually been thinking about getting a new one soon anyway, because my old one was an iPhone 11 from 2020, but this decided it. There was the cost of the new phone plus a new case and new charger (because of course none of the accessories I had for the old phone would work with the new one). Then, about three days after the phone arrived, it flew out of my hand while I was out on a walk and the glass broke in the exact same place. Never before had I broken the glass on a phone and I managed to do it twice in a week! Fortunately, with Apple Care, I was able to get the glass replaced and paid only a reasonable service fee. And that was not the end: The Mister celebrated his birthday last week, and he is notoriously hard to buy gifts for (mainly because when there's something he wants, he just buys it for himself), so when he said he'd found a piece of luggage he really wanted, how could I say no? All of this is to say that my expenses have exceeded my income this month and it's a good thing I'm a saver -- and that I've been knitting from stash this year!

There has also been less running this month. I started having some pain in my left knee several weeks ago, so I pulled out my trusty knee brace. It helped, but the discomfort was still there, so I figured the best thing to do was rest. I've only run once a week for the past couple of weeks and it's helped a lot; I would have stopped altogether were it not for the race this past weekend -- I didn't want to go into it having not run at all recently. I've noticed it's been feeling better, and clearly my reduced running time did not impact me in the least, because I had a new PR in the 5K:

I finished 13th (out of 183) in my age group, 95th (out of 1,318) among women, and 321st (out of 2,399) overall. My previous record for this race was last year's 27:14, so I really blew it out of the water. And I was not at all expecting it! I was hoping to be around 26 minutes, but I guess the adrenaline really gave me an extra boost this time. Now that the race is over, however, I'm going to give my knee more time to heel and probably will be sticking to walking for a while. And here's hoping that translates to Less knee pain in October!

Good Things to End the Week

I am very happy to see Friday come around again; it's been a busy week, even with (or perhaps because of) the day off. I thought I'd wrap up the week with some happy things, because don't we all prefer and need happy things in our lives?

First good thing: Ruthie is free of all her post-op restrictions and is back to being her normal rambunctious self. We have some behavioral things to address (like the fact that she's suddenly started biting us to get our attention), but most of the time she's a good girl. And now that she doesn't have all that stuff she has to wear, she's resumed her second career as a cinnamon roll:

Second good thing: We got rain! We had a wet start to spring and then a long stretch of mostly dry weather and heat for the summer, so we were actually in drought conditions until this week. You might even say that the start of the new year brought rain, as the first downpour occurred during our Rosh Hashanah dinner on Monday evening. Thankfully the heavy showers have been brief and we've mainly had light but persistent showers for the past several days; I think by the time it moves out, we will have gotten between 2 and 3 inches this week, and apparently it's been enough to put us at an above-average total for the month. I don't think our front lawn is likely to recover, but at least there's some green on it now, instead of the brown it was.

Third good thing: I am nearly finished with a pair of socks!

I was maybe being a tad ambitious in declaring that I might have them done by the end of the week, but really I am very close. I'm past all the parts (save the toe) where I really have to pay attention, so I can pretty much go on autopilot until I'm ready to decrease.

This weekend all three of us are running the Great Race 5K. I'm not sure I'll match or beat my time from last year, but I will be able to run it, which is saying a lot given that less than a year ago I couldn't walk without pain. Afterward, Molly and I are going to get our COVID shots -- I figure that after running a race and getting a vaccine, we will be totally justified in loafing the rest of the day.

I hope there are some good things in your life this week, and I hope you can find some more this weekend. I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word reflection (yes, we are almost at the end of September!).

Unraveled, Week 39/2025

Happy Wednesday, friends! On the one hand, I'm glad it's already Wednesday, but on the other hand, Monday and Tuesday ended up being such long days that I feel ready for the weekend already. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and see what everyone is up to!

I barely sat down for more than 20 minutes on Monday until just before bed, and yesterday we were at services in the morning, then out to lunch, and then Ruthie's schedule was so off that she didn't take her usual afternoon nap. All of that meant little to no knitting time for me, so I don't have much of a knitting update today because my WIPs look virtually the same as they did on Monday (I've added just a few rows to the shawl). I can report, though, that Ruthie did really well with all the people on Monday evening. I'm sure the sedative helped (and I'm keeping the few we have left for Thanksgiving!), but she did start to come out of her shell just a bit toward the end of the evening. She seemed really interested in my niece, which I guess is no big surprise because she's the human closest in size to her!

They really seemed to enjoy each other, and I'm hoping they'll get to play again soon when there aren't quite so many other people around. Apparently my niece is very into Leo lately, too, and Leo is being a good boy and tolerating her. As you can see from the photo, she's started pulling herself up to stand -- she was even standing on tiptoes as she was trying to hold on to a higher step at one point! I'm sure she's going to be running after both dogs before we know it.

