An Okay Weekend

This past weekend went by quickly, as they always do. We had lovely autumn weather -- crisp mornings, warm sunshine, a gentle breeze. Things were a bit busier than usual, or at least it seemed like it because Iw as in and out a lot. We ended up going out to dinner with my parents Friday night; on Saturday morning I took Molly to get her flu shot; and then we had the anniversary dinner out on Saturday, which ended up being a bit of a fiasco because the restaurant seemed to be overbooked and so we didn't even get our food until around 8 and by the time we'd dropped off my in-laws and I'd taken Ruthie out before bed, it was basically time for me to go to sleep. Fortunately yesterday was calmer, even if I did have to wake up early for the race.

The Mister did end up running, though I think he was in pain for all of it and he was certainly slower. He was just a little ahead of me for most of the race and then ran with me for the last mile or so. I put on a bit of speed at the end so that I finished just ahead of him. As I predicted, I didn't come near last year's PR, but I wasn't that much slower. According to the official results, I finished in 24:50, placing sixth in my division (women 45-49), 98th among all women, and 363rd overall (of 2,345). It felt like a pretty easy race for me, though there's a hill in the middle right after mile 1 that's always a bit of a challenge (it's not steep, but it's long -- probably a good half mile). I got a good adrenaline boost so I was able to run at a slightly faster pace overall. And of course lately when I run I'm doing a longer distance, so 3.1 miles is a light day for me. Next year will be the 50th Great Race, so I expect some fancy swag. This year's shirt, as you can see, was very "America 250" themed, as was the medal. Anyway, another year is in the books.

I didn't get as much time with my sweater this weekend as I hoped (in large part due to that long dinner Saturday night), but I am quickly approaching the end of the yoke patterning:

I have just one more eyelet section, I believe, and then it's just straight stockinette until I reach the target yoke length. I'm still debating whether or not to block the yoke after this point and before carrying on, as suggested in the pattern; it'd be nice to see the texture get a bit crisper, but I also know that I'm good on gauge and likely don't need to make any adjustments to the yoke depth. I'll make a decision once I get to that point.

One accomplishment for the weekend was finishing up my sister-in-law's rainbow-striped socks (well, finishing the knitting, anyway; they'll still need to be blocked):

They did end up very well matched, as advertised, and I've got some leftovers that I think would make some adorable preemie hats.

I'm not sure what the week ahead will bring at work, as we've just finished a big weekend (homecoming, a celebration of 100 years of the Cathedral of Learning, and the launch of a $3B capital campaign). I'm hoping for a bit of a breather before the next big thing starts up. Molly is going to a concert on Tuesday night, so the Mister and I will get a date night, and I'll be on call should my parents -- who are babysitting my niblings all week while my brother and sister-in-law are on a trip -- need extra help. I hope those of you who are on the East Coast have survived the nor'easter without too much damage or trouble, and I hope you all can enjoy these last few days of September.

Welcome, Autumn

After starting out the week with rain and chill, we've been lucky to have what, to me, is perfect fall weather to end it. It's been clear and mostly dry, with warm sunshine but low humidity and highs in the 60s. We did have to turn on the heat upstairs because the house was actually colder than it was outside, but I've been happily walking Ruthie wearing long sleeves and a light sweatshirt on top. It feels so good not to be melting! I'd say we're a bit off from peak fall color, but the dogwood in our backyard -- always early to turn -- has started changing from green to red and yellow, so I know it's just a matter of time.

Speaking of Ruthie, she has also been enjoying the cooler weather by cozying up in her fleece blanket:

The weekend ahead looks beautiful, and I'm so glad. We're going out to dinner Saturday night with my in-laws and my brother- and sister-in-law (and their two boys) to celebrate both couples' anniversary, which they share. And Sunday morning is the Great Race, in which I'll be running the 5K. Molly has decided not to run this year, and the Mister is going to make the decision whether he's up to it or not on the day (he's still recovering from his injury). To ensure I'm rested enough, I'm taking today off from running, though I don't expect I will break last year's PR even though I'm now regularly running longer distances. The older I get, the happier I am to have a slower pace but the stamina to run for longer. It will probably be chilly Sunday morning, but it should be dry! I'll let you know how I did when I check in on Monday.

