Early May Weekending

All too soon, it's Monday morning again. It was a wet weekend here, with rain on and off most of Saturday and part of Sunday. It was a good weekend for napping, and I did some of that on Saturday because Ruthie was up at 5:50 a.m. -- and so that meant that I was up that early! Aside from the early wakeup, though, it was a pretty good weekend. And I think the reason she was up so early is because she's started sleeping through the night, so despite getting up early, it means we've both slept for about 7 hours.

We started with an early lunch birthday party for my youngest nephew, who turned 2 on May 1. He entertained us with the amusing things he had to say, like asking my sister-in-law "Do you need a helping hand?" And we finished with chocolate cupcakes.

An added bonus for me was when we arrived, my niece was wearing the tee I knit for her last summer:

The Mister took Molly and her friend to see the show, and Ruthie and I took naps. Then we went out to dinner with my parents at a Turkish place in our neighborhood. 

Ruthie did a great job both times we were out, even though we were gone for about two hours both times. She's continuing to do really well with the house training -- which really means I'm doing really well at getting her out when she needs to go! Yesterday was the Pittsburgh Marathon, and the route comes close to our house, so I took her up to watch the runners for a bit. There were a lot of people, quite a few dogs, and a lot of noise. She was very nervous at first, but she soon adjusted, so it's clear that exposing her to new situations with people is good for her.

I managed to do a little bit of knitting this weekend, too. I started the second sock for my mother-in-law and was in a groove on the leg when I came across a knot in the yarn. I snipped it out and carried on as before, only to realize several rounds later that the two ends that were tied together were different colors.

I'm not sure if my mother-in-law would notice, but now that I've seen it, I can't not see it. So I'll likely be ripping back to the start of the stripe in the first blue and winding off yarn until I get to that point in the stripe sequence. So much for easy knitting!

A Finish on Friday

Happy Friday and happy May, friends! It's been a heck of a week here, though the puppy stuff has been the least of it. We had some strong storms move through on Tuesday that caused some major damage in the area from high winds, though amazingly we didn't lose power. So many people did, though, that the city and county are under disaster declarations and quite a few schools have been closed for multiple days this week. I saw our lights flicker once or twice but that was it. To Ruthie's delight, there were tons of sticks in the street on Wednesday, so a large part of our trips outside have involved taking them away from her (in addition to trying to keep her from eating various other things she finds on the ground).

On the positive side of things, I went for a run on Wednesday! I've been trying to get Ruthie to be more comfortable in her crate and not bark and cry the whole time, so I thought I'd give it a try to see how it went. I also had a couple of things to drop at the post office, so I ran there (it's about half a mile from our house) and back and then did some loops around the neighborhood. The last time I ran was on April 11! I didn't do my full distance because it was the first time I was leaving her alone, but it felt good to be out there again (until my knee started to hurt and it didn't feel so good). I was definitely sore yesterday, but it was nothing like after my first run following my broken foot, so that's a good sign.

My finish for the day isn't terribly exciting, but it's something. Since finishing up that second slipper sock, I've pulled out the socks I've been knitting for my mother-in-law again. I'd really like to get back to my Sugar Maple tee, but it's been safer to have something small (and with only one ball of yarn attached) that I can quickly put down and away. I've worked on it this week while Ruthie has been napping and managed to finish the first sock yesterday -- though she woke up as I was about 2/3 of the way through grafting the toe, so I had to put it down and finish it up later!

Again, terrible lighting that doesn't do it any justice, but it's what I could manage to do without putting her back in the crate.

This weekend we've got some actual plans on the calendar. My youngest nephew turned 2 yesterday, and his birthday party is on Saturday morning. It was supposed to be outside, but the weather is not looking good right now, so it will probably be moved indoors and we'll leave Ruthie at home. That afternoon we have tickets to see Come from Away; originally the three of us were supposed to go, but I don't think Ruthie can hold it that long, so given that I've seen the show before, I told Molly to see if she could find a friend from school who would want to use my ticket. Then my parents are taking us out to dinner Saturday night, just to a neighborhood restaurant so we'll be close. I don't know if it's some sort of special occasion or if they just feel like they haven't been giving us enough attention lately (my brother has been having terrible back problems the past several weeks, so my parents have been helping out a lot with my niblings).

And because no post is complete without a puppy pic, here is an example of how dainty our little pup can be:

She's continuing to make good progress with house training (very few accidents, likely because she often goes to the door and sits when she needs to go out) and generally has been getting up only once in the middle of the night. What we really need to work on now is not barking and growling at other people, especially the Mister. And her DNA is on its way to a lab to be analyze, so soon we'll have a better idea what breeds are in her (and maybe how big we can expect her to be)!

I hope you have a wonderful first weekend in May -- and if you're headed to Maryland Sheep and Wool this weekend, kindly fondle some yarn and have some ribbon chips on my behalf!

Good News to End the Week

When Friday morning comes, I always think of it as the start of the weekend (even with a day of work ahead of me), and who doesn't like starting off the weekend with good news for a change? I've got three items of that sort to share today.

Good Thing #1: I finished up my sister-in-law's socks Wednesday evening and blocked them yesterday, so they'll be ready to go to her tomorrow.

