FO Friday

Friends, I can hardly believe I did it, but look what's done!

Obviously it still needs to be blocked and ends are woven in but not trimmed, but all the knitting is done. And it fits! I tried it on last night to be sure and was greatly relieved (I had been holding it up to me along the way but never actually tried it on). This isn't a proper FO post, of course. After it's blocked, we'll do a photo shoot and I'll share all the details, but for now you can see some proof of life, so to speak.

We've got a hot weekend ahead. Tonight the Mister and I are going out to dinner with some friends, and tomorrow morning is the last session of puppy class. Molly is working tomorrow and then has a friend sleeping over tomorrow evening, and we're all invited to dinner at some friends' on Sunday evening. In between all the usual stuff, Molly and I will need to pack for our trip this weekend. We'll see if we can pack light enough to carry on our luggage or not!

Have a good weekend, friends, and stay cool! Ruthie recommends napping as much as possible.

Unraveled, Week 36/2025

It's Wednesday! Kat isn't hosting an official link-up this week, but I try never to skip an Unraveled Wednesday if I can.

First, thank you for all of your reassurance about Ruthie and the Mister on Monday's post. I'm happy to report that the past two days, he's gone down in the morning, successfully gotten her harness on, and taken her out for a walk. He's fed her whenever he's around at her meal times, given her extra treats, and joined me for the last walk of the day. I expect it'll be rough for a day or so, until she realizes that he's all she's got while Molly and I are away, but I'm feeling better about things, particularly now that he's putting in the effort. (In all honesty, even if we weren't going away, it's important for him to be able to do all the stuff involved with Ruthie. Inevitably there will be a day when I'm sick or hurt and can't take her out, and he needs to be able to do so then. So we're just preparing for that inevitability.)

I don't have a huge update on my knitting because everything is pretty much as it was on Monday. I managed to take a very bad photo of my two WIPs yesterday afternoon, with horrible overhead lighting, and though I was able to improve it a bit on my phone, it's still nowhere near accurate:

I've now gotten through two increases on the body of my Midsommarkrans, and though I haven't touched the hat in several days since I decided to try to finish the tank, I did do a bit of knitting on it over the weekend and have 21 g of yarn left (I'll start the crown when I have 10 g remaining).

It's been a humid and occasionally stormy week here -- in fact, I got soaked walking home from the office yesterday morning -- so the afternoons have been great for curling up for nap (Ruthie) and reading (me). I finished two books in the last week:

I've long been a huge fan of Geraldine Brooks's fiction, and I was on a long wait list at the library for her memoir Memorial Days when it was a Kindle deal and I decided not to wait. Before she was a novelist, Brooks was a journalist, as was her husband, Tony Horwitz. On Memorial Day in 2019, Horwitz was in Washington, D.C., as part of a book tour when he suffered a fatal cardiac event on a sidewalk. This book, told in chapters that alternate between 2019 and three years later, recounts the first days after Horwitz's death and Brooks's journey to a remote cabin on an Australian cabin in an effort to fully process her grief. Her writing, as in her novels, is exquisite, even when she is writing about her very darkest days, and somehow she manages to turn a memoir into a study on mourning and how different cultures do it. It should be a sad read but instead is a moving portrait of how to face tragedy and find reasons to keep going. I gave it 5 stars.

I suppose it was a week for sad books because my other finish was a truly heartbreaking read. Tali Girls was translated into English in 2023, though it was written earlier. Set in Afghanistan beginning in 2002, it tells the stories of three girls living in what seems to be an idyllic rural village as the Taliban is rising to power. What follows is devastating, as their dreams of education, marriage for love, and a life other than one of endless servitude are crushed in a society where illiteracy is high, the patriarchy is fully in power, and corruption is rampant. There were moments in this book that were incredibly hard to read, but it was also very worthwhile, in my opinion, for a look into a society about which Westerners really know little. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm still reading The Map of Love, though I have less than 100 pages left to read, and this week I've started Challenger on audio and The Secret Chord -- the last Geraldine Brooks novel I have to read to have read all of them -- on Kindle.

What are you making and reading this week?

