Unraveled, Week 35/2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 34/2025

Greetings, friends, and happy Wednesday! It's been a long start to the week (I woke up yesterday and my first thought was, "Is it really only Tuesday?"), but today is my favorite day of the blogging week, when I get to join in with Kat and the Unravelers.

Today I'm kicking things off with a finished object (finished, but not yet blocked, so please excuse that).

I completed the knitting on this hat on Monday afternoon during what I've taken to calling "snoozy time" and then wove in the end that evening. The yarn is from Supernova Dyeworks and came from my SSK goodie bag; I love the colors but thought they'd be a bit too much in socks. In the larger circumference of a hat, however, I got some nice stripes. This will be added to the charity pile.

I have also made some real progress on my Kudzu tank, completing the second and final chart:

The second chart is worked under the arms, after you've joined the front and back, and it continues the leaf lace motif in a really pretty way:

Now it's just stockinette through the rest of the body, with a few increases to give a little shaping. I've used up my first skein of yarn and will be interested to see how far I get with the second.

I've had another blockbuster week of reading -- five books finished! This is in large part due to audiobooks (I get a lot of listening done between exercising and walking the dog) as well as the fact that I read some shorter books this past week.

My brother loaned me his copy of Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You shortly after we adopted Ruthie, and I'm a little ashamed to say that I've only just gotten around to it. This is a book I would have enjoyed even before having my own dog simply because of my interest in psychology (it's what I got my bachelor's degree in). The author, an academic who studies canine behavior, set out to uncover why it is that humans and dog have long been able to form strong bonds and loving relationships. While he gets into evolution and genetics and even Pavlov, the book is easy to read and understand, and he certainly makes a strong case for dog ownership. It also made me regret not taking the course on animal behavior in college! I enjoyed this one a lot -- 4 stars.

Next was an audiobook that I listened to over the course of two days and very nearly DNF'd. Severance is a pandemic book, but it was published back in 2018 and was eerily familiar. I'd had it on my TBR for a while because I'd heard about it on at least one bookish podcast I listen to, and I had thought I'd heard that the virus in the book caused people to become overly religious rather than sick. Either I was confusing it with another book or the podcaster hadn't read it, because that is not the case at all -- there's some near zombie stuff happening in this book. The crux of it is that there's a virus out of China that causes people to become "fevered," and the main character finds herself in a New York City that is quickly becoming a ghost city, yet she continues to go to her office and work despite the fact that her work has become impossible and pointless. The Goodreads description of this book calls it a "hilarious deadpan satire," but I just found it depressing. Some of the descriptions of the people afflicted by the virus started to make me feel a little ill myself, and that was the point at which I nearly stopped listening, but because I was out on a workout without anything else to listen to at the time, I kept going, and it got a little better. The only parts I actually enjoyed were the flashbacks to the main character's family when they first immigrated to the United States and their determination to make a new life in a new country. I wouldn't recommend this one. 2 stars.

I needed something lighter and fluffier after that, so I scrolled way down in my Kindle shelves and found Shrines of Gaiety, which I'd bought a couple of years ago but never gotten around to reading. I know a number of you read this when it first came out and thought it was okay, and that was my experience as well (it was a 3-star read for me). This book is not on the same level as Life After Life, but it's fun and didn't require a lot of thought or attention on my part. I was a bit frustrated that several storylines were left just hanging at the end -- some, it seemed, deliberately. I am okay with ambiguity in certain situations, but this felt a bit like laziness to me. If you're writing fiction, can't just just make up an explanation? In any case, it was a good palate cleanser.

I so enjoyed Adam Higginbotham's Challenger that for my next audiobook, I decided to read another of his works Midnight in Chernobyl. As with his book on the Challenger disaster, Higginbotham is thorough and impartial in relaying the facts, looking at what happened from all angles and, at times, from minute to minute. I was familiar with some of the names and how the disaster played out from having watched the HBO miniseries several years back, so I can't say I really learned anything new. If you've seen that miniseries, you probably don't need to read the book, but if not, I would recommend it if you'd like to learn more about what happened. It's very well done (though I have some grumbles about the audiobook narrator). I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, a memoir, The Tell. It's an Oprah pick, but that is not why I read it (though it likely explained the long wait list at the library). The author was struck by her daughter's comment that she felt she really didn't know her to examine why that would be. She cautiously entered a session of therapy using MDMA, only to discover a long-suppressed memory of being sexually assaulted by a teacher when she was in middle school. Having released this memory, and realized why she reacted the way she did to certain stimuli, she then embarked on a long process of both healing from the abuse and seeking some form of justice for what was done to her. This is a book that will be very hard for some people to read, for obvious reasons. I found it fascinating that our own brains will hide a memory from us yet the effects of what is hidden can be seen and felt in the body. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 32/2025