The reading has not been as voluminous this past week, but it has been very good. I've finished two books, both of which are up for the National Book Award (one for fiction, one for nonfiction).

A Guardian and a Thief is a work of speculative fiction set in Kolkata, India, in the not-so-distant future when climate change has caused temperatures and seas to rise, leading to crop failures and food shortages. In a week's time, Ma, her 2-year-old daughter, and her father are due to leave to join her husband in Michigan, having secured valuable climate visas that will allow them to leave India and settle in the United States. But the night after obtaining these precious documents, they are stolen, leaving their potentially lifesaving trip in jeopardy. In turn we learn what led the thief to Ma's house and that her seeming good luck in having food for her family and an exit strategy haven't entirely come her way honestly. This book paints a fairly grim picture of what happens when there isn't enough to go around to ensure everyone's survival, the lengths even an otherwise good person will go to in order to feed their family, and the rationalizations and lies people will tell themselves to justify their actions. This isn't a story with a happy ending -- but often that's reality, so it feels genuine. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published October 14, 2025.

My other finish this week was The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life, which I listened to via Hoopla. As the title implies, much of this memoir is about the author's experience running a farm in Vermont, where she and her family raise Icelandic sheep and try to be conscientious stewards of the land. Although the setting sounds idyllic, the author is frank about the hard work, expenses, and life-and-death realities of raising livestock. Amidst the stories of lambing and sheep shearing are interludes of history, such as how the Merino sheep got to North America and the cruel attempts of white settlers to keep Indigenous tribes of the Southwest from the sheep they traditionally raised. And it's not all about the farm, with moving and wistful passages about raising children (the author's stepdaughter and daughter) and losing her mother to dementia. In spite of some bad blunders by the reader, I found this book to be thoroughly enchanting and would recommend it highly to anyone interested in the fiber arts. I gave it 5 stars.

I'm currently in a good place where I have more to read than I have time for -- to the point where I actually had to suspend a hold on a library book because I have too many others ahead of it! My top priority is finishing Flashlight, which I've been reading since late last week and which just made the Booker Prize shortlist. And I'm also roughly halfway through a reread of Mrs. Dalloway, having last read it during my senior year of high school -- I'm even using the same copy I used back then, which has all my notes in it and even contained a bookmark on which I'd passed notes back and forth with a classmate talking about where we thought we might choose to go to college, which is quite a trip down memory lane!

What are you making and reading this week?

Not So Monday

Monday is a lot easier to take when you know you'll have Tuesday off -- and that you'll be knocking off from work a little early! Rosh Hashanah begins tonight, and we'll have 20 people (including four small children) and a dog in the house. This is technically Ruthie's last day of recovery, but I'm going to wait to give her the sedative until a couple of hours before everyone comes over in the hope that it will help her handle all those people in the house. She's been without her donut since Saturday, when she woke up with it deflated and I finally admitted defeat (I'd patched a hole in it once before). She seemed quite happy with the situation:

Today she'll finally get to be free of the onesie. I probably could have taken it off earlier, as the incision seems to be almost completely healed, but as she wasn't fighting it as much as she fought the donut, I figured I'd keep it on for the full two weeks. 

In between walks and naps, I managed to bake another pair of challahs, and these looked even better than the last batch, if I do say so myself:

I learned from last week and baked them on separate baking sheets so they didn't get stuck together. Tonight we'll get to dig into all of them, with plenty of honey drizzled on top for a sweet new year.

There was some knitting over the weekend as well, though perhaps not as much as I'd like, but that's okay. Here's where the two WIP stand:

I made a rather stupid mistake on my shawl on Friday night and knit a couple of rows I'd already knit (because I missed the arrow I'd written on the chart to indicate where to start when I picked it up again), so all my knitting time was spent knitting and then tinking four rows. But now I'm back on track, and fortunately the sock requires no chart or even remembering where I was because I can measure or compare it to the first sock. I'm very close to starting the heel on the second sock, so if I can get in a little time every day, I may well have a finished sock before the end of the week.

In addition to celebrating the holiday today, we're also going to be celebrating the Mister's birthday -- there will be birthday cake and apple cake for dessert! There will also be plenty of other delicious food, all cooked by my mother: matzoh ball soup, brisket, chicken, vegetables, etc. I'm sure she'll send food home with everyone and there will still be more than enough for another meal for several families, so we'll get to enjoy it more than once. I'd share some with all of you if I could!

I hope your Monday isn't too Monday-ish, and even if tomorrow is just a regular Tuesday for you, I hereby give you permission to eat something sweet, like homemade challah or a ripe apple dipped in honey. See you back here on Wednesday!

It's Friday?

