Let's Celebrate!

Hello, friends! I thought about skipping a post today because I've already posted three times this week and I'm just tired from the week, but then I realized I couldn't let the day go by without acknowledging it. Yes, it's Friday -- always a reason to celebrate. And yes, it's Halloween, which means getting to see cute kids in costumes and eat candy. But there's another reason to mark today: It's my blogiversary! I started posting here on Halloween in 2005, which means this bloggy thing has now be around for two decades. Crazypants! There have been times I've thought about wrapping it up, but now I'm glad I didn't. I've found such a wonderful community and made such good friends because of this blog, so if you're reading this, thank you.

Have a great weekend and don't overdo it on the candy!

Unraveled, Week 45/2025

Hello, Wednesday! Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and share what I've been making and what I've been reading this week.

I didn't know what to do with myself with only one project on the needles (my sister-in-law's socks), so I pulled out that last skein of DK tweed from the multipack and the leftovers from my recent charity hat to knit another.

The pattern is Around & About by Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works, which felt appropriate given that I'm using her yarn. I am knitting the largest size, so as to maximize my yarn usage, but I'm not sure if my scraps will hold out for the specified number of stripes. I had 10 g left, which is about 23 yards, but the pattern says I need about 30 yards. I am hoping that Lisa overestimated that number on purpose, but if not, I'll just make do with fewer stripes.

Speaking of the socks, I was making great progress on the first one and was almost ready to start the toe decreases when I pulled off more yarn and saw this:

Look, I get it, I know knots happen in the production of yarn occasionally and it's acceptable in the industry up to a point. But if the yarn is self-striping, is it really that hard to tie the knot in the right place in the striping sequence? Gah! I wound off until I got to the same point and rejoined the yarn, and it looks like I will have enough to complete the sock, but if I were not making shortie socks, this would have been a bigger problem.

I finished another four books this week -- in fact, I finished the first three of them all on Friday! (I was very close to the end of them all.)

The South was on this year's Booker Prize longlist, and it's set in Malaysia, an area with which I have no familiarity. The Lim family is taking a summer vacation at their family's farm, away from the city where they normally live. None of the family's three teenagers is particularly enthused about this, least of all Jay, the youngest, who discovers he is to share a room with Chuan, the teenaged son of the farm's caretaker. They soon form a bond, however, that is first one of friendship and then one romantic in nature. Meanwhile, it's clear that the farm is failing and will likely need to be sold, and Jack Lim is dealing with difficulties at his job that may complicate his family's life. All of this is set against a backdrop of climate change and the melting pot of races and nationalities that is Malaysia. I thought the writing was beautiful at times and made me think of Ocean Vuong. But the point of view shifts throughout the book, including (confusingly) between a first-person narrative and a close third person. I also didn't understand why sometimes the dialogue was in quotes and sometimes it wasn't, though perhaps a reader who isn't an editor might not even notice. I gave it 3 stars.

Next was a bit of fluff in the form of an audiobook that took me two days. Unless you are around my age or a bit younger, then you likely won't be familiar with the TV show One Tree Hill; if that's the case, all you really need to know is that it was a WB show from the early 2000s that was a sort of teenage soap opera. Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show is the memoir of one of the actors from the series. But rather than a tell-all about what went on behind the scenes of the show, this book tells how the author, in an effort to find community and meaning from a Bible study group, ended up in a controlling religious cult. This entertained me while I exercised, walked the dog, and cleaned the bathroom, but I wouldn't call it fine literature and wouldn't necessarily recommend it unless you're particularly interested in how people end up in these sorts of groups. The author also narrated the book and spoke so quickly that I had to turn down the speed! I gave it 3 stars.

Celestial Bodies was the winner of the 2019 Booker International Prize and is the next title a small group of us are discussing for our women in translation project this year. This novel is set in Oman and centers around three sisters, all of whom have a different approach to marriage. In shifting points of view that change each chapter, we explore their lives in widening circles that include their husbands, their parents, and others in the community and also learn more about the changes happening in Omani society. I found it really interesting to be immersed in a country and tradition entirely unknown to me, but that also meant that there were many terms I didn't know and references that meant nothing to me. I also found the shifting in perspective and time to be a bit confusing, particularly as no actual dates are given but the relative timeline has to be intuited by the context. I'm sure I will appreciate this book more after the group discussion, but for now I gave it 3 stars.