I'm a little miffed that the stripes matched all the way until the end, when they didn't, but I suppose that's down to how the yarn is dyed (they're knit from Knit Picks Felici, which is dyed by machine, as opposed to the hand-dyed self-striping yarn I use a lot). They're the same stitch count and the same length, maybe off a round or two, but that alone wouldn't have caused such a discrepancy. Oh well! She's a gracious recipient and if it bothers her, I doubt she'll tell me about it.

Good Thing #2: We are getting new ovens. I've already mentioned this in replies to some comments to my last post, but I'll share the whole story here for everyone. We have double wall ovens, and we're on our second set from the same company (JennAir) since we redid our kitchen in 2009. The first set lasted longer than the second, which had only just gone out of warranty at the end of February. The Mister called the appliance store where we bought them, and the store then directed him to JennAir, which told him the particular ovens we have are discontinued, so there's no way to fix them. But he then got directed to some alternate resolution group that JennAir has, and initially they offered to replace the ovens with different models at cost -- but when he mentioned to them that this is the second time we've had to replace both ovens in about five years, they said they'd replace them at about 1/4 of what we paid for the most recent set! I'd say that's just about the best outcome we could have gotten. The new ovens are on their way, to be installed by the local appliance store, and it's possible we could have them in time for the first Passover seder next Saturday, which we are supposed to be hosting (and for which we'd very much need functional ovens!). In the interim, we're planning meals that require cooking on the stove, in the microwave, or using a toaster oven -- did you know that you can bake a decent potato in a toaster oven? And if the ovens don't arrive in time, we'll just be extra cozy having seder at my parents' place.

Good Thing #3: Last weekend, the Mister bought a new car. That is not the good thing, but it's the impetus for what comes next. His previous car was still in good shape but was likely going to require some transmission work soon, and he decided he'd rather spend his money on something new. He's notorious for taking a long time to make up his mind about something, but the tariffs that just went into effect finally convinced him. He bought a plug-in hybrid, which I was quite happy about, but also a much fancier car than I would choose. When he was at the dealership, he texted to ask me if I wanted to talk it over with him before he made the deal, and I told him it was his decision because it would be his car -- and that if he got it, I felt it was time that I got a dog.

You see where this is going, right?

This sweet girl, an almost 4-month-old Jack Russell Terrier mix, will be coming to live with us next weekend. She's coming from a organization in Kentucky that rescues dogs from high-kill shelters; they have her mother and her four siblings. Their post for her describes her as "sweet, snuggly, and always looking for love and affection," which is pretty much exactly what we wanted in a dog. Her mother weighs less than 20 pounds, so we expect her to stay on the small side, too. The rescue organization named her Kitty (what a silly name for puppy!), but we will be calling her Ruthie -- full name, Ruth Barker Digsburg. 

Molly and I are ecstatic; the Mister seems to be accepting it. We girls will be going shopping this weekend to get everything we need to welcome her, and I've already read a book on puppy training. Although I grew up with a dog, she was about a year old and already housebroken when we got her (not to mention very meek and well behaved because she'd been adopted once before and then returned to the shelter when that family couldn't afford to keep her), so this is a whole new ball of wax. I'm hoping my boss will be amenable to cutting back my time in the office, at least for the first few weeks while we get her settled. Expect lots of puppy pictures and probably less knitting and reading than usual in the months ahead! And I welcome any advice those of you who have experience with puppies have to offer!

That's it from me for now. I hope you have some good things in your life this weekend!

Unraveled, Week 14/2025

It's been a wild few days here. On Sunday, our ovens died (and this is after we'd just replaced them several years ago), and that foiled some baking plans and made dinner prep a bit complicated. Then, after a warmer weekend that encouraged pretty much every living thing outside to bloom, we go a return of winter yesterday, though at least the sun came out for the afternoon. It's supposed to be wet off and on for the foreseeable future, but I guess that I should expect that now that it's April! And it's Wednesday, which means it's time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers.

On my long to-do list over the weekend was to swatch for handspun sweater, which I started but didn't manage to complete until Monday. The one benefit of the weather turning colder is that it meant the radiators came back on, so after washing it Monday afternoon, it was dry by Tuesday. Even better? My stitch gauge looks pretty much spot on and row gauge isn't off so much that I can't make it work.

I was undecided about how to use the two skeins of yarn (two different colorways from Southern Cross Fibre with slightly different fiber content), but I think I am just going to use them both the whole way through the sweater and alternate every two rounds for micro-stripes. I'd thought about fading from one to the other, but then I couldn't decide which one I wanted to be on top. I'm getting 9.5 rounds per inch, so each stripe is going to be less than a quarter inch in width, and I think I'll get a nice blending effect. And if I've knit a bit and it looks terrible, I'll just rip and start over!

My top priority at the moment, though, is finishing up my sister-in-law's socks, which are on the home stretch:

I prefer knitting with long circulars, but it makes for awkward photography.

I expect that I should be able to get the second sock finished later this week, and I'll be seeing her on Saturday and can give them to her then as a belated birthday gift.

After my eyes uncrossed after reading all those names last week, I got some good reading time in last week.