Holiday Weekending

It was a hot long weekend here. Friday ended up being much less relaxing than I'd hoped. I went for a run and cleaned bathrooms as planned, but then the Mister decided to get out our steam cleaner to clean the bathroom floor, some of the hardwood floor, the cooktop, and the sliding glass doors at the back of the house that open up to the back deck. All of this was happening in the kitchen and family room -- the two rooms where Ruthie lives -- which means she didn't get much rest. And then we had family over, so lots of people. Let's just say she was a very tired girl Friday night! The good news is that she seemed completely oblivious to the fireworks. I did buy a white noise machine for near her crate, and I'm sure that helped (or at least it didn't hurt).

We went to our penultimate puppy class on Saturday morning. I'm going to miss seeing the puppies playing together after next week, but I won't miss the stress of driving there and back and worrying if/when Ruthie is going to get carsick! Molly worked from 10 to 2, and after she got home, we went over to swim at some family friends' pool for a little. Then we had plans to go out to dinner with a friend of Molly's and her parents, which was very fun but made for a later night.

Yesterday was thankfully calmer (though Ruthie was up before 6, ugh!). At one point, there were three of us napping on the couch in the family room! My nap was pretty brief, though, and I spent the afternoon reading and working on my Midsommarkrans, which is now cruising down the body:

It may be ambitious to get this done in the next week-ish, but it's not entirely out of the question. The knitting at this point is simple enough that I can work on it downstairs while Ruthie naps. At this stage, the only thing that happens other than stockinette in the round is four decreases (at markers) every 12th round. After I work those decreases four times in total, I work even for a bit and then work four sets of increases at the markers. The bottom is finished off with a round of eyelets (yo, k2tog around) and several rounds of garter stitch -- easy peasy. I'm enjoying this yarn so much, too, that I'm thinking that perhaps I will pick up another couple of skeins at the SSK market to make the other top that I originally bought these for!

Speaking of SSK, this week is all about getting ready for it, and frankly I'm nervous. The Mister is going to have to do a lot with Ruthie, which is a challenge given that she's still skittish around him. He's been joining me on walks the past several days, and I have him giving her treats and feeding her whenever possible. But it's going to be a challenge: I am clearly her person and have been doing pretty much everything (I think Molly has taken her out on her own twice, and one of those times was when I was sick and physically couldn't), so getting Ruthie to trust him enough to let him take her out for walks is a big ask. He's not happy about it, either, as he's not a huge fan of hers because she barks at him and runs away from him (see the vicious circle here?). If it were just me going to SSK, I would cancel at this point, but Molly is so excited about going that I'd hate to do that. So send some positive thoughts our way, would you?

A Free Friday

It's Friday, and it's Independence Day here in the United States, though I'm not feeling much like celebrating this year. Still, I have the day off (not that I slept in, because some-puppy was up before 6) and we're having family over for a cookout this evening. Otherwise, it's going to be a normal day. I'm going to go for a run a little later and then have to clean all the bathrooms and do some laundry. Ruthie and I will likely curl up on the couch for a nap this afternoon. And tonight I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the fireworks don't wake her up and scare her (she's been indifferent to thunder, so I'm hoping the booms don't bother her, either).

I don't have much of a knitting update, but here's a new photo of my Midsommarkrans, with the body well under way:

I worked all the top sections using one skein of yarn (I didn't want to add to the complexity by also alternating skeins), but now that I'm working stockinette in the round, I've added in the second skein and am alternating every round. The body is very simple, with the only thing to pay attention to is some simple shaping -- decreases and then increases at four points indicated by stitch markers. I think it might be overly ambitious to have this done to take to SSK in less than two weeks, but at worst I can take it with me and likely finish it while we're there. I'm going to have to start thinking about what to take with me in any case and soon.

We've got a hot summer weekend ahead. Molly is working tomorrow, after which we may go swimming, and tomorrow night we have plans to go out to dinner with one of her closest friends and her parents. Other than that, it will be the usual -- puppy class, walks, naps, etc.

If you're off today, I hope you enjoy your long weekend. If you're not, I hope the day passes quickly so you can get to your weekend. See you all back here on Monday!

Unraveling, Week 35/2025

Happy Wednesday, friends. The world is still a bit of a dumpster fire, but at least it's no longer hotter than Hades here. We've had quite a bit of rain, including an unexpected downpour yesterday when I was taking Ruthie to the vet to get her second round of vaccinations, so I'm still very much in the mode of not bothering to try to blow-dry my hair or look presentable. But I did manage to run on Monday -- not as much as usual, because it was super humid, but it was something!

