But at Least There's Coffee

It was very hard to get up this morning. Mondays are always tough, and it was a busy weekend. Rainbow and I ventured out to run some errands Saturday morning, and in the afternoon there was the usual cleaning and laundry to do. Yesterday I spent four hours (yes, you read that correctly!) on a Zoom board meeting. This was after a call on Thursday that lasted more than three hours. And I expect there will be more long calls in the weeks to come as well. I can't really say much, but I think it's obvious that there are some big, serious issues being discussed.

The only good thing about all these hours on Zoom is that I am using them to get a lot of knitting done. For instance, over the course of yesterday's call, I knit about half a sleeve on my sweater:

Click to embiggen and you'll see a little silver house charm hanging off the sleeve -- that marks where I started knitting yesterday. The sleeve is almost done now; I think I have one or two more sets of decreases to work before the cuff.

I've also made some good progress on my socks and now have two completed heels, so I'm on autopilot for while until I need to do the ribbing on the cuff of the second sock.

If you paid attention to any national news this past weekend, then you probably heard about the bridge collapse in Pittsburgh. It's not far from where we live, and it's one we've been over many, many times, so it was a shock. As it happens, my brother-in-law was running in the park right near the bridge (the trail goes underneath it) and came across it not long after it came down. He was actually able to help some people out of their cars, including, as I later learned, the husband of a knitting friend. The photos he took and shared with us were pretty surreal.

Yes, that's a bus on the right! Amazingly, no one was killed or even seriously injured, and there was less traffic on it than usual because it was not only before the height of the morning rush but there was also a school delay due to the snow, so I think only like six vehicles were on it at the time it collapsed. In an interesting twist, the day this happened, President Biden was coming to town to talk about infrastructure -- and frankly I don't think there's a better example of why we need to invest in infrastructure than this!

Today I'll be trying to stay awake and hoping for calm. I hope it's a good last day of January for you!

Growth in 2022: January

With everything going on this week -- the Mister being away on a trip, snow, bitter cold, work -- I totally spaced out on my One Little Word update earlier in the week. So I'm playing catch-up now. Thanks to Carolyn for hosting our monthly link-ups again this year!

While a lot of the growth I've had in mind for this year has been of a personal nature, I'm also thinking of ways to expand my skills or knowledge. I'm of the opinion that no matter how long we've been doing something or how well we do it, we can always learn new things, and in 2022, I want to take that approach to my knitting. You know that I've been knitting for a very long time, more than three-quarters of my life. But there are many techniques I've never tried, and this is my year to try them.

First there was the tubular bind-off. It seemed so complicated until I actually sat down to do it and saw that it was nothing more than an extra couple of rows (and easy ones, at that) and a graft. I've done it twice now on my sweater and plan to do it on the cuffs of the sleeves as well. And now that I've done the bind-off, I'm more motivated to learn the tubular cast-on as well.

Another skill I'd like to learn is the moebius cast-on. Fortuitously, Sivia Harding was recently running a sale on her patterns, so I saw it as the perfect opportunity to buy a cowl pattern that uses it:

Harmonia's Rings (Ravelry link)

I've long been thinking about making a moebius cowl with the yarn I spun a little more than a year ago with my HipStrings Base12 set, and I have just about the right amount of yarn in this skein (I'm sure I can add some more of something that will complement it if I need to or just end the cowl a bit early).

I'd really like to get started on this -- but the WIPs, particularly my sweater, my socks, and my combo spin, come first! I think the desire to try out a new skill will be good motivation to finish up my current projects.

If you've been knitting a long time like me, are there certain skills or techniques that you've never used that you want to try this year?

Have a wonderful weekend, and stay safe and warm if you're in the path of the big storm headed up the East Coast!

Unraveled, Week 4/2022

It's a frigid morning here, but the sun is coming out and it's Unraveled Wednesday again -- time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers to talk making and reading!

Last night I finally sat down with my May(be) Queen to weave in some ends on the body and do the math I needed to do on the sleeves. Why is it that we put off things that take so little time for so long? It took me less than five minutes to figure out how many stitches I needed to decrease and how often to do the decreases -- all I needed to do was measure another sweater that fits me well and do a few calculations. Weaving in ends took me most of my evening knitting time (the hour or so between when Rainbow goes to bed and I get into bed with my reading), so I only managed to pick up the stitches for the first sleeve and knit a few rounds, but it's under way now!

I still have small amounts of the first two skeins of yarn remaining from the body, but I didn't want to give myself any more ends to weave it, so I've started the sleeve with the two untouched skeins. I also tried the sweater on again last night (sorry, didn't take a photo because it was night and the light was terrible), and though it's tighter than I anticipated, it does fit. I expect blocking will loosen things up a bit and give me just a touch of positive ease.

I'm also actively working on my socks, as they are easy to do while reading for work, and I'm approaching the heel of the second sock.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, I am knitting this one toe up! I know that's not the direction I normally knit my socks, but given that this heel is designed to be worked in either direction, I thought it was prudent for me to try it out to be extra sure. The pattern is now with my tech editor, and I hope to have ti back in a week or so, so I want to finish up the second sock to take the final pictures.

I've also been putting in some plying time here and there, and my second bobbin is filling nicely -- though it does feel a bit like I'm going to be plying forever.