Remember how I recently reread Jane Austen's Mansfield Park? The reason is because I wanted to refresh my memory of the story ahead of reading This Motherless Land, which is a retelling rather than a modern update. It follows the lives of two cousins over several decades. First, we meet Funke in Nigeria. The daughter of a Nigerian father and a (white) British mother, she hears stories about the magical house in England where her mother grew up and is content with her life. When a great tragedy happens, she is sent to that house to live, only to discover that it's old and dilapidated and full of unfriendly relatives, especially her aunt, who is intensely bitter about how her life has turned out after her sister left. The one bright spot is Funke's cousin, Liv, who is nearly the same age and is desperate to be her friend and protector. The two become inseparable as they grow up, only to be split apart by an accident that sends Funke away from the place she had begun to think of as home. We see how the two cousins reconcile the split and the choices they make with the lives they've been given in the aftermath, all the while trying to come to grips with who they are and what makes a place home. While I found the connections to Mansfield Park to be slight, it's an enjoyable story that comments on race, class, and culture. I gave it 4 stars.

I expected How to Read a Book to be a bit "women's fiction"-y, but I was surprised by its emotion and depth. This novel follows three main characters: Violet, a woman in her early 20s who is in prison for manslaughter; Harriet, a retired English teacher now running a book club in Violet's prison; and Frank, the widower of the woman Violet killed. When Violet is released from prison and find her family cannot forgive her, she tries to make a new life in Portland, Maine. In a bookstore, the three meet by accident, and that meeting changes the trajectory of all their lives. I wouldn't call this heavy reading, but it does address issues like grief, forgiveness, and life after incarceration -- and, as the title suggests, it emphasizes the power of books. Interestingly, both this book and This Motherless Land feature grey African parrots, which was an amazing coincidence! I listened to this one and found it easy to follow. I gave it 4 stars as well.

Finally, the real star of this past week's reading: The History of Sound is a collection of short stories set in New England over the course of several centuries. They are connected in an interesting way, with each story having another that pairs with it. This isn't to say that the stories in each pair have the same characters or even take place in the same time period; there's just some way they're connected. And the stories are beautifully written and inventive. I think one of my favorites (or at least, in my view, the most original) is an imagined transcript of an episode of the podcast Radiolab, so well done that I showed the first page to my husband and then played him the intro to the podcast so he could appreciate it as well. I savored these stories over about a week, but the whole collection is a pretty quick read. I also found each and every story to be satisfying, which is saying a lot; my biggest complaint about short stories is that I often feel I want more when I finish them, and few collections I've read have been this satisfying. I'm so glad that I bought myself a copy of this book rather than waiting for it from the library, and I'm passing it along to my parents next. I gave it 5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Deep Breath Before the Rush

Good morning and happy Monday, friends. I am bracing myself for a busy week -- commencement lists are due to me today, which means I'm in for a week of reading page after page of names that I have to ensure are in alphabetical order. It turns out that the end of last week was an excellent time to take a couple of days off before things get hectic again, and even though it wasn't a terribly exciting long weekend, it was restful, and that was much needed. Molly and I enjoyed the bonus time together, and I'm looking forward to having her around the house for one more week.

I spent most of my knitting time this weekend working on a chicken.

I call this the "spatchcocked" phase of the project.

The yarn leftover from Molly's socks turns out to be pretty perfect for knitting a bird and is working out very nicely to give some variation to the fabric without having to get too fancy with other yarns. I'll be using the lighter purple for the feathers on top of the chicken's head and yellow for the beak. I'm also going to be embroidering the eyes rather than using safety eyes, both in the interest of safety and because I think the safety eyes might look a little demonic because of the smaller scale of the project. I'm not doing anything different with the pattern other than using fingering weight yarn and size 2 needles. I'll be sure to share a photo of this when it's finished alongside my regularly sized chicken so you can get a sense of scale.

While chicken knitting has been enjoyable, there's not all that much left of it and it's not something I can do while reviewing lists of names, so I needed to cast on something fairly mindless. As it happens, today is my other sister-in-law's birthday, and I would have started these earlier had I remembered that before this weekend, but it is what it is. Unlike the SIL I just finished socks for, this one has very large feet (9.5 inches long and 9.25 inches around), so I typically stick to ankle socks for her.

The label is a little hard to read, but these are being knit out of Knit Picks Felici in the colorway Space Disco (isn't that a great name?). I'm going to knit probably a couple inches of cuff and then start the heel, and I'll do the whole foot in stockinette. I last knit her socks about this time last year, also out of Felici, and did the same thing.

I've saved the best news about the long weekend for last: Just as we were getting ready to head out the door for our haircuts on Friday, my phone pinged with an email notifying me that I'd gotten in off the waitlist to SSK! I yelled for Molly to tell her, and the poor girl thought I was yelling at her because we were running late! Needless to say, once I told her what was up, she was very excited. We've now booked flights and a place to stay (the on-site housing has been full since January, so I reserved a Vrbo that's literally across the street from the retreat center). The event begins on a Wednesday evening, but we are flying in midday on Tuesday so that we can have a bit of time for some extra sightseeing. Neither of us is really a country music fan, but one of us is a devoted Swiftie, and apparently the Country Music Hall of Fame houses the Taylor Swift Education Center, so we might have to make a visit. Personally, I'd like to go back to the Parthenon and see the inside. And I wouldn't mind another visit to Parnassus Books, either! We've still got several months to plan and prioritize, but it's so nice to have something big to look forward to.

With that, I'll sign off for now. I will see some of you online tomorrow evening at the Read With Us Zoom, and I'll be back with an update on Wednesday. In the meantime, here's a little hello from Dippy, who hopes you enjoyed the first weekend of spring!