The last finish for the week was also the longest, at 600+ pages. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a big, sweeping story that spans continents and, through the back stories of some characters, generations. The title characters are two 20-something Indians who both traveled to America to study and both found they were lonely there. Back at home, their families, who know each other tangentially, decide to arrange an introduction in the hope that, perhaps, they will be a match. But nothing is ever that simple, not least because Sonia and Sunny are both deep in the process of trying to figure out who they are and what they are meant to do with their lives. There are some truly bizarre characters, some truly comic characters, and some truly tragic characters. There is magic realism and mysticism and perhaps even supernatural elements. There's a lot going on here, so it's not surprising that it takes so many pages. It took me a while to read, but it didn't drag; I put it aside when a library hold came in, for instance, and there were days when work was busy and I didn't get to read much. I still feel that there's a lot I just didn't get from this book, but that's okay -- I still enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars.

I had a brief period of time after finishing Sonia and Sunny when I was reading zero books (basically overnight), but I quickly rectified that. I've been listening to The Burgess Boys (which I missed somehow when I was reading a lot of Elizabeth Strout several years back). On paper, I am reading a YA novel that I was a bit obsessed with as a young teen called The Language of Goldfish. And just yesterday I started Anna Quindlen's forthcoming More than Enough.

What are you making and reading this week?

Less in 2025: October

It's been a whirlwind of a month, so it's probably not surprising that I completely forgot that yesterday was the last Monday of the month and my day to check in with my One Little Word. So a day late, a dollar short? Thanks to Kat for hosting our monthly link-ups!

This month, there has been Less of many things -- free time, daylight, warm weather, etc. But what stands out right now is less patience. Ruthie is now 10 months old and firmly in her adolescent phase, so she is constantly testing me. In the last several weeks, she has starting getting very nippy and demanding, especially when we're trying to eat a meal. True to her terrier DNA, she's always been a digger, and now she has starting "digging" under the cover on the couch, usually while I'm trying to cook dinner. And when we go on walks, she often tries to jump on passers-by or leap out into traffic at cyclists. I'm trying really hard to focus on positive reinforcement, but I'll admit that at the end of a long day, it's really hard not to yell "No! Stop!" repeatedly. So far I've only had to put her in her crate once to keep her out of trouble while I finish cooking, but it may very well be necessary again. I keep reminding myself that these days won't last forever and that we will keep working on the good behavior. And she's already come so far from just six months ago.

On the plus side, there has been much less early morning barking! I think she is finally understanding that I will come down around the same time every morning and she doesn't need to announce that she's awake. Occasionally there's a yip or two, but I think that may be due to her hearing something outside or dreaming. Getting enough sleep is certainly helping me be calmer!

Hallo-weekending

I can't believe it's Monday, again! Isn't it crazy how it keeps coming back? It was at least a fairly restful weekend, aside from a brief period of barking at 5:45 on Sunday morning (I suspect an animal was outside; she got quiet again afterwards). Importantly, we had beautiful weather for a Halloween party, and pretty much everyone brought their A game. Here's a look at some of the costumes:

First, my brother and his family as Star-Bellied Sneeches:

My brother-in-law as his family as Toy Story toys, plus a kid with a boombox:

My parents, the gnomes (my father was a "bathroom gnome," whatever that is):

And then me and the Mister, or Marty McFly and his girlfriend Jennifer:

Molly had had a really rough week at school and was up late on Thursday night because she went to the Sabrina Carpenter concert with a couple of friends, so she didn't dress up as anything other than a tired, stress-out high schooler.

The end of last week also brought with it a finished project:

Tied Knots (Ravelry link) in Fibernymph Dye Works Confetti Tweed DK

and a new cast-on:

The very last of my Felici!