Reading has been pretty good this week. I've finished two books since last Wednesday, one of which I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

I know many of you have already read and loved Stanley Tucci's new memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, so I'm here to tell those of you who haven't yet picked it up that you need to read it, preferably with your ears. The audiobook isn't long (maybe 7 hours?) and goes very quickly, but every moment of it is a delight. If you're a foodie, you will love this book. Tucci takes us on a trip through his life, highlighting the hilarious and heartwarming moments that have centered around the kitchen and the table. He does drop the occasional F-bomb, if that sort of thing bothers you, but it felt perfect for the context to me. When I finished listening, I was tempted to start from the beginning and listen again, but I knew there were a lot of people on the wait list and didn't want them to have to wait any longer than necessary. I gave it 5 stars.

I purchased a Kindle copy of Agatha of Little Neon, the next Read With Us selection, rather than wait for a copy of the library because I was afraid I wouldn't get it before the discussion in March. I liked this book, though I didn't love it. I found the nuns to be entertaining and endearing, and I liked Agatha very much. But when I finished it, I found I was left wanting a little more. I still didn't have the sense that I knew Agatha all that well, and I really wanted to know what happened to her after the book ended. It's certainly a very different book from Matrix, despite the commonality of nuns as main characters, and I think we'll have a very interesting discussion. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm still slowly working my way through Braiding Sweetgrass and really need to focus on it if I want to finish it soon-ish. But at the moment I am fully immersed in Ruth Ozeki's newest novel The Book of Form and Emptiness. This is only the second book of hers that I've read, and I have a feeling I will be reading all her books at some point because I really love her style. There's such an unusual quirkiness to her writing that some might find strange but that I find really endearing.

What are you making and reading this week?

I Could Still Use Another Day

Monday morning again, eh? It always comes around so quickly. This morning, as I was trying to drag her out of bed, Rainbow proclaimed Mondays to be stupid, and I have to agree with her. A Monday after a busy weekend feels especially stupid. On Saturday, I had a good chunk of my morning taken up by a Zoom session I had to attend to finish my Girl Scout troop leader training. It was partially wasted time (normally I'd be doing laundry and cleaning the bathrooms around then), but I did get some knitting and spinning done while I was sitting there. I only had a bit of time after that ended to get my walk in, and then we headed out to my in-laws' to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday. My brother- and sister-in-law and nephew were supposed to join us, but earlier in they day they'd found out that my nephew had an exposure to a COVID case at daycare, so he's under quarantine at home for 10 days and only my brother-in-law joined us. I sent him home with the hat I'd made for my sister-in-law, and later that night she texted me to thank me. How cute does she look?

Not that I'm surprised -- she's such a gorgeous woman that she looks cute in everything -- but I was glad to see she was happy with it.

I also finished up the first of my socks Saturday night, and I couldn't be more thrilled with how the heel worked out.

I've started the second sock (which I'm knitting toe up!) and wrote up a draft of the pattern yesterday. I have a few more finishing touches to put on it before it's ready for my tech editor. I'm really excited about this one!

Meanwhile, my May(be) Queen ready for the front hem to be grafted and then it's on to the sleeves. I have a bit of mathing to do before I start, but I don't think it's entirely out of the realm of possibility that I could get through the sleeves in this last week of the month. A lot depends, of course, on how busy things are at work this week, but as I'll be working in stockinette in the round on a smaller circumference, without lots of stitch patterns to keep track of, I have a feeling they're going to be much faster. I've decided that they'll be plain stockinette, fitted, and end in a twisted rib cuff.

How was your weekend?

Not That I'm Saying I'm an Old Dog

One of the things I love about knitting is that no matter how long I've been doing it, I can always learn something new. Something that's been on my list to learn for quite a while is a tubular bind-off. Mary has been raving about this bind-off for quite some time, and it seemed like kismet that May(be) Queen called for it. As with most knitting techniques, once I actually sat down to do it, it turned out to be not nearly as difficult or as scary as I'd imagined -- really it was more time consuming than anything else.

When you do a tubular bind-off, what you're essentially doing is creating a horizontal channel (or tube) along the edge of your fabric. In this particular pattern, I was working in 1x1 rib, so there was a two-row set-up for the bind-off. In each row, I knit the knit stitches and slipped the purl stitches with the yarn in front. Next, I slipped the stitches to two needles, the knit stitches to the needle in front and the purl stitches to the needle in back. The final step is a very long graft. If you're someone who hates grafting the toe of a sock, I'd advise against this bind-off. Me? I happen to love grafting, so I didn't mind at all. I think the edge will improve with blocking but is already very attractive, and I'm excited to do it again for the other hem of this split-hem sweater.

[As an aside, I wanted to mention that I am making an effort to use the more generic term "grafting" to describe this method of stitching rather than "Kitchener stitch." The stitch was so named because it was believed that it came about during WWI, when the Earl of Kitchener was the British secretary of state for war and women were encouraged to knit socks for British soldiers. But the man was also responsible for some pretty terrible humanitarian tragedies, like concentration camps in South Africa, that I'd rather not associate with knitting.]

Also, I thought I'd share this photo of the "shark fin" sock on the foot, so you can see how it fits. It could use some blocking, but I'm quite happy with it.

As further proof of the pattern, I'm going to knit the second sock toe up, and then we'll see if anyone can tell which was knit which way at a glance. It's going to be a frigid weekend, so I'm hoping I can set aside some time to sit down with my numbers and write up a draft of the pattern to get to my tech editor. (And if any of you wants to test this out before it's formally published, let me know!)

Are there any knitting tricks you've picked up recently or that you want to try?

Have a wonderful weekend!

Unraveled, Week 3/2022

It's Wednesday again, in spite of my brain insisting that it's only Tuesday (something that happens without fail anytime I have a Monday off), so that means it's time for my weekly link-up with Kat and the Unravelers!