Happy Wednesday, friends! Before I join in with Kat and the Unravelers, I have an apology. Each week for my Unraveled post, I look back at the number from the week before, and it took typing out 40 this week for me to realize that something was not right because I know there are more than 12 week left in this year. It seems that somewhere back in spring, instead of typing the number 12, I typed 20, and that set off a chain reaction of mis-numbering the weeks. I've gone back and corrected them all, but that means that if you use some sort of blog reader or subscribe to something that notifies you that I've posted, you will have seen what looks like a ton of new posts from me. I wish I had that much exciting content to share, but alas I'm just fixing my own errors. I've always maintained that my strength is in words, not numbers, and I think this just confirms it.

But enough about my typos -- let's get back to the making and the reading! Since finishing up my latest pair of socks, my afternoon puppy nap time/reading time knitting has been the hat I'm knitting using the SSK goodie bag yarn, and at present it's about the size of Ruthie's tushie:

There's obviously still a good ways to go on this, but I do like the way the colors are pooling in sort-of stripes.

I've also cast on a new project, using the free-to-me Shibui Linen yarn that I picked up from the giveaway table at SSK. I'm making Kudzu (Ravelry link), the pattern I originally bought the Miss Babs silk/linen for.

This lace is a lot less complicated than Midsommarkrans, so with any luck it will go quickly and I'll be able to speed through to the stockinette body. I did swatch for this and got stitch gauge with a US 5/3.75 mm, though this start looks awfully small. I am making a size that should give me about an inch of positive ease, assuming I get gauge in the actual piece.

Reading has been good this past week, with three solid finishes.

It's been a number of years since the last Jimmy Perez novel and I truly thought the series was done, so I was delighted to see there's a forthcoming ninth book! In this latest installment, The Killing Stones, the action has moved from the Shetland Islands to the Orkney Islands, closer to mainland Scotland but remote enough that Jimmy and his team are largely on their own when it comes to investigations. This time, the first victim is Jimmy's longtime friend Archie Stout, and the discovery of his body at an archaeological site suggests a motive related to the island's history. The murder investigation keeps you guessing and keeps the list of suspects long, but the real focus of the novel is the changing nature of life in an island community where everyone knows each other and where outsiders are suspect. It's an entertaining and propulsive tour of Jimmy Perez's new home and also serves as a satisfying update on his personal life with his new family. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for providing me with a digital ARC in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 30, 2025.

After clearing a long podcast backlog, I went looking for something fun on audio and decided on a romance that had long been on my radar. In Red, White & Royal Blue, the son of the president of the United States and a British prince are involved in an incident at a royal wedding, leading them to be forced to be together in the name of damage control and end up falling in love -- and dealing with all the complications that such a relationship entails. I thought this would be a fun little fairy tale-type romance, but it deals with some surprisingly serious issues. Clearly the author was dealing with the outcome of the 2016 election (the president in this world is the first woman elected, and there's a plot point involving a private email server), so I guess you could call it a left-wing political fantasy if you wanted. There are a few real political names dropped (and some made-up figures who are clear stand-ins for real people), but for the most part all the people are fictional, and it seems the author has also taken a few liberties with the rules of royal succession. It was fun and more serious than I expected. I do have to lodge one complaint about the narrator, who pronounced Bowie (as in David) as if it rhymes with "owie." Yikes! Still, it was enjoyable. I gave it 4 stars as well.

