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!