No unraveling has happened this week, but not that much knitting progress has been made since the weekend, either, and that's mainly because much of my attention has been focused on this:

This is the first bobbin of plied yarn from my combo spin (which is actually more green than blue, as it appears here), and there's going to be at least one more. I'm going to cram as much as I can on this bobbin before I switch it out. Plying handspun can get a little tedious; at least when I was spinning the singles, I was actively doing something and I had the novelty of each new bundle of fiber I pulled out of the bag. This is more mindless, but it's at least something that lends itself well to reading at the same time.

I have done a little knitting (though I haven't touched my sweater since the weekend). I'd cast on a sock for our trip home from Florida, and the intention was for it to be a way to try out an idea I had to combine two of my sock patterns -- one cuff down, one toe up -- into a new version that could be knit in either direction. I've been just about to the heel for a while and kept putting it off, in the way that you put off something that requires a little thought and seems like it'll require a huge effort but in actuality really doesn't take much time at all once you sit down and do it. And that was the case with this heel. About an hour of knitting time gave me proof of concept.

I know it looks a little like a shark fin, but it's a combination of gussets and a short-row heel, and it seems to work! I tried it on right after finishing and was happy with it, but I want to try it on again after knitting a bit more of the foot to be sure. Then it's just a matter of working out all the numbers for the different sizes.

Reading has been good this week! I've finished two books.

Shortly after I posted about Magpie Murders last week, I got really sucked into it, and I think I listened to the second half of the book over the course of Thursday. The story follows a book editor, Susan Ryeland, who has just gotten the latest murder mystery from her publisher's most popular author, and we read the book along with her at the start. But she discovers that the final chapters are missing from the manuscript, leaving the murder unsolved, and when the author of the book turns up dead, she finds herself involved in her own murder mystery as she tries to find the missing pages. Horowitz's detective in the book-within-a-book felt a bit like Poirot to me, but both story lines were very entertaining, and I thoroughly enjoyed both narrators. I gave it 4 stars.

The more Lauren Groff I read, the more I am impressed with her as a writer. I found the characters and the plot of Fates and Furies to be completely unrealistic and yet completely compelling, primarily because of the writing. I'm choosing to view this book as a modern Greek tragedy rather than an attempt at realism; Groff even inserts her own commentary on the plot in real time in brackets as a sort of chorus. I kept reading not because I cared about the characters, who at times seemed even too much for fiction, but because I was fascinated by how the author wrote about them and I wanted to see where she would take their story. This was a read that for me was less about the plot and more about the craft. I gave it 4 stars.

At the moment, I am only reading Braiding Sweetgrass, still quite slowly, but I've got the new Read With Us title, Agatha of Little Neon, queued up in my Kindle library to start later today and am hoping that soon I'll have Stanley Tucci's memoir to listen to from the library.

What are you making and reading this week?

No Day Like a Snow Day

It's a snow day here in Western Pennsylvania! We were all scheduled to be off anyway for the holiday, but I'm glad that we're all home and don't have to go anywhere, because this is what we're seeing in our backyard this morning:

I'd estimate we've gotten at least six inches so far, and the snow is going to continue for at least 2-3 more hours, so we might get a couple more inches before this storm is done. In the past, I would've gotten really anxious watching the snow come down because I'd be worrying about having to drive in it. I'm less worried about it these days, but when it snows like this on a day when we can all be home, I really get to enjoy it. We might go out for a walk as a family later so we can see how pretty the neighborhood looks, but I expect to spend the day mainly inside -- spinning, knitting, and staying warm.

Rainbow and I had a fun time puppy-sitting over the weekend. Other than taking him out for walks in absolutely frigid temperatures, it was an easy job, and he was happy to see us.

He spent a lot of time snoozing on "his" chair in the living room, but he was very cute yesterday morning when he heard us moving around upstairs and ran up to greet us -- it was like he forgot we were there and was jumping with excitement to see us! Because we didn't spend a lot of time playing with him (we tried; he just wasn't interested), I got quite a lot of knitting done! The body of my May(be) Queen is almost done. I've got just a few rows left on the back ribbing and the front ribbing to do (the bottom has a split hem and is longer in back than in front).

I think I'll be able to finish the body with the two original skeins, and I'll switch over to the two other skeins I have for the sleeves so that I don't add any more ends to weave in. I'm fairly certain I will be modifying the sleeves to make them more fitted and eliminating the stitch detail in favor of plain stockinette and a twisted rib cuff. I don't dislike the stitch detail, but I'm not hugely a fan of the puffed sleeve. This modification, though, will require a little math on my part, so I'll have to sit down with a measuring tape and a calculator and doing a little bit of work before I pick up for the first sleeve.

Before any of that, though, I'm going to spend some time at my wheel this morning. I started plying my combo spin singles late last week, and I'm eager to see the finished yarn!

I hope you are enjoying your Monday and staying safe and warm if you're getting snow like us!

Reasons to Smile

Happy Friday, friends! It's a gloomy day, and there's a snowstorm coming, but I am trying to focus on good things today. I am convinced that there are always reasons to smile and be happy, though sometimes they can be harder to find. Today I want to share a few of them with you in the hopes that you can find some of your own.

First of all, Rainbow's mittens are done! I had a Zoom board meeting last night, and it lasted long enough that I was able to finish up the second mitten and weave in all my ends.

Obviously they still need to be felted, as you can see that they are bigger than even my hands at this point, but that will be easy enough to do. My own felted mittens could use a wash and a touch up, so I will throw both pairs in the wash at some point this weekend, and Rainbow's hands will finally be warm when she heads back to school next week.