My most recent finish this past week was also my favorite of the bunch, but it's one that feels almost impossible to describe. The Antidote is set in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, in the early 1930s. It's the time of the Dust Bowl and opens as a massive dust storm moves through and wreaks havoc on this small town founded mostly by Polish immigrants a quarter-century earlier and displacing the Indigenous people who lived there. But in this version of the Dust Bowl, there exist Prairie Witches, women called Vaults who can store your memories for you and relieve you of the burden of carrying them -- at least until you decide you want to withdraw them. When the titular character wakes following the storm, she realizes that the memories she's been storing in her body have left her, leaving her effectively bankrupt. She and her backstory -- along with a farmer, his orphaned niece, and a Black female photographer working for the federal government -- form the center of the story that follows. I'm actually glad I didn't know much about this book before I started reading; in fact, I bought it when it was a Kindle deal mainly because I kept seeing it pop up all the places buzzy books do, and now I'm glad I own it because I have a feeling I will need to reread it. There is so much going on in this book and it has a lot to say about some big, important issues -- things like colonialism, the mistreatment of Indigenous tribes by the federal government, racism, memory, and climate change. This is not a book that can be rushed through, and from the material at the back, it's clear the author did extensive research to do justice to the issues she raises. It's not a book for everyone, but I know it's a book I'm very glad I read and will be thinking about for a long time. I gave it 5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Ready to Rest

I am thankful to have made it to the end of this week. The trip was a lot of fun but not particularly restful, and of course coming back on Sunday afternoon meant we were thrown right back into the usual schedule on Monday morning. I am getting this post ready ahead of time because I have an early appointment for my mammogram this morning and then have to get back for more (pointless) work meetings.

Since my last post, I have been able to finish up the hat I started just ahead of the trip, so now I have two for the charity pile that are ready to be washed, blocked, and put safely away:

And I've added some more stripes to my sock WIP and am almost to the heel (unfortunately they're only a small fraction of a Ruthie long):

We have a quiet weekend planned. It's going to be hot again, like upper-90s-with-heat-index hot, with a chance of rain every day, so it'll be a good weekend to stay in the cool and relax. Molly and I talked about maybe going to a local farmer's market tomorrow morning; she has a hankering for fresh cherries, and maybe we'll find some other yummy things to eat for lunch or dinner. The Mister has a high school friend in town on Sunday and they're getting together for dinner with friends (I may or may not go along). Other than that, the weekend is wide open and that's just fine with me. I need to clean bathrooms after skipping a week and would like to maybe sneak in a nap, as I doubt Ruthie will let me sleep in.

Whatever's on tap for you this weekend, I hope it's enjoyable. I will see you back here on Monday for my July One Little Word post -- can't believe this month is almost over!

Unraveled, Week 30/2025

Time continues its forward march and here we are again on a Wednesday. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I spent most of my knitting time when we were away working on a charity hat, and I'm quickly approaching its end. As of yesterday afternoon's nap time, when I snapped this photo, it was about 4/5 of a Ruthie:

Funny story: She actually woke up when I first draped it on her, and I thought she was going to try to eat it and quickly snatched it back, but she almost immediately closed her eyes again. I guess the desire to sleep was stronger than her desire to chew! This yarn is Fibernymph Dye Works Bedazzled, which is 438 yards per 100 g, but as is usually the case with the skeins I get from Lisa, this one was a bit overweight at 106 g, so I've actually got about 464 yards to work with. I'll use most if not all of it, and that should make for a nice slouchy hat for someone.

I also worked a bit on the socks I started in the car on the way to the airport, but I was holding back a bit so that Molly and I could do heels at the same time. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how much she got done on hers considering that this is probably the first time she's ever worked on such small needles (her sock on the left is on a US 1/2.25 mm; mine on the right is on a US 0/2.0 mm).

While I'm working on these smaller projects, I'm also pondering what to cast on next. I think I may try to knit another summer top, specifically this one (Ravelry link), which was my original plan for the Miss Babs silk/linen I used on my Midsommarkrans. In fact, the Shibui linen yarn I found on the giveaway table at SSK should be pretty perfect for it. I may start swatching that soon.