Good morning, friends. I have a confession to make: Since Ruthie joined the family, mornings have gotten a lot more hectic, so I've been writing my blog posts ahead of time. Maybe some of you thought I was awake enough to put together a post before 6 a.m., but the reality is that even though I'm usually awake before then, I'm rarely alert enough to form coherent sentences until I've had at least one cup of coffee. So writing the day or evening before and setting the post to publish the next morning has been working well -- at least when I remember what day it is and when I need to write a post. Yesterday I completely forgot. And this morning when I came downstairs to let Ruthie out of her crate and take her outside, I discovered her donut was extremely deflated, which required taking it off, re-inflating it, and then getting it back on in addition to getting her harness and leash on. You can imagine how much she enjoyed all that (not). All of this is to say that my usual posting plain failed me and I'm flying a bit by the seat of my pants.

It's been a bit of a weird week, not especially busy but just enough that I've felt like I'm running behind schedule. Nevertheless, I did manage to finish a sock:

The toe wrapped up at an ideal point in the stripe sequence to enable me to make the second sock match without having to wind too much yarn off, and that felt like a win. We're still having summer-like weather here, but cooler temperatures are surely coming, and I'll be happy to have fun new wool socks to wear when they do.

Another win this week? After not seeing one for a while, I found a praying mantis in the garden:

They are such weird-looking creatures, so finding one is a bit like finding an alien in the yard.

The weekend ahead looks relatively quiet, though there's Rosh Hashanah prep to do (the holiday begins on Monday at sunset). I've got a second batch of challah to bake, and because we're hosting the big dinner on Monday evening, we've got a lot of cleaning and setup to do. Ruthie would like to remind you that it's important to get your rest, so whatever you have planned, remember that naps are always a good idea.

Unraveled, Week 38/2025

Hello and happy Wednesday, friends! I hope you're having a good week. It's been a bit exhausting here, but the sun is shining, my sinus infection is finally going away, and it's my favorite day of the blogging week. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

You saw my sock progress on Monday, so I'll spare you more of that and instead show you how my two-color shawl has grown:

I am about halfway through the pattern repeats now, but of course the rows get longer as you go, so there's still a lot more knitting still to do than already done. The pattern has two main body charts, one with the first color dominant and one with the second color dominant, and you alternate three repeats of each for each section. Now that there's more knit, the zig-zag patterning is also much more apparent. I'm also at the point where I basically just have to do a quick check-in at the beginning of each right-side row to get my bearings and then I'm off the chart.

I've also managed to put in a bit more time at my wheel. I'm starting to wonder if this yarn is just going to look grayish brown when it's plied, but we'll see -- I very well may be surprised!

There hasn't been as much reading in the past week as in weeks prior -- not entirely a surprise, given a puppy patient and a big work project -- but I have managed to finish two books since this time last week.

When I asked for audiobook recommendations recently, Pam mentioned Kevin Wilson's latest book, but as you'd expect, it has a long wait on Libby and isn't on Hoopla. Hoopla did, however, have two of his earlier books available, so I decided to finally read Nothing to See Here, a book that many people I know had long ago read and that I actually had a copy of on my shelf, having picked it up from a Little Free Library. The premise of this book is a bit ridiculous: Lillian, our narrator, gets a call one day from Madison, who was her roommate for a year she spent at an elite boarding school. Madison is now married to a senator being considered for secretary of state, but there's a big secret in his family that could derail his plans: His children from his first marriage spontaneously burst into flames. Madison asks Lillian to come take care of the children for the summer while the vetting process is ongoing, and Lillian, whose life since leaving that school has been rather aimless, sees it as a way to get out of her mother's house and get a change of scenery. Though the idea of children catching on fire is bizarre and totally unrealistic, it's a creative way to portray people who feel like they don't fit in or aren't loved by their family. Yes, it's all rather preposterous, but it's also funny and surprisingly touching. And it was an easy listen. I gave it 4 stars.

It's a good thing I was listening to a lighthearted book, because my other finish this week was the complete opposite. As Night Watch opens, it is 1874 and 12-year-old ConaLee and her mother are being driven to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum by Papa, the man who ConaLee knows is the father of the three babies her mother has given birth to in the past two years and who they have just given to nearby families but not to her. She doesn't really know who he is, only that since he came to their West Virginia mountain home, her mother has virtually stopped talking and stopped being able to care for herself or her children. Papa tells ConaLee that she must pretend to be a neighbor of her mother's, call her by a different name, and see that she's taken care of in the asylum -- and then he drives off, leaving them alone. The story then jumps back in time a decade, to the last year of the Civil War and the experience of a nameless sharpshooter in the Union Army leading up to the Battle of the Wilderness. And we get some of the story of Dearbhla, the older Irish woman who lived near ConaLee and her mother and who was more intimately connected with them than ConaLee ever knew. All of this is set against the background of the hospital, a real place founded according to the principles of a "moral" cure. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2024, and if you look at the reviews on Goodreads, it's a mixed bag. It's not an easy book to read and includes some very difficult subject matter -- war, sexual assault/rape, racism, etc. -- but I think it was extremely well done. I gave it 5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Now THAT Was a Weekend