I also reached a critical point in my combo spin: I finished spinning the last bobbin of singles on Wednesday and started plying yesterday!

This is a pretty crummy photo (see above re: gloom), but at least you can see it coming together. I anticipate that I'll fill at least two bobbins with yarn, maybe even three. Even a conservative estimate gives me about 1,500 yards of yarn from my five bags of fiber, so there is a lot of treadling in my future. In retrospect, my electric miniSpinner probably would have made sense for plying this project, but now that I've started on the Lendrum, I'm going to keep going.

Finally, we have a long weekend ahead, as all three of us are off on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And that timing is excellent, given that there's a storm coming in on Sunday that could make things very sloppy on Monday morning, so I'm happy we won't have to go anywhere. A long weekend is always a reason to smile, but this one in particular is making me extra happy. My brother and sister-in-law are taking a quick trip to see her brother's family, so Rainbow and I are dog-sitting Saturday night. We haven't seen our favorite puppy since before the holidays, I think since we had everyone over for her birthday in mid-December, so we're both looking forward to spending some extra time with him. And given that it's supposed to be very cold in the lead-up to the storm, what could be better than curling up with a puppy?

I hope you have some great reasons to smile this weekend, and if you're in the path of this storm, stay safe and warm!

Unraveled, Week 2/2022

First, I want to thank all of you for the kind comments and good wishes for Rainbow. She was able to get back to school yesterday (double-masked!) and is feeling great, other than a little bit of lingering congestion that may or may not be related. I was feeling a little gross over the weekend, mainly with sinus issues, but I started using my nasal spray again and they've resolved, so who knows. I did go back and get another PCR test yesterday -- which turned into quite an adventure when my first swab decided to jump out of the vial and I had to redo it! -- and it's currently being processed, so I hope to have results later today. [Edit: Just got results -- negative!]  The Mister has felt fine the entire time, so he's either not been infected or been asymptomatic.

It is Wednesday today, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers to talk about what's in progress and what I'm reading. I am still working on my sweaters (well, actively only on one sweater), but you know that old adage about how the cobbler's children have no shoes? This weekend Rainbow informed me that she has no mittens that fit her. So guess what I'm knitting?

I'm using the Snow Day Mittens pattern (Ravelry link), which I've used many times before, but I've had to go up to the women's small size. The pink here is some Knit Picks Swish Worsted and the heathered  purple is a 50% wool/50% alpaca from a sweater I frogged. I knit all of the purple part you see here during last night's Read With Us Zoom session, just to give you an idea of how quickly these work up. I've got maybe another round or two to knit before I start the decreases.

High on my list of priorities today, however, is finishing up the singles of my combo spin, because this is all I have left to be spun:

I am really excited to get to start plying and see what this mashup yarn looks like!

Reading has been challenging (in a good way) and fulfilling this past week. I finished two books:

 I had heard about Eloquent Rage on a podcast and tagged it as to read in my library app several months ago, and I finally listened to it over the course of a few days. Cooper is a writer and a professor of women's and gender studies and Africana studies, and this book (which she reads herself) is a collection of essays about identity, racism, sexism, and feminism. She is brutally honest about how she views her role as a Black woman in a patriarchal country grounded in systemic racism, and her writing is incredibly powerful. I have a feeling I'm going to need to read this again, in print, because so much of it passed by quickly on audio and I have so many things I want to highlight and take notes on. I gave it 4 stars.

I know several of you have already read and raved about How the Word Is Passed, and someone (forgive me for forgetting who!) mentioned right before the end of the year that the Kindle version was on sale, so I bought it immediately. I took my time with this one and read it slowly; Smith is a poet, which you can tell from his prose, and his writing almost begs to be read at a slower pace. In this nonfiction book, the author takes the reader along to visit a number of historical locations that have strong ties to slavery and reflects on how their legacy can be felt today, both in our society in general and in his own life as a Black man descended from enslaved people. Given his background, you'd expect to get a particular viewpoint, but I really felt that he went out of his way to try to get honest opinions and responses from the people he met during his travels, including white descendants of those who fought for the Confederacy. I had a lot of highlights in this book, but the most powerful one, I think, was the very last one:

"The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding;
it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it.
This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories."

I gave this book 4 stars.

I'm currently reading three books -- one on paper, one on audio, and one on ebook. The paper book is Braiding Sweetgrass, which is likely to be a long-term read for me. I am listening to Magpie Murders on my walks this week. It's been on my radar for a while, and when Katie mentioned how much she enjoyed it on Monday and it was available with no wait from the library, it seemed like kismet. I'm roughly a third of the way through it and am enjoying it immensely. Finally, after last night's Zoom discussion, I was inspired to read another Lauren Groff. Fates and Furies was mentioned as a favorite a couple of times, and I've been meaning to read it, so I finally borrowed it from the library and started it right before bed.

What are you working on and reading this week?

Too Much Drama for One Weekend

I had hoped that this past weekend would be a relaxing one. We didn't have much on the calendar, and the weather was supposed to be very cold on Saturday and rainy on Sunday, so it looked like a good weekend for staying in.

And then all hell broke loose.

