Unraveled, Week 44/2024

Hi, friends. I'm getting this post ready to go on Tuesday evening, as I know I won't be sleeping much and am likely to be very groggy on Wednesday morning. The Mister worked from home on Tuesday and was able to take me to the polls shortly after they opened. I waited in line about half an hour to vote -- and was voter number 47 in my precinct! I was wearing my "Madam President" t-shirt, my pearls, and my Chucks (well, one of them).

I will say that I was very encouraged by the turnout -- it reminded me a lot of 2008. I only hope that there was this enthusiasm everywhere! I expect we won't know the outcome for several days yet, so I'm trying to keep myself busy and as distracted as possible.

Edit: I woke up, looked at the news, and am in complete shock. I truly don't know what to say.

It's Wednesday, so it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers. Here's where the WIPs stand at the moment:

I spent Monday evening getting through the heel of the striped socks and then binding off the rest of my sweater body. Yesterday I was focused on the new sock design; I've written up a draft of the pattern but am still struggling to come up with a name. And I've also wound yarn for the sleeves of the sweater, including dividing the remaining main color yarn. I think I am leaning toward making the colorwork on the sleeves match the body and then finding something else to do with the rest of the contrast yarn -- it certainly won't go to waste!

I have finished another two books in the past week:

A small group of us have been exploring past winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction this year, and on Saturday we gathered on Zoom to discuss the 2015 winner, How to Be Both. This is a really unusual book, not least because it's made up of two stories and the order in which they appear depends on the particular edition of the book you have. I had a paperback in which I got the "camera" story first and the "eyes" story second. I don't want to say too much about the book because I think it's best to go into it not knowing much. I will say that while I was frequently a little puzzled, I thought it was really cleverly done. This is a book that I think I could easily read again, perhaps more than once, and get more out of. I gave it 4 stars.

I think many of you know that Molly and I recently finished watching the entirety of Gilmore Girls, so you will probably not be surprised to hear that I was interested in learning more about Kelly Bishop, aka Emily Gilmore, when I heard that she had a memoir coming out. To be honest, I didn't know much about her at all, so I found her story to be absolutely fascinating. First of all, she is nothing like her perhaps most well-known character. Did you know that before she became an actor, she was a dancer on stage, or that she originated the role of Sheila in A Chorus Line and won a Tony for it? Bishop narrates the audiobook, and I think hearing the story in her voice made it that much more enjoyable. It's a quick listen, too. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading This Strange Eventful History on Kindle and The Piano Tuner on paper, though I'm not making much headway on either (gee, it's almost like I have other things on my mind).

That's all from me today. If you need me, I'll be trying not to check the news constantly and likely pretending to work. Hang in there, friends, and remember to breathe and hydrate!

How I Spent My Weekend

It is the first Monday of Standard Time, and I'm guessing a lot of you are still messed up over the time change. I know there's a lot of to-do about staying in Daylight Saving Time, but I'm in the camp that believes Standard Time is better. Regardless, it's the switching back and forth the gets on my nerves, and I'm thankful that yesterday was a lazy day even without factoring in a broken foot so that I could adjust a little easier.

So, how did I spend my weekend? Let's just say it looked like a lot of this:

We had tickets to go see the musical & Juliet on Saturday afternoon, and I was really looking forward to seeing it with Molly, but even if someone had driven us there, it would have been a lot of walking and too great a risk of someone stomping on my foot, so my father took her instead (my mother had a hair appointment she wasn't able to move or else she would have gone). Molly loved it, and while I'm sorry I couldn't go with her, it was nice to have a Saturday afternoon to myself without errands to run or chores to do. I was also supposed to go with the Mister to his high school reunion that night, but he went on his own and Molly and I had macaroni and cheese and watched Only Murders in the Building.