But let's back up a bit. I have to share a photo from Ruthie's playdate last Friday, at which much fun was had by all:

Bagel and Ruthie ran around the whole time (while Star, Bagel's older sister, mostly ignored their shenanigans) and got on very well together. At one point they even disappeared upstairs somewhere, where I hope they didn't get into too much trouble! She also had a fun time at puppy class on Saturday morning (we were one for two on car sickness), and we had very enjoyable afternoons sitting together on the couch. We've basically given up on keeping her off of it and got a slipcover, on top of which I have "her" blanket on the chaise portion, and it's very comfortable to sit there with her napping next to me. As a result of those naps, I've gotten a fair amount of knitting done on my hat:

She was asleep, otherwise I'd never have risked this!

I haven't measured the length of the hat or weighed my yarn, but I can't tell you it's about 2/3 of a Ruthie!

And significant progress has been made on my Midsommarkrans -- just look at this!

I've completed the lace chart for the v-necks on both the front and the back. There's a small gusset chart under each arm, too, that brings the edging together nicely. I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot more of this tank to share the next time you see it!

I've done a fair amount of reading in the past week while Ruthie has been napping and finished two books.

While the news of Indigenous children dying at residential schools in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries has only relatively recently been widely reported, it is something that their communities have known the whole time. The Knowing: How the Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Continues to Echo Today takes on the subject of the residential schools in Canada and shows how it was part of a larger effort by colonizers to oppress and erase First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. The author is a journalist with a long history of writing about Canada's Indigenous peoples and is herself Indigenous. Woven throughout her exploration of the residential school system is a memoir of sorts; part of her impetus for writing the book was trying to figure out what had happened to her great-grandmother, who was essentially imprisoned and died in a psychiatric hospital. This is a difficult book to read. It doesn't hold back in detailing the cruelty in ripping children from their families and communities to place them in residential schools where they faced substandard living conditions, frequent spread of illness and disease, and often starvation. And that is to say nothing of the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse often inflicted upon them. While the book focuses on Canada, it's clear that the residential school system in the United States was no different and, in some cases, even influenced its neighbor to the north. Nothing can undo the harm that was done, but I believe in learning about it, we can show our respect for those who have been lost. I gave it 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/Hanover Square Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published July 15, 2025.

My other finish this week was a backlist title ahead of one of my library holds. A Separation came out in 2017; I have Katie Kitamura's most recent book on hold, and Mary suggested I explore some of her backlist in the meantime. This one had no wait from the library, so I thought I try it. This is a quiet novel, mostly the thoughts of the unnamed narrator. There is a small amount of dialogue, but notably it's not in quotation marks, so sometimes it's hard to tell what's been spoken and what's only been thought. The plot, such as it is, is minimal: At the outset, the narrator has gotten a call from her mother-in-law, who believes all is not right with her son, who has traveled on his own to Greece, ostensibly to conduct research for a book he is writing. What the narrator knows and her mother-in-law does not, however, is that she and her husband have separated, but he asked her to keep it a secret for the time being. And now she is being sent after him to see what has happened to him and is finding herself split between the almost ex-wife she knows she is and the wife everyone else believes her to be and trying to navigate that split identity as she searches for her husband, who has gone missing. I could certainly see the author's writing ability, but some of my enjoyment of the book was diminished because I couldn't turn my editor brain off (the comma splices, oy vey!). It's at least relatively short, so not a long read, but still it's one I'd recommend to very few people (Vera, this one is not for you!). I gave it 3 stars.

What are you making and reading this week? Be sure to visit Kat and the other Unravelers to see what they're up to!

Less in 2025: June

Is anyone else in absolute shock that today is the last day of June? Despite the longer days, this month always seem to pass much faster than I'd like, but this year it seemed especially quick, I suppose because I lost some days due to illness (mine and Ruthie's).

So how has Less made itself apparent in my life this month? Several ways.

To start with, there's certainly Less in my wallet after trips to the vet, urgent care, the pharmacy, and the vet twice more (to pick up meds). I'm sure in the long run, my health care is a lot more expensive, but the bills were certainly bigger for Ruthie this month!