This week is shaping up to be busy at work, plus there's Halloween and extracurricular activities. And I'm already dreading turning the clocks back next weekend, mainly because I know I won't get any extra sleep and it'll just be dark even earlier. For now, though, I'm going to enjoy the fact that it's supposed to be sunny and a high of about 60ºF today. I'll be spending most of the day inside in front of a computer screen, but at least I'll get some vitamin D when Ruthie and I are out for walks.

Friday Fun

For the past several months, I've really appreciated Kym's Friday Sanctuary posts; in these dark times, anything that makes me laugh or smile is extremely welcome. Kym's on a little blog hiatus right now, though, and while I'm not planning to try to replicate her wonderful posts, I thought I'd share a little something fun on Friday when I can. And today, I have something that I think is pretty fun.

Earlier this week, the Mister had to travel to New York City for a work meeting. When he was preparing for his trip, he looked up the location of his hotel and discovered he was going to be in walking distance of Rockefeller Center, so he told us that if he had time, he'd try to go to the Today Show plaza. Accordingly, we set our DVR to record the show on Tuesday morning, because Molly would be going to school and I would be going to work, so we wouldn't be able to see him live if he made there. Through the magic of technology (because he could access our DVR remotely), he sent me this video not long after I left the office:

(Lest you think the TV camera is zooming in, that's because he filmed the footage on his iPad with his phone and zoomed in -- just in case we missed him!)

We should have some fun this weekend: Tomorrow is my brother's annual Halloween party! The Mister and I are doing a costume together, and I believe my brother's family is doing a similarly themed set of costumes. I'll be sure to share some photos on Monday.

In the meantime, have a great weekend and stay warm!

Unraveled, Week 44/2025

Last week seemed to crawl by and this week seems to be going by in a blur; it's already Wednesday! Kat is back, so it's time to link up with all the Unravelers.

Today I've got some finished socks to share:

These are for my sister-in-law (my brother's wife) for Christmas. Her feet are the same circumference as mine, which makes the stitch count easy, but quite a bit smaller -- 9 inches long compared to my 9.75 inches. At the moment, she has the smallest feet of anyone I knit socks for, but that's mainly because I haven't knit socks for any of my niblings yet (it seems rather pointless when they're so likely to grow out of them so fast). I used my regular plain-vanilla recipe for these and 77 g/336 yds./307 m of Knit Picks Felici in the colorway Painted Hills. I started both socks in the same point in the stripe sequence -- conveniently, both socks started withs the dark blue -- but must've gotten off a little on the foot of the second sock because there's a little more red on one toe than the other. Do I care? No. Will the recipient? She's unlikely to even notice. She also loves getting hand-knit socks, so I know she'll be happy with these. And I love that I now have only two more skeins of Felici left in my stash (unless there's some in there I don't know about), which are already being turned into socks for my other sister-in-law.

It's been another good week of reading, thanks in large part to some shorter audiobooks:

I think many of you have already read and enjoyed Is a River Alive? already; I know I'm a bit late to the party. The author reads this work that examines how rivers have shaped our world and how we humans have exploited, polluted, and restricted them to our peril. Detailing visits to rivers in Ecuador, India, and Quebec, he details the plight of these three rivers and their impact on the surrounding ecosystems, all the while making a case for recognizing the "aliveness" of rivers as a way of asserting their rights to exist, thereby saving them. He's an excellent writer and a great narrator, and as a longtime proponent of environmentalism, I thoroughly enjoyed it (though I'll admit there's a lot that went right by me as a result of reading with my ears rather than my eyes). I gave it 4 stars.

When we first meet Dawn, the narrator in Love Forms, she is a pregnant 16-year-old in Trinidad being smuggled by boat to Venezuela to a home run by nuns where she will give birth and then give up her child to adoption. We then meet her 42 years later, when she is a divorcee with two grown children in London looking back on her spotty memories of that experience and trying to find the daughter she gave up. This novel from the Booker Prize longlist takes a hard look at the hard choices we make for ourselves, at family relationships that can be damaged by those hard choices, and at how we -- particularly women who are mothers -- look at our own identity. It's a quiet book with a lot of introspection, but I like that sort of book. I also learned more about Trinidad and Venezuela, two places with which I am unfamiliar, and a novel that teaches me something is always a good thing. I gave it 4 stars.