Yesterday we all slept in a little and had a leisurely breakfast, and I did some knitting and watched some podcasts while the Mister did the grocery shopping. In the afternoon, while Molly did homework, I worked on the sock pattern (the actual pattern writing part) and then we baked another apple cider donut cake with the cider that was left. The one we made on Friday tasted good but came out of the pan in two pieces, so I wanted to give this one a try, especially because more than one person recommended it on Friday. The verdict is that the Smitten Kitchen cake takes longer but is a more sophisticated cake (not as sweet). I think it would be a good recipe for Rosh Hashanah, actually, because it reminded me a bit of honey cake. I neglected to take a photo before we dug into it, but mine ended up looking quite a lot like the one in the recipe, although a bit taller.

As you can see from the photo above, there was a lot of knitting on my sweater this weekend, and I've actually just about finished the body -- I just have to finish binding off the back!

I guess I was a bit of an overachiever in spinning the contrast color, because when I completed the colorwork, I hadn't even gotten to the first shift in color. Molly suggested that when I do the sleeves, I work from the other end of the gradient, and I'm toying with that idea. I'm not sure if having the sleeves and the body be different will look good or weird. Thoughts? I have a while before I have to decide, but I'm pondering.

I am hoping that work calms down a bit last week. With all the foot drama last week, I also had a very large (nearly 80 pages) and very high-profile annual report to review, plus December graduation lists started coming in. At least I know that this week I don't have to worry about commuting to the office or picking Molly up from school, so that gives me a little extra time. And I will be able to knit through two additional meetings this week!

Tomorrow's the big day -- please make sure you get to the polls if you haven't voted already! I know it'll likely be several days before we know the results, but at least all the ads and text messages will stop. I will be voting in person tomorrow, either by getting a ride or getting out the crutches, and I'll be spending the rest of the day feeling (as I saw someone post on Instagram) nauseously optimistic.

Friday, Finally

Thank you all for your good wishes for my healing yesterday. The orthopedist couldn't have been nicer (my mother actually sees him for her arthritic knee!), and he told me that I should have my foot in the boot pretty much all the time. I can take it off to bathe, but that's about it. So no driving for me until I see him again in five weeks, which is a major bummer. The Mister dug out the crutches I used when I got that bad sprain many years ago, and I'll use them when I have to go longer distances. The doctor said that given that I'm generally physically active, I don't smoke, and I'm not diabetic, he expects the foot to heal quite well. I just have to stay off it as much as possible and let it heal. And that's likely to be the hardest part.

While this is a major bummer and a big inconvenience, the timing has worked out well, if it had to happen. Right now is a particularly busy time at work, so I'd be sitting at a computer for most of the day anyway. My boss has already told me not to worry about coming into the office until I'm healed, so I don't have to worry about that (and now I'll get bonus knitting time during my biweekly team meetings). And because my niece is due to arrive soon, my parents took only a brief trip down to Florida and now are back, so they'll be able to help out while I can't drive. I've also decided to use this opportunity to work on my upper-body strength and do some focused workouts to build up those muscles. I miss running and walking outside, but I'll do what I can from indoors.

Today I am hoping for a better day. Molly is home (it's an in-service day at her school), so we'll be baking an apple cider donut cake to take to family dinner tonight. I'm hoping to finish up a big, high-profile project for work. And we'll have that family dinner again, so I'll get snuggles from my nephew and my favorite puppy. This too shall pass.

I'll leave you with a couple of photos. First, the sum total of my bell pepper harvest from this year:

I may have grown only one pepper, but I can tell you that it was delicious! We had it on our salad at dinner on Wednesday night.

Second, something to make you laugh. When I fell on Sunday, I also managed to break the case of my phone, so I ordered some new ones. I'm always amused by the poor English translation on the packaging of products, and I thought you'd appreciate this one:

Click to embiggen so you can read the smaller print!

Be careful out there, friends, and have the best weekend available to you. And don't forget that we turn the clocks back to Standard Time on Sunday!

Definitely a Trick

Happy Halloween, friends! I'm popping in on a Thursday to give you all an update on my foot. Some of you already know this because we chatted over email yesterday, but I'm sorry to say that it's broken. They took x-rays at the urgent care and determined that I have a fractured fifth metatarsal (that's the bone on the pinky toe side).