There is also these days Less of me. Those of you who have been reading for a long time might remember that several years ago, when my cholesterol was starting to get a little high, I made some major changes to lose weight and get it down, and I've been maintaining my weight ever since. But this month, in spite of more than a few days of not exercising at all (first because I was ill, then because of the extreme heat), I've lost more weight. I know part of it is due to anxiety about the aforementioned illnesses; when I'm really worried about something, I lose my appetite. But I think another part of it has been because it's rare these days to find me sitting down, especially at a mealtime. Keeping an eye on a puppy who is always getting into mischief can be a full-time job, and it can be even more challenging at breakfast and lunch when I'm the only one here with her. It is ironic that I'm losing weight without trying or wanting to for probably the first time ever in my life! I am keeping an eye on it, just in case it's not my increased level of physical activity and something that merits seeking medical attention, but for now I'm just trying to make sure I'm eating enough.

On a more positive side, this month there's also been Less to-do about puppy bedtime. Hearkening back to when Molly was little and demanded I stay with her until she fell asleep, I had been sitting with Ruthie in the evening after her final walk, letting her curl up and fall asleep in her bed, and then trying to transfer her to her crate and leave before she woke up. Kym told me that I was pretty much nuts to do that (well, she said it using much nicer words) because I was letter Ruthie have all the control. Instead, she advised, say goodnight, put her in her crate, and leave her. And naturally she was right. We have a bedtime routine now -- I sing a little to her (I changed the words of "Goodnight, Ladies" from The Music Man to "Goodnight, Ruthie), put her in her crate and pet her for a minute, then close the door and leave. For the first week and a half or so, she cried and barked for up to an hour. Lately, though, she has been great. I hold her when I start to sing and then put her down in front of her crate, and she goes right in and curls up. If we hear anything from her, it's either a noise she's making in her sleep or there's something outside she's barking out, and it's usually very brief. I'm hoping one day we'll get to the point where she puts herself to bed, but I have a feeling we've got a while until that happens. In the meantime, I'm enjoying our little snuggles and then having my evening back.

Thank you to Kat for hosting our monthly One Little Word link-ups! Be sure to visit her post for today to read her reflection and get links to others'.

TGIF

What a week it has been, friends! The heat has been something else. I know other places have had it worse and I am lucky to have AC to hide out in, but just taking Ruthie out for (brief) walks has been enough to leave me dripping. I made the executive decision to not worry about exercising this week -- too dangerous to do outside, frankly -- and have accepted that I'll be a little stinky all day until I shower before bed. I haven't blown my hair dry in a week, not that I've needed to, and much of my time has been spent in a dark room. We finally got a brief thunderstorm late yesterday afternoon. It didn't do anything for the humidity, but it at least dropped the heat index by about 20 degrees. Today we're only (ha) supposed to reach a high of 88ºF. Still a bit too warm for me, but it's better than mid- to upper 90s.

While I haven't made a ton of progress on my Midsommarkrans, I am happy to report that I have conquered the left/right confusion and have 3/4 panels done and the fourth under way:

After knitting and reknitting so many times, I am finding that I am getting faster at the lace because I'm not checking the stitch key as often. I've just started the neck shaping on this panel and it's moving right along. I hope that by next week, I'll have joined all four panels in the round and gotten started on the body.

By way of a pup-date, I'll let you know that Ruthie is doing much better (although she did wake me up at 4:30 a.m. yesterday -- good thing I had the day off and could nap with her in the afternoon!). She has a playdate with Bagel this morning and puppy class tomorrow morning, and she's had a couple of quick play sessions with the pups on the next street over this week when we've happened to run into them on a walk. She has been enjoying taking naps on these hot days, which isn't much of a departure from her usual routine except that I've been next to her. We've pretty much given up on keeping her off the couch in the family room, so we got a slipcover to protect the upholstery and it's working well. She still occasionally "digs" or chews on it, but, you know, puppy.

I am not going to express any hopes or expectations for the weekend ahead because that hasn't gone at all well the past two weeks. Instead, I'll say I hope it's a good one for you, and I'll leave you with the spectacular rainbow we spotted when we went out for our last walk yesterday evening, right after the showers moved through.