Friday Finishes

Technically, today is the first full day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, but it sure doesn't feel like it here. A front came through yesterday, bringing rain and wind, and this morning it's back in the 30s. Brrr! At least the sun is out.

I spent my day off yesterday finishing up both of my active projects. I had a little bit of plying left to do on the skein of handspun, so I took care of that right after breakfast and then wound off the skein after my workout. Thanks to the temperature dropping and the heat coming back on, the finished yarn is dry this morning.

As I hoped, it's a fingering weight (mostly; like any handspun, there's some variation) and measuring about 416 yards. It's also very bouncy and stretchy, which is pretty typical for Targhee. And I've already pulled out fiber for the next spin, which I'll probably spin the same way:

The lighting isn't great, but can you tell I was in a particular mood when I ordered these?

Yesterday's other finish was my sister-in-law's socks, which required just a bit more knitting on the foot and the toe to get done.

I'm very happy with how these turned out, and I can't imagine my sister-in-law won't be anything but thrilled with them (she's incredibly knitworthy). These will be getting a wash and then will be packed away until her birthday in September.

Of course I couldn't leave my needles empty after I finished the socks, so I have started my niece's Emotional Support Chicken:

I'm really enjoying how this yarn is becoming feathers! I'm also interested to see how big the chicken ends up being given that I'm using fingering weight yarn and size 2/2.75 mm needles.

On tap for today, other than the usual stuff (working out, cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry), are haircuts for both of us. My hairdresser always jokes that I only manage to get in to see her once a year, but Molly has informed me that we were last there in May, so it's been less than a year this time! I need to chop a couple of inches off -- I'm at that stage where my hair is getting caught in everything -- and Molly's hoping for some layers that will show off her curls. Tomorrow, we have an appointment to apply for her new passport. She got her first one back in 2019, when we were planning to travel abroad in 2020, but it's since expired. We've decided that we're finally going to take that trip next spring, probably right after the end of the school year, so we're getting all our ducks in a row now. I'm also looking forward to sleeping in the next two days; even though I've taken two days off from work, I've still gotten up with my usual alarm.

Here's hoping it's a good weekend for all of you!

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!

Unraveled, Week 51/2024

It's that time again -- time to join Kat and the Unravelers! And I've got another finished hat (though this one is so tiny, I'm not sure it really counts all that much).

I totally winged this little hat, casting on 72 on size 4/3.5 mm needles, working until the body of the hat measured 4 inches (with the brim rolled), decreasing to 8, and then working a three-dimensional leaf. I used a whopping 30 grams/69 yards of yarn. And with this project complete, I am officially done with holiday knitting for the year!

I've actually cast on for another hat, which I'm trying to finish before we leave on our trip (but it's okay if I don't). The pattern is Coronal, which has been in my library for a number of years and is designed by one of my fellow Giftalong mods. I'm using the leftovers from my youngest nephew's gnome, though as I sat down to cast on, I realized that one yarn is DK and one is worsted. They are close enough that it shouldn't make a big difference, and this one is going into the charity pile in any case, so if the sizing comes out a little weird, I won't have to worry about it not fitting a specific recipient.

There's not been a ton of time for reading in the past week, but I've finished one book.

I'm a big fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and have wanted to read more of her novels, so when I got an email from NetGalley inviting me to read her forthcoming novel Dream Count, I didn't hesitate. This is a novel about four women, all African and all connected. We open with Chia, who is our primary narrator, during the early days of COVID lockdown. She is living in Maryland but is originally from Nigeria and has traveled widely in her career as a freelance travel writer. Unable to go anywhere, she takes the time she must stay at home to reflect on her relationships and her regrets related to them. Then there's her friend Zikora, a successful lawyer who has wanted to get married and have children more than anything and who finds herself abandoned by the man she thought was her soulmate when she tells him she's pregnant. There's Omelogor, Chia's cousin, who has made a career working in Nigerian banking (and made a lot of money by being involved in money laundering), who is now trying to help other women succeed in business and fending off pushy relatives who pressure her to marry and have a family. And finally there's Kadiatou, who came to the United States with her daughter after being widowed and who brings the other three women together when she is sexually assaulted at her job as a hotel housekeeper. We get to spend time with all of these women and to experience their heartaches, their frustrations with racism and misogyny, and their hopes and dreams. Though they all have very different personalities, what they have in common is their strength and boldness -- these are no shrinking violets. I gave it 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book will be published March 4, 2025.

I am trying to finish up The Glorious Heresies before we leave so I don't have to schlep it with me; I've got about 100 pages left. I know my mother will have books for me to read there, plus I have a ton of books on my Kindle shelf and library holds. I am looking forward to lots of extra reading time!

Let's Wrap It Up

I am always happy to see Friday come, but this one is especially welcome. The Mister has been on two work trips this week, which means more school runs for me, and we've had frigid temperatures and some snow to boot. I do not like driving in winter conditions at the best of times, but it's even more scary when I have a not-fully-healed broken foot! Thankfully Molly's school isn't far and I don't have to worry about coming home and walking into the office after I drop her off.

The week's been fairly quiet as far as work is concerned, but my boss let me know yesterday that another magazine just arrived, so I imagine that it will take up all of my remaining work days until our winter break (don't you just love it when other people want to clear off their desks before a break and push all their work on you?). I'm sure she'll tell me that I don't have to get it all done before the break, but who wants to think about the work they still have to do the whole time they're on vacation? At least it will make the break feel even better, and as this week has given me lots of knitting and reading time, I can't complain too much.

