Unraveled, Week 50/2025

It seems that once again I got off count in what number Wednesday it is, so my apologies if you got several weeks' worth of my posts in your feed or reader today; I just went back to correct the mistakes. At least all of those posts have appeared on Wednesday, and I'm here again this week to join in with Kat and the Unravelers.

This week is all about the gift knitting. I've started my nephew's gnome, which is being knit from the pattern Gnome News Is Good News. Because he's a toddler, though, I'm knitting in DK rather than fingering so that this gnome is more of stuffed animal than a shelf ornament. As usual, I'm so delighted by Sarah Schirra's creativity and smarts in her shaping.

The body is knit from a self-striping yarn from Fibernymph Dye Works that was created as a Valentine's Day colorway, but I thought it looked a bit like a candy cane. And while you really can't tell from the photo, it's sparkly! The hat is also FDW, Lisa's Bona Fide DK base in a semisolid light green. I'm likely going to use a fuzzy synthetic yarn for the beard -- something from a big box store that I bought for unknown reasons years ago.

I don't have a WIP photo yet, but I'm also working on a Cat Stack (Ravelry link) for my niece. They're essentially knit balls with faces, ears, and tails, and I think they'll be good for her to pick up and toss around.

The past week has been busy at work, but I've been able to finish three books thanks to two of them being on audio.

I've read my fair share of speculative fiction, but I'm fairly certain that Moon of the Crusted Snow is the first one I've read that set within an Indigenous community. It's fall, winter is coming, and in this Anishinaabe community in northern Ontario, the cable and then cell service have gone out. The landlines and power soon follow, and without any way to contact anyone outside the community, they can't know if this is a temporary or permanent situation -- until two teen boys who were in the city for school return and tell tales of chaos in the wider world. The community has a generator and an emergency store of food, but their fuel and food won't last forever. And then a white outsider shows up, but is he a white savior or the Windigo? This novel tells a bleak story, but there is hope in seeing a community come together and rely on their traditional knowledge to survive. I also greatly appreciated the use of an Indigenous reader for the audio, as he was able to read the Anishinaabe words and also capture the cadence that is so unique to Indigenous people. I gave it 4 stars -- and I think my reading experience was truly enhanced by listening primarily while I was outside in the winter weather!

I've been a fan of Steven Rowley's since reading The Guncle, and I've been wanting to read more of his backlist, so I took advantage of a Kindle deal not too long ago to buy Lily and the Octopus. This is a novel, but I imagine it's largely inspired by Rowley's experience with the loss of his dog, the real Lily. In this fictionalized account, the protagonist's beloved dachshund is terrorized not by a brain tumor byt by an actual octopus that has taken up residence on her head and is gradually taking away her life. In this world, Lily can talk to her owner (as can the octopus), and the two of them go to extremes to get the octopus to leave. While it gets a little over-the-top at one point, I found it to be a funny, touching, and also heartbreaking look at the bond between a person and their pet, especially when that beloved pet is that person's family. I'll admit I ugly-cried at the end, and if an animal dying is a no-go for you, you'll definitely want to skip this one. (I realize that's a bit of a spoiler, but given the dog's condition, which you know from the first chapter, it's pretty inevitable.) I wouldn't recommend this as widely as The Guncle, but I really enjoyed it -- and hugged my own puppy a little tighter at the end. I gave it 4 stars.

And speaking of trigger warnings, it takes real skill to make a book that deals with murder, suicide, the death of a child, alcoholism, divorce, and family estrangements funny and delightful, and that's what you get in The Road to Tender Hearts. PJ Halliday is an alcoholic in his 60s still mourning the accidental drowning of his teenage daughter. He's divorced but still friends with his ex-wife, who lives down the street from him and makes him breakfast every morning in addition to trimming all the sad stories out of the newspaper; PJ's already had three heart attacks and can't take any more bad news. But when his ex-wife leaves on a long trip with her boyfriend, PJ comes across an obituary for a former classmate -- who was married to a girl he's long thought of as the one who got away -- and he decides to drive to Arizona to woo her. Before he can leave, however, he finds that a orphaned pair of kids, his great-niece and great-nephew, have been left to him. And there's the slight complication that his license is still suspended from too many DUIs, so his estranged daughter, Sophie, is roped into coming along. As if this motley crew wasn't enough, they're joined by Pancakes the cat, who used to live at a nursing home and had a knack for predicting when someone was going to die soon and who showed up at PJ's house after breaking out of the animal shelter. As they drive from Massachusetts to Arizona, they all learn more about themselves and each other -- and they seem to dodge death regularly. This was excellent on audio. I gave it (you guessed it!) 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?