I didn't read as much while we were away as I would have at home, but I've still managed to finish two (short) books in the past week:

Continuing my exploration of the work of Nobel literature laureate Han Kang, I read her latest, We Do Not Part. In terms of the subject matter, this felt like a logical continuation of Human Acts in that a large part of the book explores the trauma of massacres in Korea, this time on Jeju Island. (Note: If you've read The Island of Sea Women, then the history of this island will not be new to you.) The way this history is presented, however, is a bit strange. We start with Kyungha, who is struggling with nightmares in the wake of writing a book about another massacre (presumably the one depicted in Human Acts) when she gets a call from her friend Inseon, who is in a hospital in Seoul after a carpentry accident and begs Kyungha to come see her. When they meet, Inseon begs Kyungha to go to her house on Jeju to take care of her bird, and Kyungha makes the long journey in a treacherous snowstorm. When she awakes in her friend's house, with the power out, she is surprised to see Inseon there, all signs of her injury gone, and the two begin going through Inseon's extensive research on the massacres on Jeju and her intimate connection to them. The writing (or at least the translation of the writing) is beautiful, but the story itself is odd and at times hard to follow, and I felt a bit frustrated when I finished and found there was no explanation for how Inseon could be both in a hospital in Seoul and in a house on Jeju. The novel does serve as a vehicle for communicating the impact of the generational trauma of the events of 1948 and 1950-52, and presumably a Korean audience would have more knowledge of those events than I did; I felt at more than one point that I should stop and read about some of the history in order to have a more complete picture of the period. It's a hard book to read for a number of reasons, and it's one that perhaps I will revisit once I have a better handle on the context. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Shortly after we got to Nashville, I got a notification that my library hold on Intimacies was ready. This relatively short novel follows a woman who works as an interpreter in the international court in the Hague and details her personal and professional relationships. There's her friend Jana, who lives in a seedy neighborhood and witnesses a violent mugging. There's Adriaan, the man she's seeing who she soon learns is a married (but separated) father. And there are the incarcerated individuals on trial at the court she translates for and whose accused heinous acts she has to listen to as part of her job. There's a bit of a plot to this book, but overall I wasn't sure what the point of it was -- not to mention that the author seems to use the word "intimacy" a little too much for the title to have any subtlety. Maybe I would feel different if I read with my eyes rather than my ears. In any case, I didn't care for it much. I gave it 2 stars.

On the way home, I started an ARC of Ian McEwan's forthcoming novel, which is being billed as speculative fiction. And I've also started Broken Country, one of those buzzy books you've seen everywhere lately and which I was lucky to get passed by my mother.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveling, Week 27/2025

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!

Unraveled, Week 11/2025

It is Wednesday -- already and again! Time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers!

As work is entering a busy cycle, there's been less time to craft and read during the day, so I don't have a lot to share. But I do have a finished hat, which you saw the brim of on Monday. Once I finished up the brioche, it flew pretty quickly.

There is no pattern for this, as it's just a basic beanie. I cast on 88 stitches with two colors of Knit Picks Chroma Twist on US 3/3.25 mm needles and worked in two-color brioche until I didn't have enough of the lighter color (Sandpiper) to do another round. Then I switched over to US 5/3.75 mm needles and knit until the hat measured 6 inches (about 15.5 cm) and did basic swirled decreases at eight points. I still have a bit of the darker color (Cousteau) of yarn left and could have made it a little longer, but I wasn't in the mood to play yarn chicken. This will get a bath and then will be added to the bags of charity hats, and perhaps Molly will use the leftovers in one of her many scrappy crochet projects.

I'm still working on my sister-in-law's socks and have gotten to the heel. I'm pondering what to cast on next -- one WIP doesn't usually do it for me if it's not especially engaging, but maybe I should just focus on these socks in the interest of getting them done quickly. We shall see.

I've only finished one book in the past week, but when it's a five-star read, that seems like enough. And I have Bonny to thank for putting it on my radar.