Here's a very bad, very early morning photo of my nephew's hat as it is currently:

That marker in the middle was placed Wednesday evening, so you can see that in about 24 hours, I knit up about five or six inches. I weighed my remaining yarn last night before I put the project away and it's around 50 g, so I'm past the halfway mark. It would be great if I could wrap up this project by the end of the weekend, not least because we need to wrap all the holiday gifts for the niblings soon!

Today's to-do list includes baking challah, which I haven't done in a while. One loaf will come with us to dinner tonight and one will go in the freezer for a future dinner. My father and brother have a client holiday party to go to this evening, so the rest of us will be taking dinner over to my sister-in-law (much easier for her to deal with two small children at her own house!). This weekend we'll be celebrating Molly's 15th birthday (can you believe this tiny thing is going to be 15?!) with a family brunch on Sunday morning.

Have a wonderful weekend, and please take a moment to go congratulate Vera on the arrival of her granddaughter!

Unraveled, Week 50/2024

Week 50! The end of this year is getting awfully close! But Wednesday keeps coming around reliably every week, and this week, as always, I'm joining the fun with Kat and the Unravelers. This Wednesday, there's more gnome fun:

Pattern: Never Not Gnoming, largest size (Gnorbert), by Sarah Schira
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bona Fide in OOAK (blue) and Teddy Bear (brown) and Lion Brand Baby Soft in White
Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)
Started/Completed: December 6/December 10
Mods: omitted arms

This is the gnome I've been making for my youngest nephew, who's only 19 months old, so I've stuck with the very simplest pattern. I've also eliminated the skinny arms that are called for because I figured he'd just pull them off (his parents are frustrated with his current habit of yanking on and tearing book pages). I had a slight snafu with the needles, discovering only after I finished closing up the body that I was using a US 4 and not a US 2 as I thought (I was trying to knit at a dense gauge so the stuffing wouldn't show through), but I wasn't about to undo it all and start over. I think it's fine. Straightforward, simple, and (in true fashion for me) a little wonky. I just hope my nephew is still into gnomes when he opens this guy!

I've also made some progress on the hat for my oldest nephew, and now that I've moved into the long straight stockinette portion, this should fly.

Funnily enough, I made a snafu with this project as well. This is going to be a double-ended hat, and the idea is to use up as much of the yarn as possible, so I intended to weigh the yarn before and after I finished the crown so I'll know how much I'll need to leave to finish the other end. But guess who forgot to do that? Oops. I did weigh the yarn after I finished the increases and I still had 98 g (meaning my skein was likely more than 100 g to start), so I think I'll just go with about 10 g and hope for the best. Worst case, I can add some scraps if I run short.

I have finished two more books this past week, both good reads.

I had heard about Our Wives Under the Sea on a podcast, but it was one of those books where the person talking about it didn't want to say too much because it would give away a lot of the book. The basic premise is this: Miri is struggling because her wife, Leah, has recently returned home from a work trip in a research submarine that was meant to last three weeks and turned into five months, and Leah no longer seems like the Leah who left on the trip. In alternating chapters, Leah tells the story of what happened on the sub. This book is categorized as horror, which is not a genre I typically read; aside from a few icky body-related things that happen (and which aren't described in detail or at length), this didn't read like horror to me. Rather, there's a building tension as the reader learns more about what happened to Leah and begins to question things. It's intriguing and mysterious and in many ways ambiguous -- and it's very well written. I gave it 4 stars.

Madness: Race and Insanity in Jim Crow Asylum is the first book selected for a new community read effort in my area. I was already interested in reading before I heard about this program, and I was even more excited to get a free copy of it from my local bookstore! It's hard to say that I enjoyed this book, because it deals with some very difficult subjects, but I did find it to be very informative and enlightening. This book looks at the history of mental hospitals through the lens of Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, which was built specifically to house Black patients. The author looks at the history of the hospital and its residents to paint a picture of the impact of systemic racism and connection between mental health care and the criminal justice system. The online blurb about this book connects it to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and I'd say that's a good one -- and there's even a direct connection between the two. I gave this book 4 stars; really what kept it from being a 5-star read for me was that I was unable to turn my internal editor off and was just bothered enough by what I felt was poor editing -- sentence fragments that didn't seem to be intentionally included for emphasis, improperly placed commas, etc. I would have made a lot of changes if I had edited this book! But most people likely won't notice this kind of stuff, and the content of the book certainly makes it worth reading.

I'm currently reading the last selection for the small group of us exploring past winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction, The Glorious Heresies, which frankly I'm having trouble getting into but that I am committed to finishing (and I see that Kym enjoyed it, so I'm optimistic!). I'm actually going to miss the Zoom discussion of this one because we'll be flying home from our trip, but seeing as I went to the trouble of buying the book, I might as well read it anyway! I'm also about a quarter of the way through an ARC of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's forthcoming novel, Dream Count.

A Rainy Start

It's a dark, wet Monday morning here. After a partially frigid weekend, we are due to hit the mid-50s today, but it's going to rain most of the day. We need the water, so I won't complain, but it'll be a dark day. Not great for taking blog photos!