Until then, please enjoy this first weekend of fall, officially, in the Northern Hemisphere!

Unraveled, Week 38/2026

I only took one day off from blogging, but it feels like it's been a long time! It seems that Mother Nature finally got tired of my complaining about the heat and brought in the fall weather. It's been much cooler the past several days -- but also gloomy and rainy. We were all wet and cold walking home from services on Monday, and that wasn't helped by already being cold from fasting. Other than the crummy weathers, the holiday was as good as solemn day of fasting can be. We had my family over to break the fast, including my brother's dog, Leo, and the two pups spent a lot of time racing around the house.

Yesterday it was back to the usual routine during the day, but it was also the Mister's birthday -- his 50th birthday (how am I married to such an old man?!) -- so we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Today it is Wednesday, which means it's time for my weekly link-up with Kat and the Unravelers with an update on my making and my reading.

Knitting has been continuing at regular intervals here, with sock knitting during the day and sweater knitting at night. As you would expect, the socks are moving along much faster; I've finished the first sock and am almost to the heel of the second:

These have come together quickly despite the fact that I actually had to unravel part of the foot of the first sock when I found myself in that weird bit of knitting physics where the fabric keeps measuring the same length over and over again (not long enough) until suddenly it's too long. It was only about a quarter of an inch, but it was annoying. I just put my needles in where they should be to start the toe, pulled them out of where they were, and unraveled the unneeded rounds. It was probably only about 20 minutes of knitting that I didn't need to do, and of course I wanted these socks to fit the recipient, so I dealt with it -- but I was annoyed just a bit all the same.

As for the sweater, it's grown to the point where the circumference is now a bit larger than my needles and I've completed the largest of the stitch patterns:

I've got a couple more eyelet sections and a repeat of the first knit/purl texture section to go and then a bit of stockinette before I split the sleeves from the body. I'm sure it'll move much faster once I get past the texture and don't have to count stitches, but I'm managing a handful of rounds a night. Maybe now that it's getting cool enough to actually wear a light sweater, I'll be more motivated to do more.

It's been a good week for reading, with five books finished, but bear in mind that one was a short audiobook and one was my before-bed book that I'd been reading for a while. In the interest of keeping this post a reasonable length, I'm going to keep my reviews short this week.

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo (audiobook)

4 stars

High school student Emoni has a gift in the kitchen, but she also has a lot of responsibilities, including her 2-year-old daughter and her grandmother, with whom they live. When she gets into her charter school's culinary arts course, which includes a trip to Spain, she begins to dream of perhaps turning her talent into a career. It's beautifully read by the author and enjoyable to an adult reader, even though it's technically a YA book.

The Searcher by Tana French (digital)

3 stars

In the first of a three-book series, Cal Hooper has moved to the tiny Irish town of Arnakelty, where he hopes to leave his life as a Chicago police officer behind and start a new chapter. But soon he gets drawn into the search for a missing man, and it seems that there's something everyone else in the town knows that he doesn't and that maybe they're trying to keep it that way. It's a fairly entertaining mystery that kept me mostly engaged, though it was a bit slower than I expected.

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers (paperback)

4 stars

It's the mid-1960s in London, and Helen is working as an art therapist at a mental hospital and having an affair with one of her coworkers, a psychiatrist who happens to be married to a distant cousin of hers. One day they're both called to an unusual situation: A man whose existence was a surprise to the neighbors has been found in a derelict house with his elderly aunt. When the aunt dies and the man refuses to speak, Helen becomes determined to get through to him, especially after discovering that he's a talented artist. Along the way we get flashbacks to his life, going in reverse, to find out how he came to be living in the house, shut off from the outside world. The writing is beautiful and the story is touching, showcasing the power of human kindness.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson (audiobook)

4 stars

This is the second book in the Jackson Brodie series, and even though Jackson has now given up being a police officer and a private detective, he finds himself in the middle of murder mystery (or rather several of them) and unable to help himself from trying to figure out the case. I really enjoyed Atkinson's writing of the characters such that I had a good sense of who they were and the way she pulled so many threads of the story together in a way I could never have imagined or figured out on my own.