Rainbow was online last week for the first week back at school. Her school did this last year as well, and I thought it was a smart way to allow those students who might have traveled to isolate at home for a bit without having to miss any school. They asked everyone to get a COVID test prior to returning in person, just to be safe. So I took her to get a PCR test on Thursday afternoon, and I got one as well, as it was easy and I figured it couldn't hurt. The wait for results was longer than the last time we went, but I got my negative result around noon on Saturday, just before we left for a field trip at the museum with her Girl Scout troop. Rainbow had had some allergy-like congestion but felt fine otherwise, so we just assumed she'd get a negative result as well. I think you can see where this is going. Saturday night, as I was keeping her company while she was in the shower, her positive result came in.

Before anyone gets worried, she is fine, though clearly upset. We figure she had to have caught it when we were coming home from Florida, because before and after that, she hasn't been around anyone but immediate family. I am sharing this news, with her permission, because I want you all to get a sense of just how contagious this new variant is. As you know, she was only recently fully vaccinated, having gotten her second shot just about a month ago. When we traveled, she was double-masked with a surgical mask and a cloth mask (because the N95 masks we had on hand were too big on her). I've ordered some child-sized N95 masks, but they're going to take some time to come in. This new variant, though, is so contagious that I'm not sure even the best mask can stop it. So be careful out there!

As Elizabeth Zimmermann so wisely advised, "Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises." And that's what I've continued to do (though I've been spinning as well as knitting). I am getting very close to finishing up my combo spin singles; I'm convinced that these last few bundles of fiber are taking the longest of any part of this project to finish! There are three more to spin after this one.

I've also put in quite a few rounds on my May(be) Queen, and I'm not that far off from the end of the body.

I know the needles flipping up is making it hard to see exactly how the fabric is laying, but the back of the sweater is in fact longer than the front thanks to a series of short rows that are worked every now and then along with the fake increases and actual increases and decreases to shape the side panels.

I hope that your weekend was much less dramatic than mine. Stay safe out there!

A Week In

We are officially a week in on this new year, and my view out back is drastically different from last week. This is what we woke up to this morning:

That flat surface you see is the roof of the little shed we had built this summer to hold our garbage and recycling cans. I'd say we got maybe an inch and a half of snow, not terribly much compared to other parts of the Northeast, but it's bitterly cold outside. I'll be bundling up in a winter coat and boots this morning for my walk instead of my usual activewear jacket and sneakers.

Yesterday I finished up a little project that I'd started last month. It was something I cast on mainly to have something to do with my hands during meetings, so I never even mentioned it on the blog. But now I have a new way to keep my ears warm on those rare days when it's cold enough to want them covered but a bit too warm for a hat:

Embracing my inner Kym with a real me, no-makeup selfie

Sorry for the blurriness of the photo, but the coffee hasn't fully kicked in yet. I used up some Fibernymph Dye Works leftovers from a pair of socks I knit Rainbow a couple years ago and had just enough -- maybe a yard leftover. What's a little hard to see in this photo is that the fabric is doubled; I knit it as a long tube. I still have some adjustments to make (like I added a twist that I don't think is needed), but it's certainly functional. Rainbow has asked for one, so I guess I'm knitting another.

Speaking of Rainbow, it's going to be a big year for her. If you can believe it, she will have her bat mitzvah this year, just a couple of days after her 13th birthday. Last night we had our first meeting with the rabbi to talk about this major right of passage. And tomorrow I will be handing off two skeins of handspun yarn to a friend who is going to weave a piece of fabric for her tallit. You may recall that last year, I spun up the two skeins that I thought would be used only for Rainbow to tell me (rather late in the game) that one of them was too colorful. Thankfully she found something else already in my stash that would work so I didn't have to rush to spin a replacement, and while I'm a bit surprised by her choices, I'm happy that she is satisfied.

The darker skein, which will be used for the warp, is Polwarth from the now-defunct Crown Mountain Farms. The bright blue, which will be the weft, was spun from Merino dyed by what was then called Scarlet Fleece and now seems to be known as Sweet Tree Hill Farm that I hand-carded with some undyed silk sliver. The silk is pretty subtle and a bit slubby, so I think it will add just a hint of shine and some texture.

I hope the first week of 2022 has treated you gently and that you're staying warm in wool if you've got cold like us. Have a great weekend!

Unraveled, Week 1/2022

Good morning, friends, and happy first Unraveled Wednesday of 2022! I have to admit that I started off the day feeling a bit unraveled myself, as we could not seem to get the internet to work (and that meant some minor panicking by Rainbow, who is online for school this week). But we have unplugged and rebooted, and -- fingers crossed -- everything seems to be working as it should now!

As in 2021, my plan is to blog every Wednesday this year and link up with Kat and the Unravelers. It's been very reassuring to always have this day once a week to check in with my making and my reading, so barring any unforeseen circumstances, this will continue to be a weekly practice here.

This week, as I expect will be the case for much of January, I am working on making progress on my WIPs. Before work got busy yesterday, I was spinning on my combo spin, and last night I added a few rounds to my May(be) Queen. I am already starting to think about what I'll cast on next after all these WIPs become FOs, though, and it occurred to me that I never shared all the mini skeins from my Fibernymph Dye Works holiday minis set -- so here you go!

I'd originally thought about doing a big shawl/wrap with my minis, but then I realized that the pattern I was thinking of required about twice as much as I had, so that plan was scrapped. Now I am thinking about using most of these minis in a Recalibrate, perhaps with a coordinating neutral. There are a couple of minis in this group that I don't think really go with the rest (the fourth from the left and second from the right), but the ten that remain give me 800 yards of yarn, and that's quite enough for the size I'd probably make and more than enough if I use some additional contrast yarn.

Reading this past week has been a mixed bag.