We had a pretty relaxing weekend, and the big excitement for me was being able to do a Target run on Saturday now that I can drive. The funny thing about being out and about with the boot on is that you start seeing other people with the same predicament, and as we were walking into the store, we passed a man in the same boot, and we laughingly acknowledged each other. Molly's Glee Club performance went well that night, though we all were a bit frozen after. Yesterday was mostly about catching up on the to-do list: Molly spent much of the day doing homework, while I did laundry and finished up my sister-in-law's socks:

I used my SHaGS pattern (Ravelry link) for these and Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce in the colorway Wild Atlantic Wildflowers. I didn't bother to get the stripe sequence to match (just too long of a repeat for that), but I did cast on at the same transition point, where the gray in between changes over to one of the bright colors. As usual there was apparently just enough variation in my gauge that the toe of the second sock (right) didn't have the same blip of gray at the end that the first one did. I know for a fact that my sister-in-law will not care, so I'm not stressing about it.

I also cast on for the last two planned holiday gift knits over the weekend:

On the left is the gnome for my youngest nephew, which is being knit in DK, and on the right is a double-ended hat for my oldest nephew. Because of the weather, the colors are looking more drab than they are in reality (they're sitting on top of our duvet cover, which is gray and white, not brown and white). There's really not all that much knitting left on the gnome, and once I get past the increases on the hat, it'll be a ton of mindless stockinette, so I very well could have both projects wrapped up this week.

The Mister has a couple of quick work trips this week, and I'm trying to wrap up my last big project for the year. I'm also working on trying to get in my physical therapy exercises on my foot and getting it stronger before our trip, but it still feels very weird to walk around without the boot. Here's hoping it's not too stressful of a week for all of us!

A Mixed Bag

TGIF! It's been a long week, with the Mister on a work trip and wintry weather moving in. But at least we're now at the end of it.

I appreciated all the good thoughts for my visit with the orthopedist! The bad news is that I'm not done with the boot altogether. He said to keep wearing it for the next three weeks, especially when I'm out of the house -- BUT I am supposed to start walking around without it when I'm at home and I can take it off to sleep! And I can drive again! The timeline means that I'll still be wearing it for a bit when we go to Florida, but maybe they'll have some pity on me when we're boarding the plane and let me get on early. He gave me a bunch of exercises to do to, so I will be working those into my routine and trying to get around bootless as much as possible at home so that my foot gets stronger. While part of me is disappointed that I couldn't ditch the boot completely, I had a feeling it wasn't going to happen anyway, and now I officially don't have to worry about showing up at the office for the rest of the year.

In other good news, look what I finished on Wednesday night!

Pattern: Someone to Write Gnome About by Sarah Schira
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in Mid-Winter (hat and socks), Knit Picks Gloss Fingering in Dusk (body and legs), and handspun wool of mystery (nose, beard, and sock accents)
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm and US 1.5/2.5 mm
Started/Completed: November 24/December 3

I think I may have mentioned before that I really had no idea how big this guy was going to be, despite the fact that the dimensions are written right there on the first page of the pattern. (I fully admit that other than the needle sizes needed, I didn't really read the first page all that closely.) But I'm not sure this photo really gives you a good sense, so how's this for scale?

I know my brother will love him, so knitting him was worth it, but I doubt I will do it again. And I'm quite happy that I've chosen a much simpler pattern for my nephew. There is nothing wrong with the pattern -- Sarah writes excellent patterns with lots of great information about techniques! I just found it a bit too fiddly for my taste.

Now that the big guy is done, I'll be casting on soon for the one for my nephew, and I've pulled out my sister-in-law's socks. I've just started the heel on the second sock, and they're in stockinette, so I can easily work on them while reading, in a meeting, etc.

Tomorrow night Molly is performing with the school Glee Club at a local neighborhood's light-up night, and on Sunday evening we've been invited to dinner at the new house of some friends. Now that I can drive again, we girls might also get wild and crazy and do a Target run! Mostly I want to hide inside where it's warm and get used to not having a boot on. Stay warm out there, friends, and have a restful weekend!

Unraveled, Week 49/2024

Oh dear, that number is getting awfully close to 52 and the end of the year! It's Wednesday again, so time to join Kat and the Unravelers. I'm sure not one of you will be surprised by what I'm working on at the moment:

If I'd used brown for the body, this would look like a potato.

Don't let appearances fool you; this gnome is not as close to being finished as he appears. But I am pretty confident that he will be finished up today or tomorrow at the latest. I finished up the body on Monday, including the wonky stuffing (but I think in a gnome, wonkiness adds personality). My big accomplishment yesterday was finishing a leg that ends in a tiny sock, and lest you think that's not a big deal, here's a close-up photo of it:

Including the color used for the leg, there are five color changes involved with this sock! I did make a minor modification to the gusset set up (yes, there is actually a heel flap and gusset!) so that I could avoid cutting my main sock color, but I still had nine ends to deal with in a sock that's only a few inches long. Fortunately, because the leg is sewn closed at the top when it's attached to the body, it's just fine to let those ends hang out on the inside. I secured them so the knitting would start to fall apart, but I didn't worry too much about weaving in my ends all that carefully. Once leg/sock number two is complete, all that will remain is knitting the beard and the nose and assembling everything.

This project has been taking up pretty much all my time, but I will pull out my sister-in-law's socks and start the much simpler gnome for my nephew once it's complete.

I did not get as much reading time in as I would have liked over the long weekend (frankly, I think I was so overwhelmed by all the peopling that my brain wasn't up for thinking much), but I have finished two books this past week.