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel (digital)

4 stars

I got extremely lucky and happened to click fast enough when I saw the Libby notification that my library had the book that I got a copy right away last Friday and immediately started reading. Like pretty much all Emily St. John Mandel books I've read (this was my fourth), it's weird and hard to describe. It's partly her usual post-apocalyptic fare, set in the near future when the United States has collapsed and become individual republics and city-states, with waring militias patrolling their territories. As the book opens, the narrator is attending a party with her roommate at which doubles of two others in attendance appear and then the host completely disappears. One of these doubles will later pop up in the narrator's life. Later, we learn that there's an alternate universe from which these doubles came and where, it seems, there are doubles of everyone living in a surveillance state. Amid all of this, there's a painting that keeps getting referenced (and the man who painted it is, apparently, a character in a previous book and mentioned in another). I was very confused for much of this book, but I find that's often the case with this author and I trust her to get me to a resolution in the end. I'm still not sure I understood it all having finished it, and I expect I'll need to read it again to appreciate it fully.

What are you making and reading this week?

Ready for Weekending

It's been a long week here, I guess because it's been the first full week of school since the new year started, and as classes are really ramping up, so is the stress. I'm happy to have a weekend ahead. Last weekend was filled with all the holiday observances and celebrations, so it didn't feel like a real rest, particularly as we didn't have our usual schedule. Here's hoping this weekend can be more typical.

Last night was Curriculum Night at Molly's school, where parents get to follow their child's schedule and visit all their teachers to hear a bit about what they'll be studying in the year ahead. Last year we both had conflicts and couldn't attend, and this year felt a little bittersweet because we'll only do this once more. It's a big year for her for sure, not just because of the course load but because looking ahead to college is getting much more real and serious. And as much as I love the fact that she can now drive herself to and from school, it means I no longer have the time in the car with her every day to listen to her unload on the day's events. I know this is all part of the process and that it's good for her to start pulling away to become a self-sufficient young adult -- but I'm allowed to be a little sad about it, right?

Progress has continued on my WIPs, with some noticeable growth. For one thing, the sock now has a heel and an almost-completed foot:

Yes, that is a cameo by Ruthie's tush.

In order to maintain the stripes on the instep (and because these stripes are narrower than I'm used to), I used the strand from the inside of the yarn cake for the heel turn. It means a couple of extra ends to weave in, but that's not such a big deal. This yarn base is finer than what I'm used to, so I had to do a bit of math to figure out when to start the toe based on my row gauge. Fortunately, my sister-in-law has the smallest feet of all the people I knit socks for, so I'm not too far off from that point now and expect to have the first sock down by the end of the weekend.

Then there's the sweater, which has just gotten enough increases to fit comfortably around my needle so I no longer need to knit magic loop:

I have added the second eyelet section and next will move on to the larger textured area that should be easier to see than the first one. I'm alternating strands every round, and you can see that one strand is still all ramen-y from ripping out my swatch. I'll be happy when I get through all that kinked-up yarn, as I don't think it's helping much with the patterning being hard to see.

We have a pretty quiet weekend planned, but Yom Kippur begins Sunday evening, which means we'll be having a large meal early on before the fast. We'll be hosting break fast at our place for my side of the family on Monday, and I very well may take the day off blogging that day (I'd be getting my post ready on Sunday regardless, but sometimes it's nice to take a break). I hope you enjoy this last summer weekend and will see you back here for sure next Wednesday.

Unraveled, Week 37/2026

Here we are at Wednesday again, and again it's time to join in on the fun with Kat and the Unravelers!

I've been working steadily on my sweater in the evenings (it's not really at a place where I can work on it with Ruthie in the same room) and have started the knit/purl texture sections, though I think my yarn might be a tad too busy for the patterning to be as visible as it could be.