It's been a while since I had a truly restful weekend when it wasn't because someone was unwell, but we finally had one -- though it didn't start out great. My parents invited us over for dinner on Friday night, and I thought we should take Ruthie so I could give her a dose of medicine due at 7 p.m., but she spent most of the evening being crazy, barking at everyone, and then pooped on their floor. Fortunately, she made up for being so naughty by sleeping in both Saturday and Sunday -- I actually had to wake her up at 7 to take her medicine! I'm sure it's a result of being on a sedative continuously, but part of me hopes she's adjusting to the later sunrise. Either way, I had two good nights' worth of sleep and am feeling the benefits of it.

I did manage to get a batch of challah baked up on Saturday -- and resisted eating any of it!

These two raisin loaves are in the freezer now. I'll bake two plain loaves next weekend, for which I will need to make some room in the freezer (which is really why I didn't try to do it all at once -- just no room!).

Much of my weekend was spent like this:

Ruthie normally takes a good nap in the afternoon, but with the addition of the medications she's on, she is really zonking out. That makes for good reading and knitting time for me, especially when I don't also need to keep an eye on my work inbox. This weekend I managed to finish the heel of my Penwings sock and get through a good portion of a really good book.

Another side effect of the medication is that it seems to make Ruthie less interested in going to the bathroom, so much of our trips outside end up like this:

Her incision site seems to be healing well, and it's been virtually impossible to keep from running around while playing at home, so it's going to be a long week plus that we have left until she can be free of the donut and the onesie. At least after Tuesday we can go for walks again! I'm sure she'd like some fresh smells, and I would like a little more of the exercise I'm used to. Here's hoping the week ahead brings healing and more good news for all of us!

Another Week's End

Ah, Friday. It's been a tiring week, between caring for Ruthie and a big, high-profile work project, so I'm ready for the weekend.

Ruthie has been doing well, though she spends a lot of time sleeping (unsurprising, giving the medication she's taking). Though she chewed through the strap keeping the donut on the first night, I've found a way to keep it on by threading her collar through the inside, and while she doesn't love it, it seems to be working out well as a pillow for her when she naps.

She has seemed much more like her normal self in the past couple of days, once all the anesthesia wore off and she got to eat again, but I imagine it's going to take a bit of time for everything to get back to normal. She's getting a little annoyed with me that she can't go on her regular walks and visit her friends, but she's getting extra treats and lots of love.

With the big work project, not a ton of knitting has been done the past couple of days, but I did manage to get a photo of the singles I started spinning on Tuesday:

Given that the majority of the fiber was undyed, I think I'm going to end up with a pretty muted finished yarn because the pops of color will get blended as I draft. I'm spinning from one end of the braid to the other and will ply it back on itself, so I really don't have much idea of what the finished yarn will look like -- and frankly I'm enjoying the mental break that provides! I am hoping to spend some time spinning in the evenings this weekend (I've yet to try to spin around the dog), so maybe this won't take me forever and a day to finish.

As for the weekend, the weather is supposed to be beautiful, so I'm sure I'll get out for some walks. Other than the usual stuff we do on weekends, the only thing I have on my to-do list is to start baking challah for Rosh Hashanah. We are hosting the big dinner at our house, which feels appropriate given that the holiday starts the evening of the Mister's birthday, and my mother asked if I could once again bake my challah (I believe I've done it the past two years). Each batch yields two challahs, so I figured I'd make one batch plain and one with raisins. I'm not sure if I'll manage all of the baking this weekend, but I'll do at least one batch and put the loaves in the freezer until the 22nd. They take a good amount of time, but challahs for Rosh Hashanah are always round, so I won't have to worry about pretty braids. By the way, I think I may have shared it here before, but if you'd like the recipe I use for challah, please let me know and I'll be happy to send it to you. It's pretty easy and still makes a delicious loaf even if you have zero braiding skills!

I hope your weekend brings you good weather, time to relax, and maybe even a delicious baked good to enjoy!

Unraveled, Week 37/2025

It is Wednesday, and that means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers to talk making and reading. But first, a thank-you for all the well wishes for Ruthie. She made it through her surgery with no problems and is now home in a onesie and an inflatable donut. I think she will not be very happy with me for the next two weeks as her activity is limited, but I am thankful that she's now spayed and I didn't have to deal with a heat cycle.

