Unraveled, Week 5/2026

It's Wednesday -- or rather only Wednesday, as it feels like it's already been a very long week -- and that means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers.

We have six more weeks of winter, regardless of what Phil or any other groundhog says, but we did have a little bit of a warm-up yesterday and some of the snow has melted. But it's going to get cold again, and there's more snow in the forecast for later this week, so I haven't stopped knitting socks. I'm through the gusset of the first one and am now cruising down the foot.

It might be a little overambitious to try to get the pair done by the end of the weekend, but stranger things have happened!

It's been a slower week of reading for me -- only two books finished. But they were both good reads.

Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in World War II by Judy Rakowsky

I can't remember exactly where I heard about this book, but it sounded interesting to me given my Polish Jewish ancestry. Though it was published in 2023, my library only recently got it; I was the second one to read the digital copy. The author, a longtime journalist who covered organized crime and other investigative topics, was intrigued by the story told by her father's cousin of family members who had been hiding in Poland only to be discovered and killed by fellow Poles as the Red Army was advancing. The story claimed that while those who were killed were buried in the garden of the house where they were hiding, one of the daughters escaped and was still alive. The author joined her cousin on a number of trips back to his hometown in Poland in search of news of this missing cousin, but no one seemed willing to talk about it, and over the course of several decades, the political climate in Poland contributed to the difficulty of the search by making it against the law to say that Poles contributed to the Holocaust in any way. This was a fascinating (albeit also rather devastating) read and gave me a sense of what might have happened to my grandmother's family had they not left Poland for Canada earlier. It also made me reconsider what I have heard in more recent years about Poles saving Jews; it seems that the right-wing government that took power in 2015 pushed a narrative of Polish victimhood and quashed any mention of collaboration. This wasn't an easy read, but it was well written and extremely informative. I gave it 4 stars.

I've now officially finished reading all eight published volumes of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion and now need to wait for the next one to come out! I can't say enough good things about this series. They're funny, they're touching, and they're highly entertaining and well written. The audiobooks have been a delight, but I decided to treat myself to hard copies so that I can read with my eyes when it comes time for my first reread. I have been recommending these books to everyone, and if you haven't read them yet but need some joy and laughter, please check them out. I've given the whole series 5 stars!

Speaking of series, I'm still finishing up On the Calculation of Volume III (I'll only have to wait until April for number IV), and I'm slowly making my way through Anna Karenina.

What are you making and reading this week?

Winter Weekending

How is it already Monday again! Ruthie still doesn't understand the concept of sleeping in, so to a certain extent, weekends don't feel like much of a break for me. At least there was not a lot to do this weekend -- and the sun actually came out! It really tells you how cold it's been that when we went out for a walk after lunch yesterday and it was 17ºF but sunny, it felt downright balmy! It's the longest walk Ruthie has taken since the storm, too. Perhaps she wanted everyone to see her new coat:

I spent Friday evening grafting the ends of my cowl together, blocked it on Saturday, and wore it yesterday:

I didn't use a pattern for this, but I've knit enough that I didn't need one. I started with a provisional cast-on of 110 stitches, joined my working yarn, and knit until I had just a little left (I could have managed another round or two, but I got to a stripe that was close in color to where I started and decided to end there). I put the provisional stitches back on a needle and rotated one end of the tube 180º so I'd have that little bend in the tube to make it sit nicely around my neck. I grafted the ends together and that was that. I ended up using exactly 100 g, leaving just a small amount of yarn leftover. Easy peasy and very cozy.

The rest of my knitting time over the weekend was spent on a new pair of socks that I'm attempting to finish by the end of the Pigskin Party (which wraps up with the Super Bowl, so next weekend). I'm using the second skein of Woolens and Nosh self-striping that came home with me from SSK last summer. The colorway is called Loud Plaid Shorts, which I think is just perfect for these awesome bright colors.

These colors are the perfect antidote to the gray and white (and brown) that is all of the outside right now. We actually got a little more snow yesterday morning, not that we needed any, and with no high temperatures above freezing in the extended forecast, it looks like what we have is going to be sticking around a while. At least we got mail delivery on Saturday, for the first time in a week!