I am hopeful that once the sweater is done and blocked, the patterning will be a bit clearer, but I'm not too concerned at this point. I'm enjoying working with the yarn and I think the sweater will be very comfy, and that's really what matters the most to me right now.

Sock knitting is still happening in the afternoon, but I needed something else to work on when we were at my parents' for lunch on Sunday (because the recipient of the socks was there), so I grabbed some dishcloth cotton and a crochet hook and started a quick dishcloth:

If the yarn looks familiar, it's because I was using it earlier in the summer to learn the crochet thermal stitch. Because I was just learning it, the resulting dishcloth was wonky and misshapen, and I decided to frog it once I got the hang of the stitch. I'm just using the basic corner to corner method here, with some single crochet around the outside edge to finish it of. I had about 3/4 of a skein of Knit Picks Dishie to start; I haven't weighed the finished cloth yet, but I'm hoping I can get at least one more of the same size out of the yarn that's left. It's a good instant gratification project when I need a break from the sweater.

I've finished three books this past week, two of which I really enjoyed.

I purchased House on Endless Waters when it was Kindle deal on a bit of a whim, having read only the description but not having heard of it or the author before, and I was very pleasantly surprised. In this novel in translation, the main character, a famous Israeli author named Yoel Blum, discovers a long-buried secret when he visits Amsterdam, the city of his birth and the city his late mother made him promise never to return to. His publisher finally persuades him to visit, and while he is there, he and his wife visit the local Jewish history museum, where he is shocked to see his mother in a film reel -- holding a baby that couldn't possibly be him. Confronting his older sister upon his return home, he learns the truth that has been hidden all these years and returns to Amsterdam to trace his family's experiences in WWII and write the novel he realizes his life has been leading him toward his entire career. As readers, we see Yoel explore the city and simultaneously see his family adapt to their changing circumstances as their lives as Dutch Jews become more and more difficult and desperate. As the Germans close in, arresting and deporting more and more Jews and prompting more of them to go into hiding, Yoel get closer and closer to the answer of his true identity and to understanding why his mother was so reluctant to talk about the war or connect with other Dutch Jews once they'd moved to Israel. This book was compelling and fascinating; though it is a fictional story, it reads in some respects like a memoir, and I think the author intended to highlight the struggles that many Dutch Jews who were hidden as children encountered once they uncovered the truth (some of them, for instance, had no surviving family after the war and were raised believing the families who hid them were their biological families, only learning the truth as adults). Though the stories aren't really similar, the setting and tone reminded me a lot of The Safekeep. I really enjoyed this one and gave it 4 stars.

I found The Girl Who Wrote in Silk on Hoopla and thought it sounded interesting, not least because it claimed to be based on true events. I would say very loosely based on true events. It's a dual-timeline novel, following Inara in present day and Mei Lein in the late 1800s, both of them in Washington State. Inara, having inherited a property on Orcas Island from her late aunt, sets out to renovate it into a boutique hotel and in the process discovers the heavily embroidered sleeve of a garment hidden under a stair tread. The embroidery shows a fairly gruesome scene of a ship and people (or demons?) in the water. Trying to figure out the origin of the sleeve and what the embroidery could mean leads her to a Chinese American professor at the University of Washington, to whom she finds herself very conveniently attracted (cue predictable romance interest here). Mei Lein, who lives with her father and grandfather and whose mother died when she was an infant, finds her family the target of anti-Chinese violence, as they are forced from their home and onto a ship they believe is bound for China. She overhears something that leads her to believe otherwise, however, and her father convinces her to jump ship in the hope of saving herself. She (again, very conveniently) is rescued by a white farmer who becomes her protector and eventually more than that. As the two timelines progress, the connection between all these individuals is revealed. While there is some basis of truth to the 1800s story (the anti-Chinese violence and expulsions from certain cities and towns), the defining tragedy was completely fabricated, and overall I found a lot of the two storylines to be a little too far-fetched, especially for historical fiction. I didn't find the characters and some of their actions to be particularly believable. I would have DNFed this if I wasn't curious enough to find out how it would all come together, and I wouldn't recommend it. I gave it 2 stars.