My last finished book of 2021 was Libertie, which I listened to on audio while going on my extra-long walks in Florida. At first I thought that maybe I was missing things because I was listening with my ears or because I was listening at a fast speed (1.5x), but others have since commented that they had a similar opinion. I found myself frequently confused about what was going on and couldn't really find a point to the book. The description had made it sound like a book I'd really enjoy, but in addition to the difficulties already mentioned, I was often annoyed with the main character and her mother and couldn't understand why their relationship was so fraught. I gave it 2 stars.

Fortunately, my first finish of 2022 was much better. Several of you had already raved about Still Life, and after a long wait for it from the library, I finally got it in the last days of the year. And I loved it. It opens toward the end of WWII, when a young British soldier, Ulysses Temper, meets a middle-aged art historian, Evelyn Skinner, outside Florence and they both are present when a priceless piece of Renaissance artwork is discovered in the cellar of a building recently abandoned by the Germans. What follows is the story of these two and a handful of other wonderfully written characters over the decades and how their lives revolve around their love for each other, their love for Italy (and Florence specifically), and their love for things like art and food that make life more vibrant. My only criticism of this book is that the dialogue doesn't use quotation marks at all, making it occasionally a bit difficult to know whether something is being spoken, thought about, or just described, but the writing is otherwise gorgeous and I adjusted. I gave it 5 stars.

I still need to start something to read with my eyes, but yesterday I started listening to Eloquent Rage, and I suspect it's one I'm going to need to read again with my eyes so that I can highlight and make notes.

What are you making and reading this week? Have you set a reading goal for this year? (I decided on an even 100 books.)

New Year, New Focus

Happy new year, friends! We arrived back home midday yesterday, and I haven't been able to fully warm up since. I guess I got very used to the warmer temperatures of southwest Florida over the two weeks we were there. We had a nice New Year's celebration with my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law. On New Year's Eve, we made a spread of appetizers/snacks and watched the Orange Bowl (well, the first half, anyway -- we were rooting for Michigan and were disgusted enough by the first half to turn it off after that). We all went to bed before midnight, though I was probably still awake because people were setting off fireworks and the noise was giving Rainbow trouble as she was trying to fall asleep. On New Year's Day, we slept in and then made a big brunch. I went for my first walk of the year and decided to make it extra long (7.5 miles). Dinner was fancy -- a whole beef tenderloin and lobster tails -- and we had prosecco to toast the new year.

Being in Florida again at the new year brought back some memories from when we were there last, when we started 2020 not knowing what was to come. On New Year's Day that year, I sat down with a new notebook and resolved to start writing in a journal regularly again. It was also the day I settled on a word for the year for the first time. I didn't write in that journal again until March, when things started getting scary, but at that point it turned into a regular practice for me. And now that we've started a new year, it's time for a new word! My One Little Word for 2022 is ...

Something I realized last year, especially through a lot of my reading, was that I was getting a lot of satisfaction from stretching myself and challenging myself. And I'm not talking about stretching physically, though I did that, too; I'm talking about making myself uncomfortable by examining my privilege, forcing myself to choose the perspectives of others who are noticeably different from me, and considering the ways I impact others and the world around me. I have always considered myself to be someone who loves to learn and who never stops learning, but I want to make that more of a concerted effort this year. I want to always have personal growth in mind when I choose what to read, what to make, what to cook, and how to spend my time this year. I want to work on being a better parent, a better partner, and a better citizen. Even with things that I've been doing well for a long time (like knitting), I want to challenge myself. I fully believe that one of the ways we stay mentally healthy as we get older is to learn new things, so I'm hoping that by putting an emphasis on this focus this year, it will become central to my life for years to come.

While I plan to try some new things in knitting, for January, I'm focusing on finishing up WIPs from 2021, specifically the two sweaters I have on the needles:

and my combo spin, which I'm hoping I can finish this week or next, as this is all I have left to spin to finish the singles:

I'm looking forward to hearing all about your word for the year, if you've picked one, and your crafting plans for 2022!

A Final Look Back

 

Sunset over the Gulf of Mexico from last week

Here we are, friends: New Year's Eve, the final day of another chaotic year. There were many highs and many lows, on both a personal scale and a global scale. This was the year of vaccination, and we thought it would lead to the end of the pandemic (and we all know how well that worked out). For a period of time, though, things were definitely better. We were able to gather safely with family again, to travel a bit, and to celebrate some major holidays together. I really hoped, though, that the world in general would be in a better place than we are now.

I don't want to dwell on the negative, though. It's been, generally speaking, a pretty good year for me. I've accomplished a lot this year, in no small part because I've continued to work from home full time (a situation that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future). Here are some numbers, seeing as it's a stats-heavy time of year:

• I read 141 books this year (see yesterday's post for details). I'm unlikely to read the 300+ pages I have left in my current library book by the end of the day, so that's most likely the final number.
• I knit or crocheted 48 projects this year, using up close to 19,000 yards of yarn. These included three sweaters for me, one for Rainbow, two baby sweaters (gifts), three blankets, 22 hats (of which 13 were for charity), two shawls, and eight pairs of socks.
• I spun more than 7,700 yards of yarn, including the oldest fiber I had in my stash and yarn for two sweaters.
• I walked 1,714.58 miles on my workouts -- and those were just the miles I was tracking with an app. Google tells me that's about the distance between New York and Fort Lauderdale!
• I have written in my journal almost every day this year, keeping up with a practice that started on January 1, 2020, at the very table at which I'm typing this post and that became a constant during the most troubling early days of the pandemic.
  
