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Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Unraveled, Week 35/2025

Good morning and happy Wednesday, friends! Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

This week hasn't been hugely productive, at least as far at the knitting is concerned. Being the only parent isn't as hard as it was when Molly was little, but it means I have to pick up a couple more of the daily things that have to get done -- taking Molly to school in the morning, cleaning up after dinner, taking out the trash -- in addition to what I already do on a daily basis and with the dog's schedule, so sometimes the time I have for knitting is limited (like on Monday night, when, after getting Ruthie to sleep, I had to fold and put away two large loads of laundry). Still, some progress is being made. My afternoon knitting (what I work on while Ruthie naps) is another charity hat using some of the yarn I brought home from the SSK giveaway table:

Please forgive the terrible lighting! My plan is to knit until I'm just about out of the pink and then join the blue, working a round of purls when I join so there's a good fold line. If you enlarge the photo, you might see some wonky stitches, and that's because I encountered first a break in several plies of the yarn at one point (that may be critter damage) and then a knot. Rather than taking more time to weave in the ends, especially as everything is going to be unseen inside the hat, I just held the ends together and worked that method where you weave in as you go by catching them every other stitch. I'm hoping the wonkiness will block out.

I'm also getting very close to finishing up my Kudzu tank! I decided to dedicate all my knitting time to it on Sunday, which translated to quite a few inches knit, and now I have maybe three or so inches left to reach the required full length.

Provided I have enough yarn, I'm going to work an i-cord bind-off on the bottom of the body. The pattern calls for simply binding off, and while I don't think this linen would really curl like stockinette worked in another fiber would, I think it'll look more finished that way -- not to mention that there's i-cord edging on the straps and around the armholes, so it'll all match nicely. I have joked that maybe I would bring on fall by finishing it, but it looks like the heat is coming back next week. Even if I don't wear this right away, I can always take it to Florida in December!

I've had another incredibly good reading week, at least in terms of the number of books I've finished (largely helped by two short audiobooks).

When the Booker Prize longlist was announced, there were several titles that sounded interesting to me (I'm not trying to read the entire list this year). One of them was Misinterpretation, which my library did not yet have on Libby, so I put it on Notify Me and managed to get the audiobook before anyone else. What intrigued me about the description was the part about the main character working as interpreter for an immigrant in therapy, but that ended up being a very small part of the book. I spent a lot of time listening to this book wondering what it was supposed to be about and also getting annoyed with the poor decisions the main character was making. I think the book was well written, but it ended up being very different from what I was expecting and not really a book I would have read otherwise. I gave it 2 stars.

A book several readers I respect have been raving about is The Book of Records, a book that's rather hard to describe. Though no definite time or place are given, we presume that it takes place in the future, when global warming and political conflict have wreaked further havoc on the world. Lina and her ailing father, who have fled their home in China and been separated from her mother, brother, and aunt, have arrived at a sort of way station called The Sea. Among their few possessions are three volumes of a large set of books about explorers, or so they're labeled. These three tell the stories of Du Fu, a Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty; Baruch Spinoza, a Jewish Portuguese-Dutch philosopher in 17th-century Amsterdam; and Hannah Arendt, a Jewish philosopher forced to flee Nazi Germany. Their stories unwind and are interspersed with some of the background story about Lina and her father as well as scenes of Lina all grown up. It's quite unusual and imaginative and beautifully written. I had to give it 4 stars only because I felt that there was so much I wasn't understanding and because of that I wasn't fully appreciating it. It also reminded me so much of another book I've read, but I've been at a loss as to what this book could be. Perhaps it'll come to me.

The next title up for discussion by those of us reading women in translation is My Brilliant Life, translated from Korean. This story is narrated by 16-year-old Areum, born to teenage parents, who suffers from a rare condition that causes him to age prematurely and thus deal with serious health problems. Despite his condition and the financial struggles his family has, Areum never fails to see the beauty in life. Unlike most teenagers, he wants to spend quality time with his parents and to hear about their lives before he was born, especially about how his parents met. He knows his time is limited, so he wants to read everything he can and learn as much as he can. I thought this book was just okay. I thought the first chapter was incredible and was hoping the whole book would be that way, but it petered out pretty quickly. It's a sweet but sad story but wasn't especially memorable for me. I gave it 3 stars.

Even though it's not a new book, A Month in the Country has been making the rounds among my reading friends lately, and I was delighted to find the audio on Hoopla. This is a quiet short novel that follows Tom Birkin, a WWI veteran, as he spends a month in the Yorkshire countryside restoring a mural found on the wall of a church. Bearing the internal scars of the war and having been left by his wife, he finds a renewed sense of life and happiness in the work and in the people he meets. I managed to listen to all of this book over the course of a day -- it is quite short! Even though I slowed the speed down to be able to understand the reader better, I think I might have appreciated this book better had I read it with my eyes, because I was confused about who some people were and what was happening at some points. Still, I found it to be like a PBS Masterpiece production in its calm, quiet manner. I gave it 3 stars.

My favorite of the week was Heartwood. The central focus of this novel is the search for a missing Appalachian Trail hiker, a 42-year-old nurse named Valerie Gillis who was hiking in part to gain some perspective after the grueling demands of working in health care during the pandemic. Parts of the story are told from her point of view, but we also get other perspectives. There's also Lt. Bev, the state game warden in charge of the search and one of the few females in the system. Then there's Lena, a 70-something former scientist in a retirement home who is largely confined to a power wheelchair but who stays connected to the outdoors via the internet. Interspersed throughout are snippets of interviews with other hikers who knew Valerie and transcripts of calls to the search tip line. And while the search for Valerie is the main storyline, each of these main female characters is also reflecting on her past and pondering her future -- and they're all interesting women to boot. This was a page turner, but it's also well written; I was really wondering how it would all come together in the end, and that kept me reading. In many ways, it reminded me of The God of the Woods, with the multiple storylines, strong female characters, and a mystery to be solved. I gave it 5 stars -- and I'm as surprised as anyone that it's the second Read with Jenna book I've so rated!

I'm currently listening to The Briar Club (which I should finish during my run this morning), reading Loved and Missed digitally, and reading My Friends on paper.

What are you making and reading this week?

3 comments:

  1. I never think of pink as one of my favorite colors, but I like the pink yarn for your hat - sorry about the yarn issues, but hopefully your solution will work out fine. Kudzu is gorgeous Sarah! And that color is a "go with everything" color. Maybe you will have a chance to wear it before Florida! Another strong reading week for you. I really need to give audio books another try! I'm in the queue (and have been for some time) for Heartwood.

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  2. I like your yarn choices for the hat, Sarah but the shining star is Kudzu... it is just stunning! I like your idea of working a bit of an I-cord edge along the bottom... it will look so smart! Great reading week for you!

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  3. The hat does look lovely, and Kudzu is even lovelier. The i-cord bind off will look great. I'm enjoying our current temperatures but I do hope you get to wear it before Florida. You've enjoyed a plentiful reading week!

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