The Hero of This Book is a work that challenged me. It is labeled a novel, and in it, the narrator, a writer of fiction, is taking a trip to London less than a year after the death of her mother, who loved the city, and reflecting on their relationship as she explores places her mother had visited or would have enjoyed. She recounts episodes in her mother's life and her childhood, and she repeatedly states that she promised her mother she would never make her a character in one of her books or write a memoir about her. And yet it feels very much like a memoir of grief, and many of the details of the narrator's life match the life of the author. I suppose that, in a way, it's a commentary on the fact that all writers draw on what they know, what they have lived, what they have experienced, to a degree. Unless you are inventing an imaginary world with its own rules, it's hard for pieces of your world to not find their way into your work. So the question is, then, how much of this book is truth and how much is fiction. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally, Dayswork, though it's not described as such, felt like a novel of the early pandemic to me, those strange days when we were all stuck at home and on our computers way too much, leading many of us to fall down rabbit holes. For the narrator, that particular rabbit hole is Herman Melville. In between her ordinary tasks of daily life, she reads anything she can find about the famous writer of Moby Dick, which leads her to follow the trail to other writers and biographers who similarly fixated on Melville. Again, this is a novel, but it feels very much like it could be a true story -- after all, the authors are husband and wife, and who's to say that this sort of thing didn't happen in the first couple of months of lockdown? I found it an interesting read from an academic standpoint but not especially compelling. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm still working my way through The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and Celestial Bodies, though I'm well past the halfway point on both, and I've now added The South to the mix after getting it from my holds from the library just yesterday. I'm not trying to read all of the Booker Prize-nominated books this year, but there were several from the longlist that intrigued me that I put on hold before the shortlist was announced, so I still intend to read them.

What are you making and reading this week?

Fall Color

And just like that, it's Monday again. We had a nice weekend, though the weather was strange. On Saturday, it was warm and sunny, more like summer. I took advantage of the sun on Saturday to take a 6-mile walk, and the Mister went for a bike ride. On Sunday, it was still warm, but then it got windy and rain came through. It held off until after our brunch yesterday for my father's birthday; we were inside, but it's always such a pain to get a bit dressed up and then get wet going to and from the car.

It's supposed to get cooler again this week, more like normal fall weather, and though we should be seeing the leaves changing color and some are, a lot of the trees in the neighborhood have just dropped their leaves because of the lack of rain. So I am making up for it with a very bright new cast-on:

One of the special challenges for the Pigskin Party this month is a pink challenge in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It'd also been a while since I last knit a charity hat, so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone. I had this bright pink skein of Fibernymph Dye Works tweed DK in my stash and the pattern (Ravelry link) already in my library, so all I had to do was wind the yarn and cast on. It's been a little slow going because of the ribbing and the cables, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish it up by the end of the month.

My other colorful project -- my sister-in-law's socks -- are getting close to being done, too, so perhaps it will be a multiple FO week!

I'll leave you with a puppy pic because I don't have any other knitting photos to share. This is from Saturday afternoon, when Ruthie took a long nap. She would like you to know that although she was naughty and slipped her harness again on Friday night (thankfully staying to our street and away from traffic until we could lure her into the house with a cookie), she was a very good girl on Saturday and Sunday, when she slept in until 6:45 and 7:05, respectively!

Have a good start to your week and see you back here on Wednesday!

Tesselation

It's been a while since I had a real FO (a pair of socks doesn't seem all that impressive to me), so it feels good to finish up the week with one!

Pattern: Tessella by Alina Appasova (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Solemate (55% Merino/30% rayon/15% nylon) in Reno, 103 g used, and lolodidit Everyday Sock (75% Merino/25% nylon) in Tea on the Green, 83 g used
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Started/Completed: September 7/October 14

As you'll see from the completion date, I did actually finish this before my Unraveled Wednesday post went live, but I'd set it to publish at 6 a.m. and only finished binding off right before bed, so I figured I'd just leave it. 