Back to the usual blog content! I have been working on my two projects a bit every day. I didn't take another photo of my socks, though they look pretty much the same as they did on Monday except that there's an additional repeat. The shawl, on the other hand, has grown quite a bit:

I was a bit worried at first because it didn't look like the pattern pictures and I thought I was doing something wrong, but it turns out that you can't really see the zig-zag effect unless you look at it at a distance or squint your eyes a bit. I am still referring to the pattern because I don't yet have it memorized (and I do have to keep track of repeats of each chart because they switch back and forth each section), but I can at least see the logic of the stitch pattern and can kind of intuit the next step. I will say that although the pattern does have both written and charted directions, one thing it seems to be missing is any indication of a repeat for when the stitch count exceeds the stitches shown on the chart. Understanding how the pattern works is how I figured out how to proceed, but a less-experienced knitter might find it challenging.

Something I did not manage to get a photo of (though there's really not much to photograph at this point) is that I started spinning something on my wheel yesterday while Ruthie was at the vet! I pulled out the Shaniko wool that I brought home from SSK and started spinning off one end of the braid. I'm planning to spin the whole thing onto one bobbin, wind the singles into a cake, and then ply from both ends. But I have a feeling that's a ways off yet. The important thing is that I am trying to actually use what came home with me from Nashville rather than just tossing it into the stash. As I did with my acquisitions last time, I took a photo of everything, and I'm crossing off what I've used:

It's worth noting that three skeins of yarn you see here are currently being used in projects, and the fiber at the bottom is what I'm spinning. I have plants for the gray cake with the three minis at the top, the other self-striping skein, and the skein of dark green, so really that leaves me with just one skein of yarn without a plan. Not bad!

My reading was not as prolific or as wonderful this week compared to last, but after a week with three 5-star books, anything is going to be a letdown! Let's just say I finished three books that were fine (they all earned 3 stars from me).

My parents are both fans of Fredrik Backman's books, so I was not at all surprised to get handed down a hardback copy of his latest, My Friends. As is the case with all of his books that I've read (I've read most of them), you don't get the full picture or the full story until the end, but pretty early on you're plopped right in the middle of it. This novel centers around a famous painting and the group of teenage friends responsible for it. An 18-year-old named Louisa, who has recently aged out of the foster care system, is the impetus for the story being told, as she has long adored the painting and wanted to know the story behind it. So the reader learns the story as she does, and it's not a completely happy one. There is a lot of darkness in this book -- domestic abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, death -- but there's also art and beauty and friendship and love. I think it's probably my least favorite of Backman's books that I read.

I have a bad habit of not having a queue of audiobooks I want to listen to so that I'm not rushing to pick something right before I need it, so sometimes I don't make the best choices. That's what happened to me last Friday, when I needed something in my ears for my run. I'd just heard someone mention The Wedding People, so I thought I'd see if the author had any other books. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is her previous novel, and it is told from the point of view of Sally Holt and addressed toward her older sister, Kathy, who dies in an accident pretty early in the book (this isn't a spoiler; we know from the beginning that Sally is looking back from her late 20s and that Kathy died when the two were 13 and 16). What this novel is, at its heart, is a book about grief and the ways people deal with it. I thought the characters were well written and multifaceted, but I also wanted to yell at many of them to go get some therapy. I think The Wedding People, which also has a dark side, is a much better book.

My last finish was The Emporer of Gladness, which I'd put on hold after Kat raved about it. I had a little trouble getting into it but was determined to persevere. This is a story set in a run-down Connecticut town that starts with a thwarted suicide attempt, when Grazina, an aging widow with dementia, spots Hai, a 19-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, on a bridge and talks him down. Hai ends up living with and caring for Grazina and going to work with his autistic cousin, Sony, at a chain restaurant that seems a lot like Boston Market and that employs its own cast of misfits and outcasts. It's a story about found family and about the lasting impacts of trauma. The writing is strong, but I found it to be depressing. There's a lot about drug addiction, poverty, death, etc. There was a scene in the middle with a pig slaughtering operation that was particularly hard to read. I might give Ocean Vuong's poetry a try, but I don't think his novels are for me.

I'm currently rereading Mrs. Dalloway -- even using the copy I read my senior year of high school with my notes in it! -- and just started Night Watch. I'll be in the market for an audiobook later this week, so let me know if you have any good recommendations!

Recovery Days

It was another quiet weekend here, which I think we all needed. The Mister has been feeling better, though he still has a lingering cough. I've had what I'm pretty sure was a sinus infection that's been getting better day by day but has been giving me a sinus headache pretty much every day for the past week. And Molly is still adjusting to being back at school and worked a five-hour shift on Saturday. Needless to say, we all were in need of rest. We did manage to get ourselves cleaned up and out to dinner on Saturday night, but other than a couple of walks and taking Ruthie out, I spent the weekend relaxing.