There's not to much exciting ahead this week, just the usual Monday-Friday work and school stuff. At least it will no longer be dangerous to be outside and the roads have cleared enough that we can actually drive places. I think it'll be a while yet before I can run outside (some people never cleared their sidewalks, so they've now turned to ice), but at least Ruthie and I can probably take some regular walks. I'm sure she's looking forward to smelling some new things as much as I'm looking forward to stretching my legs!

Good News to End the Week

Earlier this week, Kym asked us to notice and share some good news to help combat the onslaught of terrible news from across the country and around the world. As if all that news wasn't bad enough, it's been a hard week for us here following the snowstorm last weekend. This is apparently the largest snowfall we've gotten since the "Snowmageddon" storm of February 2010, when Molly was a newborn, and it's been a struggle to clean it up. We've yet to get mail this week, for instance, and it's been hard to get anywhere outside. We were all home Monday and Tuesday, and it felt a bit like the beginning of the pandemic again, so it wasn't easy to avoid the feelings of isolation and uncertainty again. The best antidote for those feelings is to look for the good or, in the words of the national treasure that is Fred Rogers, "Look for the helpers."

• While many of us were annoyed that we were trapped at home, I'll bet few of us thought about people who were here from out of town and got stuck. One of our local stations reported on just such a situation at hotel in the area, where the manager decided that because no one was going anywhere and all the nearby restaurants would be open, she might as well cook for everyone!
  
  
• Our city has a Snow Angels program through which residents can sign up to shovel sidewalks and driveways of neighbors who can't. In the aftermath of the storm, it was reported that signups had gone up dramatically. Even our new mayor got in on the action!
  
  
• Not to be outdone, our neighbor across the street noticed that there was a huge hump of snow at the end after the main road was plowed, so he took a shovel and cleared it enough so that we could actually drive off our street.

There is some good personal news to share, too. My parents have now both tested negative for COVID, and my mother talked to my aunt yesterday and reported that she sounded like herself. Today is pay day for me, and this month's check includes my annual raise, which I'm getting thanks to the hard work of my union after the university tried to withhold increases from those of us in the bargaining unit because our contract is still being negotiated. Finally, yesterday I published my first pattern of the new year, the Mosaika Cowl (Ravelry link / Payhip link):

I only managed to publish one pattern in all of last year, and considering I have a second one planned already, that means I'm already doing better this year.

We have no major plans for the weekend, mainly because the roads are still pretty bad and it's still going to be insanely cold. But perhaps we'll get together with my parents and maybe have a make-up birthday dinner for my father-in-law. For sure I'll be celebrating the end of my least-favorite month!

Stay warm, look for the good in the world, and see you back here on Monday!

Unraveled, Week 4/2026

Still here, still snowed in! I finally got out my yardstick yesterday afternoon to see if I could get a more accurate idea of how much snow we've gotten, and this is what it told me:

I have to say that it seemed like a lot more than that Monday morning when I went out to shovel! We've having some really bad luck with snow plows in the city, and even if we had all trucks active and they were all out on the streets, they wouldn't get to our dead end if at all for days. [Update: A plow came through a little after midnight! Incredible!] So I figured I should try to dig out some of the street so that we can get out of our driveway. An hour and a half later, here's what I'd gotten done:

The sidewalk only needed touching up after all the shoveling on Sunday.

I'm sure you won't be surprised that my arms and back were very sore yesterday! We've had a bit more snow since then, too, but luckily not enough that we've needed to go out and clear it. The bigger issue was the extreme cold, which kept all of us at home for another day. Today, though, the Mister has to go into the office, and Molly has a two-hour delay, which means I will need to drive her in for a 10 a.m. start. I'm hoping the roads are too horrible by then.

But enough about the storm! I know many of you are dealing with it as well, so you know my pain. It's Wednesday, which means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers. I've been continuing to knit on my cowl, but it's not going to look much different until it's done and seamed, so I didn't bother to take a photo. Instead, I have an exciting finish -- I completed a skein of handspun!

I started spinning this non-superwash Shaniko wool from Cesium Yarn back in September(!) after buying it at SSK last year. I bought it partly because I wanted to try to the wool but mainly because the colorway was Neighborhood of Make Believe -- I felt like I had to, because reasons. I didn't do anything fancy with this spin, just spun the fiber from end to end, wound the singles into a center-pull ball, and plied it on itself so I used up every last bit.