I'm in a walking boot for now, which makes it more comfortable to get around but also more awkward, especially if I'm not wearing a shoe with a thick sole on the other foot. I'm headed to see an orthopedist later this morning, and I'm hoping that all I will need to do is wear this boot for six weeks or so. Definitely no running in my future, which apparently my subconscious is not happy about because I had a dream I was running last night! I'll let you know the prognosis tomorrow.

And I'll leave you with a little treat, so this post isn't all doom and gloom. Here's my youngest nephew in his Halloween costume on Sunday. He and my brother and sister-in-law dressed up as the characters in the children's book Good Night, Gorilla. I think this costume is technically a monkey, but it's still pretty adorable (and I imagine it's hard to find a gorilla costume for a toddler)!

Unraveled, Week 44/2024

Thank you all for your kind words about my fall. I decided it was probably wise to get my foot checked out, so I have an appointment at the local urgent care center this morning. Please keep your fingers crossed that it's just a sprain!

It's Wednesday, though it feels like it's been a week already with all that's been going on here. Still, it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers to talk about crafting and reading!

I've been giving a little attention to all three of my current WIPs in a regular rotation, but my main focus has been my sweater. It's the largest and probably slowest, so I'm trying to work on it a little every day. On Friday night, I pulled it out to start the colorwork (I'd reached the requisite length under the arms earlier in the day) only to realize that I hadn't yet wound the contrast skein for the body yet, so I had to wait until Saturday to do that. Then it took me a good hour on Saturday to get the first round done because the floats in that round were so long that I opted to use the ladderback jacquard method to deal with them and apparently had trouble counting to four reliably not once but twice. I'm off to the races now, though, and am about a third of the way through the body chart.

While my first skein of main color is getting smaller and smaller, I'm starting to wonder just how much of that contrast yarn I'm going to get through. Will I even get to the start of the transition to to the burnt orange? I've already decided that once I get to the end of the chart, I'll continue in the contrast color to add length, if needed, but there's a distinct possibility that I'll end with quite a lot of contrast yarn left. That's okay, but it would be a little sad if that pretty orange didn't get to play with the other colors. I'll just have to keep knitting and see what happens!

Reading was quite entertaining last week! I finished two new books:

Playground is Richard Powers' latest. I am still thinking about The Overstory after reading it years ago, and this newest novel was on the the Booker longlist, so I preordered it on Kindle. The writing and the stories sucked me in, even though I was a little confused at the beginning. A lot becomes clearer as you continue to read. As in The Overstory, there are several narratives that eventually overlap in this book. In Montreal in the late 1940s, Evelyne Beaulieu gets thrown into a pool by her father to test an early version of SCUBA and finds her calling under the water. In Chicago in the '90s, two teen boys from completely opposite backgrounds forge a friendship created over board games. And in present day Makatea, an atoll in French Polynesia, the dwindling population faces a decision that has profound implications for the future of their island. The book deals with so many topics -- artificial intelligence, race relations, colonialism, parent/child relationships, illness, the environment, friendship, art -- that it's amazing that it's not a 1,000-page book. Even the title has multiple meanings. I really enjoyed it, though I was left with a number of questions when I finished. I gave it 4 stars.

I am often drawn to women's stories and their perspectives on notable historical events, so I was intrigued by the description of Hill of Secrets, a novel set in Los Alamos during the Manhattan project and was interested in the possibility of learning what it might have been like for children and spouses of the scientists to live in a place where so much is secret. I cannot comment on how authentic the author's portrayal of the setting was, but it was certainly convincing to read, and I did get a sense of the tension surrounding the whole community -- for the scientists who were sure if their experiments would work, for the families who knew something important was happening but couldn't talk aobut it, and for the whole community living through a time of war. Ultimately the stories of the main characters show that all humans are flawed: We all make mistakes, we all grapple with the morality of our actions, and we all keep secrets. There were times when I felt like the narrative was heading a little too far into romance novel territory. While I have no problem with romance, I didn't really want that level of explicit content in my historical fiction. Still, it was entertaining and fast moving. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Brilliance Audio for providing me with a complimentary audiobook in return for an honest review.