Thankfully, my most recent finish was much better. In The Astral Library, Kate Quinn takes a break from her usual historical fiction to dip into fantasy and sing the praises of libraries and stories. When times are tough, wouldn't we all love to disappear into a book? That's just what Alix does when she's fired from her main job, evicted from her shared apartment, and discovers that she's locked out of her bank account due to fraud. Opening a random door off the reading room of the Boston Public Library leads her to the Astral Library and its somewhat cantankerous librarian. Here, patrons can escape the world and their troubles and enter the world of any book in the public domain. They aren't main characters and can't change the story in any way, but they can be in the background of, say, Jane Austen's England or Jay Gatsby's New York. Alix is all set on disappearing for a while when the librarian begins receiving warnings indicating that the library is under attack, all while notices keep coming that the library board is ready to make changes to modernize (and monetize) the library, and she is swept into the action. There's no need for this caper to be realistic, and it's pure fun for readers and book lovers. I really loved the little details, like the snacks that are always available in the library (though while you're there, you're never hungry) or the fact that the library is haunted by ghosts of people who feel they can't cross over because their TBRs are too long. It was an easy listen and a great pick-me-up after the previous disappointment. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Weekending, 5787*

I have mixed feelings about the Jewish holidays falling on the weekend. On the one hand, it's nice not to have to burn any vacation time. On the other, it does tend to eat up all the free time. But even if the weekend wasn't as restful as it could be, it was still enjoyable. We had a great meal (in spite of the chaotic environment) on Friday night. Ruthie was clearly a little more anxious than usual with so many people in the house, but she handled it very well, all things considered. I was hoping she'd sleep in on Saturday, but she was up and letting me know it at 6 a.m. as usual! We attended services on Saturday, which didn't start until 11 and didn't end until about 1:45; I left an hour earlier to take Ruthie out and then go get my hair cut (which I would have scheduled later in the afternoon if I thought services were going to go so long!). We ate more of the same meal at my parents' on Saturday evening and then went back there for lunch with some family friends on Sunday. I feel like all I did over the weekend was eat! Today I'm ready to get back to the usual routine.

Friday was such a busy day and I was so tired after running, cleaning, serving, and cleaning up that I didn't have any energy to knit once everyone was gone. But Saturday evening we were done much earlier, so I was able to proceed with my sweater. I had completed all of the short rows at the neck by Thursday night, so that meant I was able to join my second skein (I'm alternating to be safe) and begin the textured portion of the yoke. I've only done the first eyelet section so far, but at least it's starting to look like something:

As this isn't a project I can easily work on during the day, I cast on a new pair of socks for my sister-in-law using yarn from a dyer who recently shared some pretty ugly beliefs and so I won't be naming or recommending the yarn. It was already in my stash and it's pretty, so I thought I would use it for one of the most knitworthy people I know because she will love the colors.

Today Molly has an early dentist appointment and then will drop me off on her way to school (yes, she's driving herself now!), but otherwise we're back to the usual schedule this week, for the most part. We've got curriculum night at Molly's school on Thursday evening, and that basically gives me a night off from cooking because we have to be there at 6:30. Today I'm going to fully enjoy the fact that the high is only supposed to be in the low 70s and I probably will need only one shower!

(*In case you were wondering, the new year on the Jewish calendar is 5787. Yes, it's a big number -- we've been at this for a while! And it's a lunar calendar, which is why the holidays seem to be on a different date every year.)

Commemorations

It's Friday, but it's a special day. Today we mark 25 years since the events of 9/11. I so clearly remember that day, and it's almost incomprehensible to me that it's been 25 years since it happened. Though I don't know anyone who lost their life that day, it's always a solemn day for me and I suspect for everyone who was of a certain age that day. As I do every year on this date, I'll be pausing for a moment of reflection this morning.

On a happier note, this evening we will welcome Rosh Hashanah with a big family meal at our house. As we share apples and honey, we will share our wishes for a sweet new year. And that, dear friends, is what I wish for you -- a year ahead that is happy, healthy, and sweet.