This was a lot of fun to knit. It'd been a while since I'd worked mosaic knitting, so it took me a little bit of time to reacquaint myself with how to read the charts plus account for the increases. As far as the shaping of the shawl, it's very similar to a Hitchhiker, though the increases are placed a bit differently. But once I grew used to the construction and could intuit how the color patterning worked, I didn't really need to refer to the charts other than to count my repeats of each one.

The only modification I made, if you could even call it that, was to add most of an additional repeat. A pattern repeat in this pattern is three repetitions of each chart; I managed 2.5 more of Chart B. The pattern does explain how to enlarge it, and the way it's written, you can do half of a chart without it looking strange. I knew I would not have enough of the darker color to work those final six rows, so it worked out just fine. And this shawl is plenty big. To give you an idea (because why would I actually measure it and make it easy?), here it is laying out to dry -- on two drying racks:

The yarns I used for this shawl both came home with me from Nashville. The lighter color, from lolodidit, is really a light fingering, at 463 yards/100 g, so I'm not surprised that I have more of it leftover. The variegated Lorna's Laces was, fortunately, overweight to begin with, so I have a few grams remaining even after using 103 g in the shawl. It was generously sized at 425 yards/100 g, but it was noticeably thicker than the light tonal green.

This shawl was a lot of fun to knit, and it only took as long as it did because my knitting time on it was limited. I would definitely knit it again, and I think it'd be great for handspun because you can end it pretty much anywhere when your yarn starts to run out. I very well may knit another; next time, I'll try two yarns with greater contrast.

We've got a pretty boring weekend ahead, with the only plans on the calendar at the moment a brunch on Sunday for my dad's birthday (his birthday was this past Wednesday). I feel a bit like I've got a long weekend because Molly has a noon dismissal today and the day off on Monday for parent/advisor conferences, so I won't have to do the mid-afternoon school run. I'm hoping she'll get her homework done early in the weekend so she can relax; it's been a rough week for her. It's been a long week for me, too, so I'm hoping I can get in some extra rest as well. Ruthie has not been barking early in the morning much this week -- dare I hope she'll let me sleep in on the weekend? Fingers crossed!

Unraveled, Week 42/2025

Good morning! It's Wednesday again, and although Kat is away this week and there's no formal link-up, I like sticking to a schedule.

Here is where my WIPs stand:

As of Tuesday afternoon, when I took this photo, I had one repeat of Chart B left on my shawl (each pattern repeat is three repeats of the chart). By the time you're reading this, I'm hoping to be further along and may well have finished, but the rows are so long by now that I'm counting on needing another day to get through those last dozen of them. And then, of course, I'll have to weave in ends and block. I'm fairly certain that I will have an FO to share by the end of the week, however, and that will mean I can also turn my attention back to the socks for my sister-in-law. I've been ignoring them for the past several days while I focused my attention on the shawl, but I'm nearly ready to start the heel flap on the second sock and don't expect to need much more time to finish up the pair.

Reading this week has a study in extremes -- two very short audiobooks and one long digital book.

Coming from the Booker Prize longlist was Universality, a very short novel (I listened to all of it in less than 24 hours) that packs a punch. Like the author's first novel, I suspect this is one I'm going to need to reread with my eyes because so much went by so fast in the audio. This starts out with article written about an event at a farm owned by a banker during COVID lockdown in which a member of an anarchist group is seriously injured with a gold bar. But is that really what happened? The story is reexamined through the point of view of various people involved directly or indirectly in the incident, and these alternate points of view show just how much power can be held in the written word. There's also a lot here that probably went over my head because it's focused on the UK and British views on race, class, money, etc. As with the earlier book, I was impressed by how much heavy stuff could be crammed into such a brief novel without having the feeling of being overwhelmed. I gave it 4 stars.