The fiber was mostly white, so I'm not surprised that the finished yarn is so soft and pastel-y. It ended up fingering to sport weight, and it shrunk up a lot; I was expecting 400+ yards based upon the number of wraps when I skeined it up, but after washing and drying, it measured about 384 yards.

Reading has been good the past week, even if I had to sacrifice some reading time to shoveling. I finished three books.

The Small and the Mighty is a chronicle of U.S. history that looks at the lives of unknown or lesser-known Americans who played a critical role in the story of this country. I'd had this book on my Kindle shelf for several months, but given what has been happening lately, I wanted to be inspired by people who worked to make this country better, and it delivered. I was happy that I did recognize some of the names, but I got a more complete picture of even those. I will note that this book has a more conversational tone than a true textbook, but I think that makes it more approachable. Learning what I did, I could even overlook the handful of grammatical errors I came across (I figured the content was more important than the form). If you, too, are looking for reasons not to be ashamed to be an American, I'd recommend it. I gave it 4 stars.

I'd seen Best Offer Wins show up in a couple of places, so I put it on hold at the library on a whim. If I had to describe it, I'd say it's a thriller about a woman desperate to buy the perfect house in the D.C. suburbs. Yes, I said thriller. This book is, well, bonkers. I've heard about how competitive some housing markets are, and certainly when we were looking for a house, it was a stressful process, but this takes it to another level. I couldn't believe what the main character was willing to do to get her dream home, and then she went way beyond that -- and then beyond that! As a thriller, it definitely delivers, but a lot of the book made me feel icky (though I suspect that was kind of the point). I gave it 3 stars; I think it's well written, but I can't say I really liked it all that much.

My final finish was a book that my aunt gave me when I saw her in Florida in December. Florence Adler Swims Forever follows a Jewish family in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the mid-1930s. College student Florence loves nothing as much as she loves swimming and is training to swim the English Channel. Her married older sister, Fannie, is pregnant and on bed rest in the hospital after losing a baby following an early labor. When Florence drowns in an accident (not a spoiler -- it happens in the first chapter), their parents decide to hide the tragedy from Fannie, worried that the shock could lead her to lose another child. This decision impacts not just them but also Fannie's husband, Isaac, and young daughter, Gussie, as well as Anna, a friend of the family who has managed to get out of Germany on a student visa, and Stuart, Florence's friend and coach. This is a story of a family dealing with its grief but also dealing with the threat of Nazi Germany. It's not easy to tell a story from so many different points of view, but it's well done here, and I appreciated it all the more when I read the author's note and learned that the story came from her own family members. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading books in two series -- Emma Lion Vol. 8 and On the Calculation of Volume III -- and have finally started my buddy read of Anna Karenina with Katie. I expect that one will take me quite a while!

What are you making and reading this week?

How I Spent My Weekend

I took my knitting to see a show:

I did some plying:

I baked some bread:

I made some soup:

I did some reading and knitting while getting in some puppy snuggles:

And I watched the snow piling up and covering the composter and fake owl:

I also braved Trader Joe's first thing on Saturday (they were out of full-sized carrots?), did several loads of laundry, shoveled snow, took Ruthie out to frolic, and tried to get some extra sleep.

I hope if you were in the path of this storm, you are warm and safe at home!

Too Much Drama

Friends, I am always happy to see Friday come around again, but this week, I am extra relieved because we have had A Week. Not long after my post went up on Wednesday, we got a text from my mother that my aunt (her sister) had been rushed to the ER the previous night with a brain bleed. Oh, and she'd also tested positive for COVID and both my parents had as well. She was scheduled for surgery that afternoon. To say that I was anxious that day until we'd heard from the Chicago family would be a massive understatement. I will spare all of you the worry and let you know that the surgery was successful, that she's expected to make a full recovery, and that my cousin reported yesterday afternoon that she was cracking jokes and correctly answering questions on legal terminology. Phew! Also, it appears that no one who left Chicago on Sunday, as we did, got infected. My mother says she feels like she has a bad cold and my father is asymptomatic, but I feel bad that after avoiding it for almost six years, they finally caught the 'vid. I'm just relieved that they're not too ill.

After all that drama, we woke up yesterday to ice everywhere because it warmed up enough yesterday for some light snow to turn to rain, which then of course coated everything. Molly had a two-hour delay, so I drove to her school, and then I proceeded to slip and slide everywhere trying to walk the dog and exercise.