The Correspondent is a book of letters. Sybil Van Antwerp, a 70-something woman who lives alone, spends regular hours at her desk taking care of her correspondence, just as she has done her whole life. She writes to her brother and her best friend. She writes to former colleagues and acquaintances she met through her career as a lawyer and judicial clerk. She writes to a teenage boy who has shared his secret troubles and fears with her and with whom she has shared some of her own secrets. She writes to authors whose books she has enjoyed, including Ann Patchett and Larry McMurtry. She has a regular correspondence with Joan Didion. And she writes, regularly and continuously, to someone who is unnamed and unknown until the very end. Though all these letters, we get a complete view of her life's struggles and triumphs, from her early years as an adopted child who felt so unlike her peers at school; to the loss of one of her children and her subsequent divorce; to the struggles in her later life to maintain a relationship with her daughter and her diagnosis of a degenerative eye condition that will eventually take her sight. Though the letters she writes and the letters she receives, we learn about her regrets and the things she blames herself for, and we are able to see how even a woman in her 70s who has had a long, satisfying life can still learn new things, can find ways to right the wrongs, and can find new ways to experience joy. It's a beautiful, quiet novel -- one that will likely make you want to write a letter! I gave it 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. It will be published April 29, 2025. And Goodreads has a giveaway for a hard copy open right now, if you're interested! Just click on the link above and you should see the giveaway on the left.

I'm getting very close to the end of The Secret History and am pondering what lighthearted or funny book I can read next as a palate cleanser.

What are you making and reading this week?

In Which I Complete Another Trip Around the Sun

Good morning, friends. I hope you've all sufficiently recovered from the time change. While I enjoyed the later sunset time, I would have been happy to wait another month for it to occur naturally and had that hour of sleep instead. I suppose the best thing I can say for changing the clocks is that at least we don't do it on a Monday morning!

Yesterday was, of course, my birthday, and it was probably also the most relaxing part of the weekend. Our plans for Friday night went a bit haywire: We had the table set, the food waiting, and the water glasses filled and my in-laws had arrived, but my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and nephews hadn't shown. When the Mister called his brother to find out where they were, they were wondering where we were because they had apparently cooked dinner at their place. So we all loaded up in the car and went there, and dinner was good, but it was not the quiet night at home I was hoping for. I think what says it all is that my birthday cake -- a chocolate almond torte -- got smushed in the refrigerator and ended up saying "Hapy day h!"

Fortunately the rest of the weekend's plans went ahead as scheduled. Molly and I thoroughly enjoyed Kimberly Akimbo on Saturday afternoon (did you know that they figured out a way to ice skate on the stage as part of the show?), and then the three of us had a nice dinner out. On Sunday morning, my brother and my nephew stopped by to drop off a gift, and then Molly and the Mister and I went for a fancy brunch at one of our favorite local restaurants -- including a pear cardamom mimosa! I took the opportunity to wear my vest again.

Photo taken by the Mister, which is why he's not in it

After some wet snow fell on Friday night, the sun was out all weekend, and it was warm enough yesterday afternoon (low 50s) to take a walk in just a sweatshirt:

That sweatshirt was my birthday present from my brother and his family. It's from my local bookstore -- the neon whale is above their cafe and is named August Whale-son in honor of one of Pittsburgh's literary native sons.

While most of the weekend seemed to be spent eating, there was some knitting as well. As many of you predicted, my needles didn't stay empty for long. I pulled out some leftovers from the two hats I test knit this year and combined them for a charity hat, and I also started a new pair of socks for my sister-in-law so I'd have something to knit at the show.

I didn't manage to get the full cuff of the sock knit before the show started and couldn't see enough in the low light to measure it, but I got close enough to an inch. Somehow I dropped a stitch but also created one when I switched over from ribbing to stockinette, so I had to get out my fix-it tool in the intermission to ladder down and pick it back up. I also had no idea how the yarn was going to stripe, so that was a fun surprise when the lights came up. This is a OOAK Fibernymph Dye Works self-striper on a superwash merino base that has sections of natural dark fiber. It's not as tightly plied as the Bounce base I usually use, so it's a little splitty, but I do love the colors and I think my sister-in-law will as well. I'll likely put these away for her birthday in September. The hat is just basic two-color brioche for the brim, which I knit until I ran out of the color I had less of, and the rest will be plain stockinette. I think both of these projects will be handy this week, as I'm expecting a magazine project to come in and will have a lot of reading to do.

It may be Monday, but it's supposed to be another beautiful day here and there are signs of spring arriving. Let's hope we can make the most of it!

Bring On All the Tea

I suspect many of us are dragging this Monday morning, though unlike many people, I am not tired because I stayed up watching the Super Bowl. I turned it off after the halftime show and opted to read until bed instead, but the Mister was up at 3:15 to catch a 6:30 flight -- and because he had to get up so early, he went to bed early, which meant the nighttime "symphony" of snoring started early. Fortunately, I'll get a break from that soundtrack tonight, so if I'm dragging a bit today, I can catch up on the sleep later on.