My next finish was one I'd been waiting for from the library for a while, and it was worth the wait (and the time it took to read when work kept getting in the way). Katabasis is the third R.F. Kuang novel I've read and my favorite so far. As was the case in Babel, there's a strong element of magic in this one, principally that it's a field of serious study ("Magick") and the scholarly focus of the main character, Alice Law, who determines that, following the death of her Cambridge advisor, she must go to Hell to find him and find some way of bringing him back to life, if only so that she can achieve her goal of having a career in academia. She is horrified to discover that her fellow advisee, Peter Murdoch, has done the same thing, and now both of them have to navigate the courts of Hell to find their advisor. In the process, they discover much more about themselves. I love that Kuang, in her typical genius way of skewering a particular segment of society, make Hell resemble a college campus, turning this into a truly funny work of satire of academia. But it's also clear how smart she is in how much actual knowledge of math, philosophy, physics, religion, language, and classics she weaves throughout the narrative; frankly, sometimes I didn't feel smart enough to understand the book! It's funny at times, sad at times, and at times goes on a little too long, but I really enjoyed it and felt it had an especially satisfying ending. I gave it 4.5 stars.

I really enjoyed Sarah Moss's memoir earlier this year but had only previously read one of her novels, so this past weekend I listened to another. Ghost Wall follows 16-year-old Silvie, who is on holiday with parents in the north of England joining an experiential archaeology course. Silvie's father, a bus driver, is obsessed with England's ancient history and insists that she and her mother be as authentic as possible in this experience, which means eating only what they can hunt or gather and wearing clothing that people then would have worn. He is also harsh and demanding and physically punishes both women when he feels they've disobeyed him or embarrassed him. Silvie longs to escape her stifling home and gets a taste of what life might be like as a university student from her interactions with the students on the course, but it's made clear to her again and again that she is still under her father's control. It all comes to a head when her father and the course professor decide to reenact a human sacrifice. Will Silvie be a willing participant, and how far will her father go? It's a very well-written book that captures some very strong emotions in few pages (or, in my case, few hours of listening time). I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading three books: on paper, Celestial Bodies, for our Women in Translation study; digitally, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny; and on audio, Is a River Alive? (which just mentioned the term "katabasis" -- don't you just love it when there are connections like that in your reading?!).

October Weekending

Don't weekends always go by too quickly? This one certainly did. I have to work today, but somehow it feels like partly a vacation day because Molly is off from school (in-service day), so I don't have to do the school pickup run, and it isn't a day I have to go into the office, so I'll take it.

Molly had a great time at her dance on Saturday, though she complained about her feet killing her yesterday. She gave me permission to share this photo, which we took when we dropped her off at the park across the street from her school (it's rather picturesque, as you can see, so her group of friends was meeting up there first to take photos).

The photo doesn't really show how pretty her dress was -- it had sequins and purple fabric flowers on it. She and one of her friends got ready beforehand and made their own bouquets.

We also had a nice visit with my aunt and uncle last night, though the scene was quite chaotic with two dogs, two little kids, and two "new" adults. Ruthie was a bit overcome and pooped in the house again (I think she was just overly worked up), so she had to be put on her leash and kept close to me while we ate. Next time, we'll leave her at home. The important thing was that we were able to be together, and my aunt was touched by our cards and presents. And there was cake!

I made a point to focus on my shawl this weekend because I'd really like to get it done, and I'm just about through the last repeat specified in the pattern. It's gotten bigger -- too big, in fact, to fit on my 40 inch circular needle without being bunched up.

I'm going to do at least one more repeat, but the ball of the darker color is dwindling, so I may not be able to do more than that. We'll see!

This week I'm hoping for a typical week without too much undue stress -- and I'm hoping my new reading glasses will arrive this week! Hope your Monday isn't too harsh. Be sure to treat yourself to a little something special if you need it.

Joy Bits

Today I'm taking inspiration from Juliann and sharing some things that have brought me joy this week.

The Weather
After more dry days and a good stretch with highs in the 80s, we finally got rain again on Tuesday. It never rained very hard for long but rather was a gentle on-and-off rain all day that was slow enough to actually absorb into the ground. We actually have a little green grass on our lawn! Sadly at least half of it is dead, so we'll do some reseeding and fertilizing this fall.

The rain also brought with it a cold front, and it was a brisk 41ºF when I took Ruthie out first thing yesterday. We are under a frost warning (or advisory? something) this morning, so I'll be getting out the wool socks and maybe even a sweater later.