Saturday was pretty gloomy after some rain early in the day, but yesterday was a gorgeous fall day -- the sun was out, there was a light breeze, and because the high was only in the upper 60s, it was cool enough to wear wool socks. I decided to give my most recently finished pair their inaugural wearing:

I cast on some new projects over the weekend, but before I could do that, I wanted to finish up a lingering WIP that had some issues. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen this scary-looking photo:

This is the hat I was knitting using the two 50 g skeins of Loopy Ewe yarn I picked up from the giveaway table at SSK. I did weigh them before I started and saw that one was slightly heavier than the other, but I figured I'd just use a little less of that yarn. It wasn't until I switched from the pink to the blue, however, that I realized that the blue was noticeably thicker than the pink, and that meant that it didn't go as far. So when I finished the blue half, it was shorter than the pink. To make the hat work, I needed to take some fabric out of the pink half, which I thought I'd do by running needles through two points, removing the fabric between them, and then grafting the stitches back together. In reality, my eyesight is now apparently bad enough that I didn't follow a round of stitches the whole way, so when I tried to pull the excess yarn out, I ended up having to undo it stitch by stitch to get to one continuous round. At that point, it was easier to just reconnect the yarn from the part I'd pulled off and knit up the crown again. It took much longer than it should have, but it's done now. Next time, I'll remember to count rounds or at least measure so that the length is the same!

This is going into the charity pile, unless someone I know expresses interest. And it's two skeins used up!

The two new projects are also using SSK yarn -- I'm determined to use it all as soon as possible so it doesn't linger in the stash. First, a pair of socks using superwash Targhee/nylon fingering from Woolens & Nosh. The colorway is called Penwings, and I don't know the meaning or inspiration, but it sure is pretty! I also didn't expect it to stripe this way, so that was a fun surprise.

I also cast on a new shawl using a semisolid from the giveaway table and one of the skeins of Lorna's Laces that was a doorprize. The pattern is Tessella (Ravelry link), and it's a lot more straightforward than it looks. What you're seeing here is actually a second version; I had started it with the colors switched and realized it was messing with my brain to have the darker color associated with the light squares in the chart and vice versa, so I ripped it out and started again. There's not as much contrast between my two colors as the samples in the pattern, so it may be that the patterning doesn't show up as well as it could, but who can argue with using free yarn? And I can always make another one.

I'll leave you for the day with a little bit of eye candy: After nurturing it all summer, my one sunflower finally bloomed late last week, and this weekend, the bees found it.

Tomorrow Ruthie is getting spayed. I'm sure she'll be fine, but if you can send a good thought or two her way (and then a good thought or two my way as I take care of her after), I'd appreciate her!

Recent Reads

As promised, I have a bunch of book reviews to share with you today -- there were really too many for Wednesday's post! And in fact I've even finished another book since Wednesday, so it was as well that I waited. Most of these books were really good, but as you'll see, they can't all be five stars.

I've been going through a lot of audiobooks lately (in fact I used all of my allotted borrows from Hoopla for the first time ever in August, all of them on audiobooks). One of those was The Briar Club, the most recent work of historical fiction from Kate Quinn. I've enjoyed her books in the past and knew I could follow one on audio, so I decided to give it a try. This one is set in a boarding house in Washington, D.C., in the early 1950s, at the height of McCarthy and HUAC and the Red Scare. As is typical of Quinn's historical novels, it's told from multiple points of view and from predominantly female characters. It's clear that all the women living in this house have their secrets, and as they take over the story, we learn some (but not all) of them. We also know that the story takes place over the course of several years and that there's been a murder at the conclusion, but it takes us most of the novel before we learn who has died, how, and why. Overall, I found it to be entertaining and something that kept my attention while I ran, cleaned, folded laundry, etc. But I don't think this is the best of Quinn's novels; I didn't quite figure out the twist at the end, but I came close, and generally I thought it was all a bit implausible and tied up a little too neatly at the end. I gave it 3 stars.

Next was a memoir that Mary put on my radar. My Good Bright Wolf has an unusual structure, most notably including a commentary (an inner critic?) that pops up from time to time to refute the author's claims. While the book largely chronicle's the author's struggles with an eating disorder and mental health, it also addresses how society has largely discounted women's suffering even as it has placed entirely unreasonable expectations for their behavior and appearance. There's some difficult stuff here, but it's beautifully written. The narration is also really well done. You'd think those critical asides would be difficult to convey on audio (I would imagine there is some treatment of the font in the print book to set them apart), but the tone and voice is just different enough to be subtle yet effective. (Incidentally, if the reader sounds familiar and, like me, you're a fan of PBS and Masterpiece, you might recognize her as the actress who played Amanda on the first few seasons of Grantchester.) While I found some of this book really difficult to listen to, I can't deny that it's very well done. I gave it 5 stars and would recommend it, unless the subject matter would be difficult for you.