  

I've gotten out of the habit of making new year's resolutions because they never get kept, but I certainly think about some general intentions, and they're often similar year after year: make healthy choices, focus on what matters, learn more, spend time with family.

For all of you, dear blog friends, I wish you what I hope to have for myself: good health, happiness, satisfaction in work and crafting, good books to read, the company of family and friends, and many moments of joy and beauty. Let's hope by the time we get to this day next year, things are better for all of us.

2021: A Year in Pages

2021 isn't done yet, and there are still two days of reading left, but today is as good a day as any to look back on my reading this year. It's been a really good one, not just in the number of books I've read but in the quality. I've tried to make smarter choices about what to read, choosing books that challenge me to think in new ways, to take perspectives I wouldn't have otherwise, and that push me outside my comfort zone.

I know this is hard to see; you can click to make it larger, but if you'd like to see all the books I finished this year, you can see them here. As of yesterday, I've finished 141 books -- I blew my initial goal of 65 out of the water! For the record, I didn't feel like I artificially set that goal low on purpose; I had done something similar in 2020, but I was hoping 2021 would be a more typical year and that I wouldn't have as much time to read, so I'd increased my goal from 2020 (60) by a very modest five books. Of course, we all know how that panned out. I will likely set a goal for 2022, but I'm really torn about the number. It's something to ponder.

For the record, here are the books that I rated 5 stars in 2021:

• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcertation in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
• Writers & Lovers by Lily King
• Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu
• The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
• The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
• The Guncle by Steven Rowley
• The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGee
• The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

These books, I think, are representative of all my reading from the past year. There's a mix of genres (fiction, nonfiction, magical realism, autobiography, historical fiction, etc.), a mix of authors, and (though you can't tell from just looking at the list) a mix of formats -- print, ebook, audio.

Some general observations:

• I greatly increased the number of books I read "with my ears" this year. 27 of the books I finished (19%) were on audio.
• The books I read were overwhelmingly borrowed from the library -- 110 of the 141 to date (78%). Some of these books I've gone on to purchase in hard copy so that I can reread them.
• I only read 17 books on paper this year, and they tended to take me longer to finish, usually because I prioritized books from the library that I only had for a limited time. I'll also confess that I sometimes was more likely to choose digital books because they were easier to read while also doing some kind of crafting.

Overall, I am satisfied with my reading this year. I've read a lot of very good and great books, in no small part due to the recommendations of reading friends. Many of the books I didn't like as well were read to fill a bingo square or were an unknown commodity in that other readers whose opinions I value hadn't read them.

What do I want for 2022? More reading that challenges me -- books that give me new perspectives, that cause me to rethink my opinions, that come from voices I may not have heard. I want to continue reading the back catalog of writers I enjoy (Maggie O'Farrell, Louise Erdrich, Ruth Ozeki, Lauren Groff, etc.). And I definitely want to keep reading books that I can discuss with others, both through organized efforts like the Erdrich-along and Read With Us and more casual discussions.

How did your reading year shape up? Were any of my favorites of 2021 also on your list? What are you looking forward to in 2022?

Unraveled, Week 52/2021

I think the days are going by faster as the number of them we have left on vacation get fewer -- and this is also the last Wednesday of 2021! Thank you to Kat for hosting this weekly link-up; as Bonny noted in her post today, having an Unraveled post each week has been a great anchor and something to look forward to.

I don't have a terribly exciting knitting update this week because I'm still working on the same two projects: my May(be) Queen and my doubled sock yarn hat. After focusing more on the sweater for a period, I pulled out the hat a couple of days ago and have been giving it more attention.

I know these projects looks like they're almost the same size, but it's a bit of an optical illusion -- the hat looks larger than it is because it was closer to me when I took the photo. I won't be finishing the sweater before vacation is over, but I'm hoping I might finish the hat. I haven't weighed the yarn that's left, but I'm pretty certain I am more than 50% done and finishing up the rest in the next few days is quite reasonable.

Reading has been been a bit more productive; this vacation is typically a time when I get a lot of reading done, and this year is no exception. I have finished three books in the past week and will likely finish at least one more before the year is over.

When I was trying to find an audiobook to listen to while out on my longer walks, I remembered that it had been more than a year since I last listened to a book in the Maisie Dobbs series, and luckily the third in the series, Pardonable Lies, was available from the library with no wait. I've really enjoyed this series so far, and I liked this one, too, even though I figured some things out fairly early on (though the final reveal was still a surprise to me). It kept me company for three long walks, and then I finished listening to the last hour or so one night before bed. I gave it 4 stars.

One of the hard-copy books I brought with me to read was Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich's first novel and the first book we'll be discussing in the Erdrich-along next year. I wanted to get a bit of a head start, but I also wanted to read this at a time when I could give it my full attention. Technically this was a reread for me, as I know I had another copy (now long gone) in high school, but I remembered none of it. Perhaps I never actually read the full book, or maybe I was just too young to fully appreciate it the first time. It's everything I've come to love in Erdrich's books -- funny, sad, heartbreaking, life-affirming. There are hints to later books (particularly The Night Watchman), and I expect to see echoes of this first novel in her later books. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I read State of Terror after my mother finished reading it (it was one of her Chanukah gifts this year) and passed it along to me. Both authors are good writers whose other books I've enjoyed, but this one fell kind of flat to me. It was a good vacation read -- I didn't have to think very hard to read it and it kept me turning the pages -- but not a great book. It certainly had the humor that I've come to expect from Louise Penny's books but not the character development that I love about them. And frankly I had a hard time keeping some of the characters straight. I told my sister-in-law (she and my brother joined us here yesterday) that I thought it read like political revenge porn -- there is no wondering at all who some of the characters are meant to be. I gave it 3 stars. Not great, but not terrible.