I technically finished a third book in the past week, a reread of Emma via Craftlit, but I have read it several times before and my views on it haven't really changed.

I'm currently trying to finish up How to Be Both for discussion on Saturday; I started This Strange Eventful History, probably my last title from the Booker Prize longlist for this year, on Monday; and yesterday I got The Third Gilmore Girl (on audio) from the library.

What are you making and reading this week!

Better in 2024: October

We've made it to the last Monday of the month, and that means it's time to check in with my One Little Word and to join Carolyn in the monthly link-up.

This will be old news to at least some of you, but the major way things have gotten Better this month is that finally, more than a year after the initial change and after almost a year of fighting for it to get fixed, my job classification has finally been corrected and I am once again a salaried, exempt employee at work. My job classification is now "editorial specialist," which I think better captures what I do. The change was essentially processed as a promotion, which feels pretty good considering I've never gotten one or even been eligible for one before -- despite the fact that I've taken on numerous additional responsibilities over the years. I'm thankful that my direct supervisor has been supportive this whole time (as well she should have been, given how much I help her out by doing work that she used to do!), but it's also good to know that if other such shenanigans happen in the future, I'll also have the union on my side.

I'm also hoping that in the days ahead I'll feel physically Better as well, because guess who fell again on Sunday? I stepped onto my brother's deck wearing boots that I know I slide around in and completely wiped out. But I suppose you could say I've also gotten Better at falling, because I managed to get myself to my side as I fell and my right foot took the worst of it. I think I either tore something or sprained something, because it's painful and swollen (no running for me this week), though I can still hobble around a bit. I timed it perfectly for when the Mister had to leave for a quick work trip, too! Molly has been a huge help in carrying things up and down stairs for me (that's the hardest part of getting around), and this injury might just get me out of going into the office this week -- if I can't really walk, getting there will be hard! I'm annoyed with myself but also relieved I didn't do any major damage.

As promised, here's a photo of us girls in our Halloween costumes. Can you figure out who we are?

There's Good News

I won't bury the lede: I divided the sleeve and body stitches on my sweater and knit enough fabric under the arms that I could try it on -- and it fits!

My selfie skills still leave a lot to be desired, but I think this photo is good enough that you can see that I've got a little positive ease but not so much that I'm swimming in fabric. Now I just have to knit, knit, knit in the round until I have 5 inches of body under the arms, and thanks to some unexpected knitting time yesterday afternoon, I have just an inch of that left to go. After that, this project will require more attention because I will start in on the colorwork, so I'll be juggling two strands of yarn and keeping an eye on a chart. Considering how fine this yarn is and the number of stitches I have on the needles, though, I'm pretty impressed with how quickly this sweater has grown. Dare I hope I might have it complete in time for Thanksgiving? It's a possibility!

The socks for my sister-in-law have grown as well, even though I've only worked on them while I was at the office Tuesday and Thursday. I am continuing to love these colors, and had I not already designated this pair for her, I might be tempted to keep them for myself.

They're not all blue, but look what color is up next!

I expect that once I start the colorwork on my sweater, these will become my knitting-while-reading project and will get a lot more attention.

We've got a fairly quiet weekend ahead of us. We've got nothing on the schedule on Saturday except for a friend's birthday gathering in the evening, and Sunday my brother and sister-in-law are holding their annual Halloween party, though the Mister has to leave for a work trip earlier in the day and Molly and I will only briefly be stopping by because she has a performance with her Glee Club in the afternoon. You may remember from past years that my brother is a stickler for people dressing up for his party, and Molly and I came up with what we thought was a great family theme that would involve all three of us. Fortunately, it'll work with just us two girls, even if it won't be quite as impressive as it would have been with all three of us. I'll be sure to share some pictures (if I'm permitted) next week.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful weekend! Next week is the last one in October, so I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word update for the month.