New Shoes
I have been wearing Dansko clogs for more than two decades, since I first discovered them when I was in grad school and was spending a lot of the day on my feet when I was student teaching. These days, they're the fastest thing for me to put on when Ruthie needs to go out. It's been years since I bought a pair, so when I happened across a thread on Ravelry about there being a new knit print, I decided to treat myself.

Should you need your own pair, you can find them here.

They were pricey (the cost has gone up $40-50 since I last bought a pair), but I know that they last for years and they're good for my feet and knees.

Weekend Plans
Tonight, we're going out to dinner with my in-laws. Tomorrow is Molly's homecoming dance (she's just going with friends, no date), which means that the Mister and I can have a date night. And on Sunday, my aunt and uncle from Michigan are coming to visit on their way down to Florida for the season, and we're having a big family dinner because Monday is my aunt's 80th birthday. This is the aunt who taught me to knit and likely is responsible for my love of reading because she sent me and my brother a book every week when we were little kids. There will be lots of good food and good company!

Finally, this sweet girl has been challenging this week, but she always brings me joy:

No, mom. I'm not ready to go to bed yet.

Have a great weekend, friends, and be sure to look for joy!

Unraveled, Week 41/2025

I can tell that it's going to be another long week because I woke up yesterday thinking it was Wednesday and it was only Tuesday. But I've checked and today is actually Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I haven't made much progress on my knitting projects this week, mostly because I've been busy with work, but I also opted to spin and read one evening. Still, here is your weekly update photo of my shawl:

And I've added a little to my sister-in-law's socks, or rather the second sock of the pair:

Reading has been a little better, thanks to shorter books. I've finished three this week.

One of the nice benefits of being a member of NetGalley (other than, of course, getting to read books before they're published) is that sometimes publishers will reach out to you and ask you to read one of their books that they think you'll like. That happened to me recently with This Is Not About Us. I'd so enjoyed Allegra Goodman's Isola that I was interested to read more of her work, plus the description of the book made it sound right up my alley. This book is labeled "fiction" rather than a novel, and that's because while it's not quite interconnected short stories, it feels like a series of vignettes that are all connected. The story begins with three sisters, the youngest of whom is dying. In the wake of her death, there is an incident involving a homemade apple cake that causes a rift to form between the two surviving sisters. The rest of the book takes the reader through the repercussions of this estrangement as it has an impact on the other members of the family, who are at all different stages of life. There are births, bat mitzvahs, midlife crises, and divorces. There are holidays and normal days. But family is what ties all these stories together. The characters feel real and the situations relatable, though perhaps that's largely because the experiences of this Jewish family felt so familiar to me. It's never happened in my family, but I could easily imagine an estrangement happening because of food! I really enjoyed my time with this family and gave it 4 stars. Thank you to Random House/The Dial Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published February 10, 2026.

When I was ready for an audiobook over the weekend, I went back to my Hoopla bookmarks and decided to listen to another Kevin Wilson. Now Is Not the Time to Panic is set in a small town in Tennessee in the mid-90s. Sixteen-year-old Frankie feels like she doesn't fit in until she meets Zeke and the two of them decide to create a mysterious work of art with a strange saying and post it all over town. Before it became a thing on the Internet, their poster goes viral, leading to unforeseen and even tragic results. Twenty years later, Frankie finds that her role in the panic has been uncovered and has to face the fact that a long-kept secret will be revealed. While this book wasn't as outrageous as Nothing to See Here, it is a bit of leap to accept that photocopies of a poster could lead to full-on satanic panic. Still, it raises some interesting questions about art and ownership, and it certainly gives a very realistic portrait of the discomfort of adolescence. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally, I revisited a book I read quite a long time ago. I first read Mrs. Dalloway in my senior year of high school for my AP British literature class -- in fact, for this reread, I pulled out the very same copy I used in class (and inside was a bookmark on which a classmate and I had exchanged notes about our college decisions). I didn't remember much of it, but I think I probably made more sense of it then, when it was discussed and analyzed as we read. The brilliance of the stream-of-consciousness narrative is still there, but I think the fact that I read this at night right before going to sleep took away from my enjoyment of it. I would like to read/reread more Virginia Woolf, and this seemed like a logical place to start, but I think my expectations of her were higher than the actual reading of it. I gave it 3 stars.