And if that's not enough, have you heard there's a huge winter storm moving through a good portion of the country this week? The last forecast I heard for our area is 8-12 inches of snow, mostly falling Saturday night and Sunday. I'm glad this is hitting on the weekend and we can be home, but it's going to be a mess, and our city has already been struggling with clearing the roads. It's very possible we'll all be home again on Monday.

As far as knitting goes, I have been doing it a little (not as much as I'd like) but don't have much to show for it. I did cast on my sweater, but all I've gotten done is about an inch and a half of ribbing. And I cast on for a tube cowl -- a long tube that I'll graft together -- in one of the new skeins of Fibernymph Dye Works fingering. The only photo I've taken in the past couple of days is the finished but not yet blocked charity hat:

Though we'll be hunkering down for the storm, we're planning to get out and about on Saturday. I'm going to send the Mister to do our grocery shopping after he takes Molly to take her learner's permit test(!). In the afternoon, the girls will be headed to see Wicked, which we were supposed to go see with my mother and which she'll obviously have to miss. My sister-in-law is coming, and one of Molly's friends will use my mother's ticket. We're also supposed to get together with the Mister's side of the family on Sunday evening for a birthday dinner for my father-in-law, but we'll have to see if any of us can actually get out. Honestly, I kind of hope we're snowed in for a day or two -- I'd really like a quiet day at home!

Stay safe and warm this weekend, friends, especially if you're in the path of this storm.

Unraveled, Week 3/2026

It's already Wednesday -- a nice benefit of a long weekend! It's my favorite blogging day of the week because it means I get to link up with Kat and the Unravelers.

Molly had a remote learning day yesterday, thanks to frigid temperatures, so I had her home with me and didn't have to do school pickup, which meant longer snoozy time with Ruthie. Thanks to that extra time, I got in a little more knitting and finished up another triple-stranded scrappy hat:

Yes, technically it was still on the needles, but when you have a dog sleeping next to you and want them to continue to sleep, you put off finishing the crown of a hat until later. This was a hat I pretty much made up as I went along, and I rather like how it turned out. I did take some notes as I worked so I can reknit it in one yarn -- in fact, I have some fuzzy bright pink yarn that would be perfect for it. But first I'll weave in my ends, weigh my remaining yarn, and give this one a block.

With all the travel in the past week, I haven't gotten a ton of reading done, but I did manage to finish three books.

The River Has Roots is a novella that is a sort of fairy tale about two sisters and the unbreakable bond of their love for one another. There is some magic in the river and in grammar, there is a love story, and there is a villain. I listened to the audiobook over the course of last Thursday, and while I really enjoyed the addition of sound effects and song in the background of the reading, I think this is a book I would very much like to reread with my eyes so I can both take my time and flip back and forth. Admittedly, I don't comprehend what I read with my ears as well as what I read with my eyes, so perhaps it wasn't the best choice. But it's well done and a great little piece of semi-escapist fantasy. I gave it 4 stars.

The Devil's Grip is the final work a small group of us are reading for our year or so of focusing on women in translation. It follows a woman who has traveled to Italy and taken up with a man she describes as ugly but whose transformation leads him to be attractive to other women. He cheats on her, and when she confronts him, he beats her. So she begins an affair of her own, with an American man who convinces her to come back to New Orleans with him. She finally gets up the courage to leave her boyfriend and fly to the United States, only to encounter a potentially even more dangerous situation. I won't bury the lede: I didn't like this book. I didn't understand what the woman saw in her boyfriend in the first place, I didn't like that she put up with his abuse, and I just didn't like her as a character. I would have DNF'd it if we weren't going to be discussing it. I gave it 2 stars, mainly because I could appreciate the writing even if I didn't care for the story.

My last finish for the week was, thankfully, a little lighter. The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, which won the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction, is told by the titular character, a 60-something gay high school philosophy teacher who lives in Beirut with his mother. In flashbacks, we learn about some of his formative childhood experiences and how they influenced his life's course. Throughout it all there is the constant of his relationship with his mother, arguably the most important relationship in his life, both as a child and as an adult. It's funny, it's sad, and it's heartwarming. I really enjoyed it and gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading The Small and the Mighty on Kindle and Florence Adler Swims Forever on paper, the latter of which I was handed down by my aunt when we were in Florida.

What are you making and reading this week?