Thank you for all your kind thoughts last week. I felt better on Friday but then had a terrible reflux attack on Saturday morning, so I am off coffee for the time being (hence all the tea). I had thought I was handling the general state of the world well, but apparently that was not the case. For the time being, I'm off coffee and alcohol and anything else that's really acidic or spicy. It makes for a boring diet, but I'll take boring if it means not feeling sick.

Partly because of the reflux and partly because it was just gloomy winter, it was a quiet weekend. I did get out for a walk, my first one in a while, on Saturday morning before wet weather moved in by the afternoon (we actually had a thunderstorm!). I spent most of the weekend knitting hats and reading, and I've just about gotten this multi-stranded hat thing out of my system.

I've got one last blue hat on the needles that I'm trying to finish up today and then I will take a break from this particular hat for a while. Six hats in about a week isn't bad, though! They were just the right break, but now I'm ready to start some new projects, which today will require winding some yarn.

This is a terrible photo (it's very overcast here today, as per usual for winter), but those two skeins on the left are handspun that I'm planning to use for an All Season Vest (Ravelry link). Of course, I've got to swatch to see if it'll work because the pattern calls for DK or worsted and this yarn is probably sport to DK. I may need to carry along a strand of laceweight to get gauge, but we'll see. The skein on the right is for some socks for Molly, at her request. I also just got approved to test knit a hat for Kerri Blumer, so I'll be digging in my stash today for something for that. I guess I'm not entirely done with hats!

I hope your Monday treats you kindly! See you back here on Wednesday.

Can I Get a Break?

We've made it to Friday -- thank goodness! It's been a long, exhausting week. I've spent a lot of it not feeling well, first thanks to an IBS flare and then, I suspect, due to the wild fluctuations in the weather. I've had terrible sinus pressure, haven't been able to get warm, and have been exhausted. And the Mister was traveling for work this week, which meant I had to do everything to keep our household running. This morning I'm finally feeling more like myself and keeping my fingers crossed that I continue to feel okay. At least there is a weekend coming up and I can get some extra rest!

First up, I want to share with all of you that I published a new pattern this morning! Or new-ish, I should say -- it's a lightweight version of a previously published pattern.

This is Funnel Vision Light (Ravelry link; Payhip link), a fingering weight version of the Funnel Vision Cowl I published with Knit Picks back in fall of 2023. Although I'd proposed the pattern for a heavier yarn (I had DK or worsted in mind but was given bulky), I'd always thought of what this design would look like in fingering, and I actually knit this sample nearly two years ago. It wasn't until late last year, though, that I finally decided to write it up as a pattern after I wore it in public and was asked about the pattern several times. It's all knit it brioche, so it's super squishy, and I knit this one in an MCN yarn, so it's extra cozy. I'm thinking I might need to knit myself another one in two colors.

The knitting this week has been pretty boring -- it's all scrappy hats, all the time! I finished my third yesterday (the one on top of the pile):

This latest one is the scrappiest of the latest bunch, with five different yarns represented. Though I started out knitting the largest size in the pattern, I'm now making the next size down because its stitch count plays more nicely with the adjusted decreases I'm doing for the crown (the original pattern decreases rapidly, leading to a sort of rumpled top, so I've changed them to a more standard eight decreases every other round). Would you believe that these three hats have used up more than 1,200 yards of yarn? That's more than I used in my most recent sweater!

I'm clearly not done with this current spate of hats, either, because I dug into my bin of full fingering skeins and wound up three blues to start some more:

That deep royal blue on top is Socks That Rock Lightweight that I bought at my former LYS, which closed more than eight years ago. The blue/gray variegated on the bottom left was purchased on our trip to Cape Cod back in 2017. And the light blue/white is from Knit Picks, purchased who knows when. I'm still feeling quite overwhelmed by the size of my stash -- each time I go digging, I swear it's gotten bigger -- so these hats seem like a great way to use up a bunch and do some good in the meantime.