I am currently trying to get through Katabasis as fast as I can (does anyone else feel immense pressure when they have a library book with a long wait?) and have just started Celestial Bodies for the women in translation book group Mary is leading.

What are you making and reading?

A Fall(ish) Weekend

As per usual, the weekend went by too quickly and it is Monday again. At least I can say that though it was fast, it was a beautiful, warm weekend -- it did not much feel like October! We had sunshine, blue skies, and highs in the low 80s both days.

I was successful at donating blood on Friday, and I'm eligible again at the end of November, so as long as I can find a drive nearby during the three-week stretch between then and when we leave for Florida and my hemoglobin is okay, I will hit the magic six donations for the year. (Worst case, I'll bet I could find a drive in Florida, but it would be good to be done before we're on vacation.)

We did end up going to see the Downton Abbey movie on Friday night, thanks in large part to the Mister volunteering to take Ruthie out for her last walk of the night, and it was delightful. Did we really need a third movie? Probably not, but it was nice to spend two more hours in that world. I also made sure that I was through the gusset decreases on my sock WIP before the movie started so that I could work on the straightaway of the foot in the dark. That good dedicated knitting time, plus Ruthie's naps and the drive to and from the farm on Sunday, enabled me to finish up the first sock and get a good start on the second.

It does help that these are for the adult family member with the smallest feet (my sister-in-law whose feet are only 9 inches long)! Both skeins of yarn I had were in the same point in the stripe sequence, more or less, so naturally I'm making the two socks match.

The farm/pumpkin patch/orchard was fun, mostly to see my nephew and niece enjoying it. We came home with apple cider donuts and apple butter; Molly is past the age of being excited by carving pumpkins, so we passed on those. We did take part in taking goofy family photos, though:

The week ahead is likely to be long. I've got a big, high-profile project on my desk, which means little reading time for me other than before bed. But we're also supposed to have more fall-like temperatures (and even a little rain), so I might get to break out my wool handknits this week!

That's a Wrap

Even though it messes with my schedule when the High Holidays fall in the middle of the week, it is nice to take a day off from work and only have to come back for Friday. So today it's a wrap on the work week and on the big holidays. I'm still recovering from fasting yesterday (not eating isn't so hard, but not drinking is a challenge when I'm used to having my big bottle of water next to me). Fortunately we had a beautiful day with warm sunshine, and after services Ruthie and I took a long walk and then curled up on the couch for a few hours until it was time for break fast.

Not a whole lot of knitting has gotten done in the past couple of days (for obvious reasons), but while Ruthie snoozed yesterday, I finished reading a book and got through the heel turn on this sock:

Molly, my mother, and I might go to see the Downton Abbey movie tonight, so today's goal is to get through the gusset decreases so I have movie theater-appropriate knitting.

It looks like the weekend is going to be beautiful and warm, and we've got a trip to the orchard/pumpkin patch planned with my brother's family for Sunday morning. Saturday Molly is going to see the Taylor Swift album launch movie with a couple of friends, and the Mister is taking her to the theater and waiting there to bring her home -- and because it's right next door, he also offered to do a Costco run for me (who says the romance is dead after 18 years?). That means I'll pretty much have Saturday to myself, which works out just fine because I am scheduled to donate blood this afternoon. If I'm successful, that'll be my fifth donation for the year and will have time for one more to make it to the maximum of six, which was a big goal for me this year.

Although we're still having summery weather, I took a peek at next week's forecast and it looks like sweater weather is on the way, with highs only in the 60s. I can't wait to wear some wool!

I hope you've got something fun planned for the first weekend of October, and I'll leave you with this photo because this week's posts have not featured any Ruthie yet:

Life is exhausting and there's a lot of bad news out there, so try to find your inner puppy (or kitten, if you prefer) and forget your troubles while you take a rejuvenating nap.

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?