Don't let the slightly creepy cover of Loved and Missed put you off -- this is a beautiful, though sad, short novel about mothers and daughters. Ruth is a middle-aged woman who is somewhat estranged from her daughter, Eleanor, due to the daughter's addiction. Ruth continually tries to help Eleanor -- with food, with money, with offers of help -- to no avail. But when Eleanor has her own daughter, and it's clear that she's in no shape to take care of her, Ruth steps in as a surrogate mother to her granddaughter, Lily. The novel follows them through the years, as Ruth continues reaching out to Eleanor to no avail and as Lily learns that Ruth is more her mother than Eleanor. Ruth never gives up on Eleanor, but in her relationship with Lily, there is some redemption. It's sad and lovely and a beautiful reflection on mothers and daughters. I gave it 5 stars as well.

In February 2021, outside the country house where she went to escape London during the early days of the pandemic, Chloe Dalton came across a leveret, a newborn hare. She took steps to rescue it and keep it alive, even though the experts she consulted told her it was likely a lost cause, and against all odds it survived, living alongside her and inspiring her to learn more not only about hares but about many other native species and the impact humans have had on them. Raising Hare is her account of what it was like to rescue the hare and help it survive without trying to tame it, her observations of the behaviors and proclivities of the hare, and her attempts to have as little impact as possible on the hare's life. I found it to be charming and a good reminder of one of the few positives of those early pandemic days: the appreciation of and respect for nature that I felt when I walked to try to dissipate some of my anxiety. I gave it 4 stars.

I wanted to read Soldier Sailor last year, when it was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for fiction, but my library didn't have it at the time and I forgot about it until I was scrolling through available audiobooks and came across it. And I am so glad I did. It's been 16 years since I was a new mother with an infant, but it all came racing back: the constant worry, the feeling of being alone in doing everything, the resentment that your partner gets to go to work, the utter exhaustion. It's a novel but feels like it could be a memoir because it's so true to life and so well illustrates how mothers are expected to do it all -- care for children, cook and clean, have careers, and keep their sanity on top of it all. I expect every mother who has read this would feel the same. I gave it 5 stars.

Finally, my least favorite of the week was Audition, from this year's Booker Prize longlist. You may remember that I read two of Katie Kitamura's previous novels earlier in the summer, and that was partially so I'd be familiar with her style when my hold came up for this new one. I've made my peace with her run-on sentences and comma splices (they still irk me, but I get that that's her style), but I think her books just aren't for me. This novel is presented in two parts, almost like two entirely different novels that just happen to have the same cast of characters. The story is told in the first person by a main character who remains nameless, though we know she's an actress and is not white (there are references to her racial background, though it's never made explicitly clear what it is), and both parts center her relationships with others. In the first part, she is in the rehearsal stage of a play when she's approached by a 20-something young man who believes, based on an interview she gave years ago, that he might be her son, and their meetings, she realizes, might be seen by an outsider as romantic in nature. In the second part, he is her son and is coming home to live with her and her husband again for a bit. I could appreciate the writing (minus the comma splices), but ultimately I felt that I just didn't get this book. When I finished, I felt that I just wasn't smart enough to appreciate it or had missed something major that would bring it all together; based on some of the reviews I read, I am not alone. I gave it 3 stars.

So this week was a mixed bag, but three 5-star reads in one week is practically unheard of for me! Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think?

I hope that my weekend includes time to finish at least one more book, and I hope yours includes time for whatever brings you joy!

Unraveled, Week 36/2025

It is so hard to go back to the normal routine after a long weekend, particularly a long weekend with so much rest, but the nice thing about it is that it's already Wednesday, and that means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers. This week there has been no unraveling -- but there has been some finishing!

Pattern: Kudzu by Laura Aylor (Ravelry link), size S/36.1 in. bust
Yarn: Shibui Linen (100% linen), color Ash, approximately 2.1 skeins/516 yards
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm -- 
Started/Completed: August 3/August 28
Mods: see below

This pattern had been in my library since the summer of 2023, and it was I originally bought the Miss Babs linen/silk for (I ended up using it for Midsommarkrans). But when I found three skeins of the now-discontinued Shibui Linen on the giveaway table and realized there was enough, I figured it was fate that I finally made it.

The yarn took a little getting used to because it's 100% linen and has no stretch, but it's formed in a kind of i-cord tube that gives it some flexibility. I didn't find it tiring to work with, but my hands are always dry these days because I'm washing my hands so much, and sometimes the yarn would catch on a rough spot, so I made sure to have some lotion nearby if needed.

The pattern itself took a little getting used to because I've knit at least one Laura Aylor pattern before but never a garment. I had fewer issues with the lace, though, with no ripping and reknitting required. I especially like how the leafy edging along the armholes comes together under the arms:

I went a bit off piste with the body, in part because my stitch count was a little off for the front and in part because I didn't want the lower hem to be too wide, so I only worked two sets of increases below the waist (I'm pretty sure the pattern called for more). The only real modification I made was to work an i-cord bind-off for the lower hem. The pattern calls for simply binding off (maybe in purl?), but even in a plant-based fiber I thought there was still a risk of that hem curling up. Plus, there's an i-cord edging around the arms and on the sides of the straps, so why not make it match? It took a little extra time, but I think it was worth it.