The weekend ahead is looking pretty wide open, which is quite welcome. I think we could all use some extra down time. We'll be watching the Super Bowl (me because I like the commercials, Molly because she's cheering for Taylor's boyfriend) but otherwise laying low. There's been a lot happening the past several weeks, much of it terrible, so I think all of us could benefit from rest and self-care. Be well, friends, and keep looking for the good -- it's still out there.

Unraveled, Week 6/2025

Happy first Wednesday in February! Like many of you, I've been trying to avoid the news and instead focus on happy things, and joining Kat and the Unravelers is always one of the highlights of my week, so I'm all in on this update on my making and my reading.

But first I have to say a very heart-felt thank you for all the beautiful compliments you gave me on my sweater. I have worn it twice already this week, and I would not be surprised if I wear it at least once more. It is incredibly comfortable and warm without being stifling, so it's been great for this up-and-down weather we've been having.

There was so much of a focus on the sweater in my last post that I didn't mention that I also finished up a hat over the weekend:

Originally this was going to go in the charity pile, but then Molly tried it on after I finished it and it looked adorable on her, plus she gave me that look, so how could I say no? I did tell her that if I was going to give it to her, I expected her to wear it, and so far she's made good on her promise that she would. This is my Same as It Ever Was pattern (Ravelry link), which I recently published an update to that tells you how to work it at any gauge using any yarn. I've really been enjoying using fingering weight yarn and US 2.5/3.0 mm needles. For this particular one, I used Urban Girl Yarns Virginia Fingering, which comes in a very generous put-up of 480 yards per skein, in the colorway Duke of Hawtness (apparently it's a Bridgerton reference).

I seem to have gotten into a hat mood this week in general, because once those two projects were done, it's been all about hats.

It's the last week of the Pigskin Party, so I thought I'd try to sneak in a couple more projects to get some last-minute points. I'm using the Sagamore Flyover pattern, which calls for a bulky yarn, but instead I'm using fingering held triple. I think that's closer to Aran than bulky, but I'm knitting the largest size to make up for the difference. The bluish hat was knit with two strands of Bella Fio fingering that I won as a prize earlier in the Pigskin Party and one strand of LolaBean Yarn Co. fingering that was leftover from my Oh My Cod socks. The one in progress is using the rest of the skein of the Bella Fio yarn, leftovers of another LolaBean fingering that I used for a baby top last year, and leftover Geektastic Fibers (now Fandoms and Fibers) fingering from this cowl. These hats knit up really quickly but also use a lot of yarn -- that first one used 374 yards! These will be added to the charity pile for sure.

After having only one finished book to share last week, I've got four this week!

Bonny is responsible for putting Small Rain on my radar, though since she mentioned it, I've heard about it other places as well. This is a fairly quiet but incredibly powerful book. The unnamed narrator (who shares many similarities with the author, though he has maintained this isn't a memoir) suffers a life-threatening medical emergency in the summer of 2020 and ends up in the ICU. He sees plenty of doctors and nurses but is allowed only one visitor per day for a limited amount of time, and thus he spends a lot of time alone, giving him ample opportunity to think and reflect on his life, his family, his relationships, and his place in the world. The uncertainty and confusion that many of us felt in the early days of the pandemic is amplified here, but so is the beauty that can be found in simple human kindness. It's hard to know how much of the book is truth (or at least modeled on truth) and how much is pure fiction, but regardless it's a beautiful and heartwarming work. I gave it 5 stars.

Next was my first audiobook in quite a while (I was way behind on podcasts because I usually listen to them and to books while I'm walking and running, and obviously I hadn't done that for several months). Typically the Read With Us Zooms include an opportunity to make recommendations or talk about what we've read lately, and during the call last fall, someone recommended Beautyland, which I recently found on audio on Hoopla. This is a quirky novel that follows Adina, who believes she is an alien sent to Earth to observe humans and report on them to her superiors, with whom she communicates via an old fax machine. Adina finds humans to be incredibly puzzling and spends many years trying to understand them through her observations. Is she actually an alien? I'm not sure, though I thought a lot of her difficulty in understanding human behavior and relationships could also said to be true of someone who was neurodivergent, so perhaps she's not actually an alien but feels like one. I thought it was charming and felt myself sympathizing with Adina frequently, even though I am definitely not an alien. I also got a kick out of the fact that at one point she is made fun of for mis-singing the chorus to this song as "Simeon the whale" because not only is the song from a local band, but back when I was a tween going to summer camp, there was a staff member at my camp named Simeon and we deliberately sang the wrong lyrics to the song. I gave this book 4 stars.