Katie alerted me to the fact that the audiobook of Louise Erdrich's Antelope Woman (read by the author) is available on Hoopla, so I'd had it bookmarked until I had time to listen. First of all, listening to Louise (in my head, we're on a first-name basis) read her book is always a treat and is a rare occurrence. But this book also has an interesting history. It was first published in 1998 as The Antelope Wife, but she has since revisited and revised it, and the audio version just came out last year. I found it to be pretty typical Erdrich: It centers Indigenous characters and incorporates their legends and stories, and there's humor even when dealing with very sad and serious subjects. I have to admit that I had the problem with this book that I often do with audio: I missed bits here and there because my attention wandered, so there were several moments when I couldn't identify a character name or where I was confused about what was happening. But the writing is magical as always. I have a hard copy of the original book, so at some point I will get it out to see both what I missed and where it differs from the new version. I gave it 4 stars.

I have gotten better about not downloading the monthly Kindle freebie books (there have been only a few good ones over the years), but I still look at what's there, and when I saw Fredrik Backman's name last month, I didn't even really read the description. The Answer Is No is technically a short story and at only 60-some pages took me maybe an hour to read, but it was a fun little diversion. Lucas is a 30-something man who lives by himself, works from home, and orders his pad thai to be delivered to his door so he doesn't have to deal with other people. But then people start knocking on his apartment door, and soon he finds himself dealing with rather a lot of people. It's all rather ridiculous and not particularly realistic, but it has Backman's signature feel-good moments -- and did I mention it took only about an hour to read? I gave it 3 stars.

I am still reading Madness, taking my time both because I'm reading it before bed and because it deals with subjects worthy of thought and consideration, and yesterday I started Our Wives Under the Sea. The latter is a real departure from what I typically read given that it's classified as horror. I heard about it on a podcast and was intrigued enough to give it a try. I'm only a few chapters in, so there's nothing truly scary yet, but I continue to be intrigued. It's a short book, so I should be able to give a report next week.

What are you making and reading this week?

P.S. I'm headed to the orthopedist for my follow-up appointment tomorrow morning. Good thoughts are appreciated!

Back to the Grind

It was especially hard to get up this morning, even for a Monday, but today it's back to the usual routine. After a major coffee-making fail over the weekend, I've got two cups in my system this morning to get me going.

It was a cold weekend, but I did manage to get out on Saturday to visit an LYS where my friend Amy was having a pop-up. I don't think I've seen her since I last went with her to Rhinebeck (that was in 2021), and she was absolutely gobsmacked to see Molly because the last time she'd seen her was, we believe, 2019.

It was my first visit to this particular store, so naturally I couldn't leave empty handed. Molly picked out this set of mini skeins, and I picked up a much-needed set of 40 inch size 6 needles (that was the size giving me trouble on the sleeves of my sweater). Amy also has asked me to design something new using her yarn, so I came home with this skein of her Funky, designed to be a dupe for Spincycle. She's going to be sending me a skein of a natural color to go along with it, as I have a colorwork pattern planned.

Much of my knitting time over the weekend was spent working on my brother's gnome. I've included a ruler in this photo because before I started knitting, I really didn't have a sense of just how big this gnome is.

The pattern does give the finished dimensions, but I didn't even glance at them until recently. Fully completed and stretched out, it'll be almost two feet tall! I should be able to finish the body today, so at some point I need to dig out the poly pellets and stuffing.

I am starting to get a little panicked about not having enough time to finish all my holiday knitting -- in addition to this gnome, I need to finish my sister-in-law's socks (sock 2 is started) and cast on my youngest nephew's gnome and a hat for my oldest nephew. I know that if I really focus, I should be able to get it all done, but I also have to work and do all the usual chores around the house and pack for our trip to Florida and do all the other social things on the calendar this month. Too much to do and not enough time -- must be December!

And Now We Recover

It doesn't feel like a Friday, but I know that it is and I am glad that I have three days to recover from yesterday. It turns out that even when you don't do all the cooking, hosting a crowd of more than 20, including half a dozen little kids, for Thanksgiving dinner is utterly exhausting. It was nice to have everyone together, but truthfully I spent a lot of the evening at the fringes of the crowd (the introvert in me fully coming out). I had planned to take a lot of photos and barely managed any, though I did catch a rare moment with my youngest nephew:

We'll have to work on looking at the camera, but it was a big triumph to get him to sit still next to me and smile long enough to take a photo.

Molly and I remembered to take a photo together at the end of the night:

Please appreciate her hair -- I spent a good half hour blowing it out for her.

The food was delicious and plentiful; I had a couple of glasses of Cava; and because the majority of the kids in attendance were under the age of 10, everyone was gone by 7 p.m. By 8, we had the house cleaned up and pretty much back to normal, and we all passed out at more or less the normal time. We slept in this morning, and I'm now nursing my second cup of coffee after a breakfast of pumpkin muffins. We're headed to some family friends' to enjoy leftovers this evening. Today, though, I plan to do some knitting. Here's where things stand on my current gnome:

I finally finished the hat -- which I certainly hope is the most involved part of the pattern -- and started what I suppose is technically the gnome's butt. I'm planning to be pretty much monogamous with this project for the next several days because I have a feeling it will take me longer to finish than any of my other planned gifts.