I'm currently reading two books: Libertie, which I am listening to on audio and am about halfway through, and Still Life, which I finally got from the library after a long wait on the hold list and only just started before bed last night. The latter is 460+ pages long so may not be finished until next year, but I'm listening to the former at 1.5 speed and should make it through the rest of the book over the course of my walks in these last days of 2021.

Tomorrow I plan to post a wrap-up of my reading this year, and on Friday, I'll take a broader look at this year we're about to bid farewell to. In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you're working on and reading in this last week of 2021 and what you may be looking forward to starting soon.

Balance in 2021: December

Hard to believe it, but it's the last Tuesday of 2021 and time for my last One Little Word reflection. 2021 was only my second year with a word; when I chose my word for 2020, I obviously couldn't have anticipated the chaotic and strange year that would come or that my word would turn out to be so meaningful in the face of so much uncertainty. For 2021, I knew that things were still likely to be unsettled, even as I hoped they'd be more "normal," so I chose Balance as my word as way to remind myself to keep all things in perspective and all things in moderation.

While my choice of word was initially chosen with things like work/life balance in mind. But as the year has gone on, I've come to see how there are so many other aspects of life that require a give and take: my daily schedule and when I do certain daily things, how I choose what to read, how I allocate my crafting time. In this last month of year, and especially these last two weeks of the year, I've realized that an important part of Balance for me is physically getting away from my usual daily life. In a typical year (i.e., one not in a global pandemic), I'd take a few trips, though usually some of those would be working trips -- like the trip to Rhinebeck. This trip that we are on now, which had been an annual trip since 2011 until last year, is one that I've found I've really come to rely on to recover from the year that has been and recharge for the year ahead. I think I've found it to be particularly so this year, not just because we couldn't travel last year but because home has become my office, and physically getting away from my house for an extended period of time has allowed me to finally feel like I'm getting away from work for a bit. And that has been very freeing and rejuvenating.

I think the biggest lesson I'm taking away from Balance is that I don't have to demand perfection from myself all the time. That is a difficult thing for a perfectionist to reckon with, and it's one I'll likely still fight with all my life. I expect a lot from myself, and no one is harder on me if I don't meet a deadline or do something perfectly. The reality is, though, that no one else is expecting that perfection, and keeping Balance in mind has made me realize that while there are some things that can be done perfectly, the converse of that is that many things don't have to be or perhaps even shouldn't be.

Case in point: my 21 in 2021 list. I haven't checked all things off the list, and that's okay! When I created the list, I wanted a variety of things that would encourage me to experience many different facets of life. Some would be easy to accomplish and others would be more of a challenge. I had to change some of them as circumstances changed. And some of the things I didn't check off the list are things I still want to do and will do, but they're probably better done without a ticking clock in the background.

I'm grateful to those of you who have been on the OLW journey with me this year and especially to Carolyn for hosting our monthly link-ups and giving us prompts throughout the year. I'd thought I'd reveal my word for 2022 today, but on further reflection, I've decided to wait. I'm taking this week to wrap up 2021, and next week we'll start things anew.

Last Monday

Friends, can you believe we've reached the last week of 2021? Intellectually, I know that it's been a full and busy year, but emotionally I feel like it was just the final days of 2020 and we were so full of hope for what the new year could bring. I am sure many of you, like me, are sad that this year didn't turn out quite as we'd hoped, even if we're not surprised.

Normally I don't blog every day, but I thought I might try it just for this week, as there's a lot to wrap up and reflect on. Tomorrow I'll post my year-end reflection on my One Little Word and reveal my word for 2022. Later in the week, I'll take a look at my reading and crafting for the year. Today, though, is a more typical post, an update on my May(be) Queen.

The pattern advised trying on the sweater before splitting for the sleeves and body, in case more length was needed in the yoke, but I didn't do that. I'd gotten almost perfect gauge when I swatched, and I really felt that trying on a yoke before there was fabric under the arms wouldn't give me an accurate sense of fit. So I gambled a bit, but it all worked out just fine.

Please excuse my tired face -- these photos were taken yesterday evening, after I'd walked 7 miles and gone for a swim. The bottom of the sweater is flipping up because of the cable in the needle, but I can tell you that the fit is perfect. I am making the smallest size, which is technically a size smaller than I should be making for my bust size, but I wanted less positive ease than the pattern recommended. I should end up with 2-3 inches of ease in the end; it's looking a bit more fitted here mainly because it hasn't been blocked yet, but as the yarn is a superwash merino/nylon, I'm fully expecting the fabric to relax some once it's blocked.

It's interesting to me that the yarn has started pooling/spiraling despite the fact that I am alternating two skeins. It's not bothering me at all -- just an observation! The next part of the body involves some short rows, though, so I imagine that will get broken up a bit in the rest of the body.

While the yoke engaged my attention by having a different increase pattern almost every round, now I'm enchanted by the patterning under the arm:

The variegation in the yarn makes it a bit difficult to see, but there are horizontal welts in the space between the twisted ribbing. It's getting wider every other round (increases that are offset by corresponding decreases on the other side of the ribbing panels), and it also gives a nice hourglass-like curve to the sides of the sweater that I think will be really flattering.

I'd say it's highly unlikely that this sweater will be finished before we head home, but I'll have made a very good start on it, and perhaps in January I'll focus on finishing this one and my long-suffering Shifty.