Molly recently had to read The Penelopiad for English class, so I borrowed her copy after she was finished because I'd long had it on my TBR list. It's a quick read, but it packs a punch. Penelope, wife of Odysseus, gets to tell her side of the story, from her youth and her love/hate relationship with her cousin Helen (yes, that Helen) to her marriage to her long wait for Odysseus's return from the Trojan War. In Margaret Atwood's hands, Penelope is anything but the patient, loyal wife; rather, she's a smart, cunning woman well aware of her place in the patriarchy who's not willing to sacrifice any more of her rights or herself than she needs to. She's critical of men -- rightfully so -- and gives a view of some of the famous names from The Odyssey that suggests that their legacies might be different if a woman had been the one writing it. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I read The Rachel Incident from my Kindle shelf. The Rachel of the title is the narrator, and the bulk of the book takes place a number of years earlier, during the economic downturn in Ireland, when Rachel is finishing up her college degree and working at a bookstore, where she meets James, who quickly becomes her flatmate and best friend. The two of them become involved (perhaps over-involved) with one of Rachel's professors and his wife. To say much more would give away a lot of the plot, so I'll leave it at that. I think what this book does well is capture that difficult period of the early 20s when "real life" is supposed to be starting but the situation isn't ideal -- when you've finished college but your degree feels useless because there are no jobs. I found a lot of the book to be a little on the bleak side, but it did wrap up rather nicely, and I gave it 4 stars.

I am currently reading Boulder on the page and listening to The Unseen World. It's good to be listening to books again!

What are you making and reading this week?

What a Week

I won't bury the lede: I am officially free from the boot and released from orthopedic care! I can tell that I still have some healing to do, but my orthopedist told me I could resume normal activity (being mindful of outside conditions, of course) and that I could start jogging again once I can walk about three miles without any pain or discomfort. As much as I miss running (and as shocked as I am to have written those words), I am not in any hurry to start running again until it's a bit safer to do so. We've had frigid temperatures and off-and-on snow all week, so I will be waiting until we have a good thaw. Sidewalks in our neighborhood can be treacherous even when they're completely dry, and I don't want to risk another injury.

I celebrated this good news, which was really the highlight of my week, by putting away the folding chair I've been using to exercise and doing a regular standing aerobic workout -- and I can feel it today! The seated workouts worked well for keeping up my fitness level but not so well for keeping the muscles in my legs in shape. So I'll be working on that in the next couple of weeks and getting back outside to walk as soon as it's a bit warmer and less precarious. I also scheduled an appointment to donate blood next week because they would not allow me to the last time I tried.

Crafting time has been limited this week due to how busy I've been at work. All week I've been chipping away at a very large magazine, and fortunately I'm nearly finished. I did make a point to cast on a new project that I could knit without looking because Molly and I are going to see Funny Girl tomorrow. I'm making another double-ended hat using my pattern and yarn that I bought at SSK in 2023 (it's from Urban Girl Yarns):

I played around with my increase method a bit, mainly because this end will likely be the one that's on the inside, so that's why it looks a little wonky. This skein is very generous, at 480 yards, so I have a feeling I won't be using all of it, but I should get a nice hat out of it to add to my charity pile.

I've also been working more on my sweater, and I'm now just four rounds away from dividing my sleeve and body stitches!

I know I'll have to keep track of decreases and rounds worked on both the sleeves and body, but it won't be nearly as complicated as the yoke has been, and I'm hoping that translates to faster progress.

My parents have an event to go to tonight, so our usual family dinner has been moved to Sunday and instead we're taking my in-laws out to dinner. Other than the show tomorrow, the only other plan for the weekend is a big stock-up trip to Costco on Sunday -- yes, this is what passes for excitement in my life right now! I am looking forward to seeing my niblings on Sunday evening because we haven't seen them since the night before we left on our trip, and I'm sure my niece has changed a lot since then. Mostly I'm just hoping to relax and recover from a busy week. I hope it's a good weekend for you, one that's full of things that bring you joy!