We have very little planned for the weekend. I'm hoping that the Mister can drive me and Molly to an LYS tomorrow, because my friend Amy is having a pop-up there for Small Business Saturday, but there's nothing else I really want to do other than my usual weekend stuff. I think we all need a calm, quiet weekend to recover from all the work of yesterday and prepare for the holiday rush that's ahead. I hope you have the same!

Unraveled, Week 48/2024

We've reached that special Wednesday -- the one right before Thanksgiving, when it feels like everyone else is already on vacation. I used to actually enjoy working this day, in the time when I still went to the office every day, because there was usually almost no one there and I had nothing to do, and often we'd be allowed to leave early. Of course, now I can be a lot more productive on a quiet work day.

I am joining in with Kat and the Unravelers as I do every Wednesday to talk about what I'm making and what I'm reading. Now that my sweater and my big honking skein of yarn (more on that in a little bit) are done, what I'm making is gnomes. Yes, gnomes!

I think I have mentioned before that my brother has a thing for gnomes. I made him and my sister-in-law coordinating gnomes years ago and have given him gnome-related gifts in the past. This year, I think he's due for another one. I am making him Someone to Write Gnome About, Sarah Schira's most recent mystery gnome. I have signed up for one of her mystery make-alongs in the past and ended up not really caring for the resulting gnome, so I have learned to wait until I see finished projects and then decide if I want to buy the pattern. That was the case with this one. A number of people I follow made it, and I thought it was adorable. As you can see, I decided to go with the more muted skein of yarn for the hat (which is a lot bigger than I realized). It's Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in the colorway Mid-Winter, which I think has a muted University of Michigan colors look to it, making it quite suitable for my brother. I'll be using that dark blue (a very old skein of Knit Picks Gloss) for the body and the cream handspun for the beard and nose. And my nephew will also be getting a gnome, now that my brother has taught him the word and he can identify all the gnomes they have around the house. His will be the much simpler Never Not Gnoming using the bright blue and light brown (as well as that little ball of white). The pattern calls for fingering, but I'll be using DK to make a bigger gnome that's more of a stuffed animal size.

Speaking of the big skein of handspun, it's done and I have a color photo to share with you all -- I certainly hope I'm not spoiling anyone! It took me a good hour and a half to skein this yarn baby on Saturday afternoon, even with my Super Skeiner (which my shoulder was very glad I was using). I knew I was going to have a lot of yarn, but I didn't imagine it would end up being as much as it is: a bit more than 960 yards of fingering! It also weighs 270 grams, so clearly the bits of fiber that were supposed to be 10 grams each were a bit heavier.

I spun this as a two-ply fractal. What I did to achieve this was to go through the fiber packets in order, splitting each in half and spinning one half in order on one bobbin for the first ply. For the second ply, I split the remaining fiber in half again and went through the order twice (so if I had five colors, the first ply would have been spun ABCDE and the second ABCDEABCDE). The colors were clearly dyed and arranged to flow from one to the next, so the yarn I spun is very pleasing in that respect. Molly suggested I use this to make a big squishy shawl, which sounds good to me, but I won't be casting on just yet. I think this needs to marinate in the stash for a bit.

On to reading! I've finished two books this week.

I've been a big fan of Ina Garten for a long time. I always enjoy watching her Food Network show, and I've never had a miss when cooking from her cookbooks. I knew a little bit about her background, but not much, so when I heard she had a memoir coming out earlier this year, it immediately went on my list. I found Be Ready When the Luck Happens for sale at Costco last month and didn't think twice about buying a copy. In a word, this book is a delight. If you like Ina's personality on her cooking shows, you'll like this book. It's an easy read (but well written!) and reveals quite a lot about her life. If you think she's always been a rich lady from the Hamptons, you'd be wrong. As a bonus, there are photos and recipes sprinkled here and there. If you're a quick reader like my mother, who I've passed my copy on to, you could read this in a day. I gave it 4 stars.

I was invited to read and review All the Water in the World and was intrigued by a comparison in the pitch to Station Eleven, one of my all-time favorites. In an unspecified time in the future, global warming has become so severe that glaciers have melted and cities on the East Coast have flooded. Thirteen-year-old Nonie, her parents, and her older sister have taken shelter in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City with a small group of others committed to protecting the museum's collections. But life is precarious, with no medicines, new insect-borne illnesses, and superstorms that threaten all remaining structures. When one of those storms breaches the museum, Nonie, her sister, her father, and a friend -- the sole survivors -- must set out on a boat to try to get to higher ground, and there are plenty of dangers other than the water and the weather to contend with. While I appreciated the warning about our failure to address the threat of climate change and a look at what might happen if we hoard resources rather than work together to help each other, much of this book felt to me like something I had already read. In particular, I kept thinking of Parable of the Sower. I also felt that the writing was a bit lacking and at times confusing, and the editor in me couldn't stop myself from thinking of ways to improve it. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 7, 2025.

I am currently reading two books: Antelope Woman (on audio) and Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, which has been selected for a local community read.

Tomorrow, of course, is Thanksgiving here in the United States, so I want to end this post by saying how thankful I am for all of you, dear readers. Those of you who read and comment regularly have become dear friends to me over the past several years, even though I've only actually met a few of you in person. I am so grateful to have found this community of like-minded crafters and readers who have been there to celebrate my successes, cheer me up when I've faced obstacles, and give me sage advice. I hope that those of you who will be celebrating tomorrow have delicious food and wonderful company to be thankful for.