Please excuse the messy hair.

After I washed the tank and left it to dry flat, I pressed it with a steamy iron to open up the lace and flatten the straps. I imagine that in time, with more washing and wearing, it'll soften, but for now it's fairly crisp, though not uncomfortably so. If I were knitting this again, I would make the neck opening in the front as wide as the back; I'm just not wild about how closely it comes in. As it is, I will need to wear this with a tank underneath, as you see here, or with a strapless bra (yuck). But it feels very comfy on and will be a great piece for the summer because it weighs practically nothing -- 105 g!

Now I'm only working on that two-tone charity hat and trying to finish it up as soon as I can because the Pigskin Party kicks off tomorrow and WIPs don't count, so I'll want to cast on some new projects.

It's been another pretty stellar week of reading, so much so that I'm going to take a page from Bonny's book and save my reviews for Friday. Until then, friends, enjoy your first week of September!

Labor Day Weekending

Friends, it's September! Today is the first day of meteorological fall (as opposed to astrological fall, which is the 22nd), and it's really felt like fall over the past several days. We had cooler weather all last week, but it was actually in the 40s when I got up to take Ruthie out yesterday morning! Of course, that's not typical for us at this time of year, but all else being equal I'd rather it be unusually chilly than unusually hot.

Today is also Labor Day in the United States, a holiday to honor organized labor and what it has done for all Americans. I am excited about the fact that this year I can say I am a proud union member! Although we don't yet have our first contract, I'm excited to be a member of the United Steelworkers and am happy that the union is advocating for me with my employer. I am less excited about the fact that my employer is using the lack of agreement to withhold my annual raise from me, but frankly it doesn't surprise me.

The weekend was quiet, as expected, though perhaps even more low key than expected because the Mister was a little under the weather (he claims he doesn't feel sick, just run down). I'm someone who tends to have a lot of anxiety around illness and often end up feeling sick myself when someone in my family is sick just because I worry about them so much, so that meant I spent much of the weekend feeling under the weather. I still managed to get in a couple of six-mile walks, though, and then snoozed with Ruthie in the afternoon. Very little knitting got done, but sometimes puppy snuggles are better than knitting. I mean, who could resist this?

We'll be taking it easy today as well. All we have planned is a little baking -- Molly and I are going to make some pumpkin muffins for her breakfasts this week, and she's going to make us chocolate chip cookies for our dessert for our anniversary dinner tomorrow. I'm hoping everyone will use the day off to get a little extra rest so that we all feel better tomorrow.

A Fall-ish Friday

I know that it's not yet astrological or meteorological fall, but this week hasn't felt like summer anymore. Yesterday, when I took Ruthie out first thing, it was about 50ºF and I could see my breath! And I wore jeans yesterday, too! It is supposed to get warmer again next week, but this week has been such a treat with the cool mornings and low humidity. Good thing, too, because it's been a long, exhausting week. As I mentioned, the Mister was out of town for a tech conference that is always the last week of August and that has caused him to miss the first day of school for as long as he's been attending. It's less of an issue now that Molly is older, but I still feel bad. We only have two more first days of school with her, too! I shared a photo on Instagram, but I know not everyone is there, so here's one for the blog:

I think the transition from summer back to school hasn't been quite as hard this year because she was working this summer (and she's going to continue working a weekend shift through the year as she's able), but she's definitely not used to being "on" all day, so evenings have been rough. And of course I am doing double parent duty this week (triple, if you count being a pet parent), so I've been worn out, too. It's a good thing we have a three-day weekend ahead!

This is not an official FO post, but I'm pleased to report that I have finished my Kudzu tank before the end of the month. I worked on it during puppy nap time yesterday and managed to start the i-cord bind-off before I had to do school pickup. This weekend I'll weave in ends, block, and take modeled photos for an official share next week.

This weekend is Labor Day weekend here in the United States, celebrating things such as weekends off that we've gotten thanks to the efforts of organized labor. I was invited to march with my union in the city's parade on Monday, but I decided I'd rather have a quiet day at home. Tonight we are going out to dinner with my parents to celebrate their 49th anniversary (today) and our 18th anniversary (next Tuesday), and we're invited over to my brother- and sister-in-law's on Sunday for a cookout on their new backyard patio. I'm looking forward to hearing all about my oldest nephew's first two days of kindergarten -- he just started yesterday! Other than that, I have no definite plans, and that's just fine with me. The weather looks like it's going to be spectacular, sunny and high 70s, so I predict long walks on my own and with the pupper. Maybe she will even surprise us and let us sleep in!

Whatever you have planned for this weekend, whether or not it's a long weekend for you, I hope it's full of things that bring you joy.