Unraveled, Week 26/2026

Thank you all for your support and sympathy on Monday's post. I'm still feeling a little anxious about the amount of yarn and fiber that's contained in the closet in that room, but at least it can be contained in the closet, and I'm feeling better now that I have a plan for it. Stay tuned for more on that in the months ahead.

Today, however, it's time for a crafting and reading update, so I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers.

Finished (but not yet blocked) are these socks for my sister-in-law:

I came up with the pattern for these, though I'm not sure whether it's different enough from existing designs to merit writing it up. The idea was an offset chevron that's mirrored in the socks, so they're symmetrical rather than identical. I used sportweight for these and thankfully had enough for both socks thanks to keeping the legs to only 5 inches and the fact that this sister-in-law has the shortest feet of anyone in the family I knit socks for (at least of the adults). Because the yarn was on the heavier side for socks, I went up to a US 1/2.25 mm needle and knit at a gauge of 8 stitches per inch. I'm now knitting another pair -- I still haven't decided if they'll be for me or for someone else -- using a rather light fingering weight and a US 0/2.0 mm needle, so they'll look similar but have a smaller gauge and a higher stitch count.

The Baby Surprise Jacket, after not getting much attention for a while, is now much closer to bind-off than cast-on, though it's still very much in the "what the heck is this thing?" stage:

I've now reached the point where you knit only on the 90 stitches at the center for a while (if you've knit one of these, you know what I'm talking about). Once that's done, I pick up on the sides of that panel and resume knitting across the whole thing for about 12 more rows, I think. Rather than buttonholes, I think I'm going to make some I-cord loops, kind of like what I did when I made Molly's BSJ.

In spite of work getting pretty busy in the past week, I've also managed to do a lot of reading (thank you, audiobooks and a day off!).

One really nice perk of being a member of NetGalley is that sometimes instead of requesting a book to read and review, the publishers come to you and ask you to read and review a book for them. That was the case for me with The Light Years, the first book in Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles. These books were published back in the '90s but are being reissued starting this December, and I was delighted to be introduced to them now. The Cazalets are a well-to-do British family whose three generations gather every summer at their country estate. In The Light Years, we spend the summers of 1937 and 1938 with them. The matriarch and patriarch of the clan are getting on in years and are being looked after by their unmarried daughter, Rachel. Two of their three sons, Hugh and Edward, are working in the family business after serving in WWI. Their youngest son, Rupert, is struggling to make a living as a painter and has recently remarried after his first wife died, and his new wife is struggling to fit in with the rest of the clan. The various grandchildren have their own quibbles and concerns. And supporting all of them is a slew of servants. While all the usual conflicts and arguments of families are taking place, so is the rise of Hitler in Germany and the specter of another war. If you're the sort of person who enjoyed Downtown Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs, and other similar period pieces, you will love this book. Be forewarned that there are some people who behave badly (adultery, child molestation) and very real concerns beyond the prospect of war (poverty, young children who have lost a parent, children who are fearful of bullying and abuse at boarding school), but overall it's a delightful insider's view of a complicated and complex family. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Modern Library for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published December 1, 2026.

I really enjoyed Laurie Frankel's most recent book, so I thought I'd try out something from her backlist. This Is How It Always Is (2017) tells the story of an extraordinary family. Rosie and Penn already have four sons when their fifth, Claude, comes along, but when Claude is still a small child, he tells his parents that he wants to be a girl when he grows up. How this family accepts their youngest child, even in a world where society has such strong gender stereotypes and expectations, is truly beautiful. I couldn't identify with this specific situation, but I certainly did feel a kinship with parents who want nothing more than for their child to be happy and true to themself. I loved that traditional gender roles were reversed in this family (the mother is a doctor and the father works from home as a writer) and that all of the children had their own quirks and distinctive characteristics. And I loved that while this family was dealing with something that most families don't, they realized that all parenting is this way -- every day is different and can bring some new challenge, but you get through them as best you can and make the best decisions you can with the knowledge you have at the time. I gave it 5 stars.

When two friends whose opinions you respect recommend a book to you, you listen. That's how I came to read Pandora's Jar, the audio version of which was read by the author. This work of nonfiction looks critically at how women are portrayed in Greek myth by looking at famous works of drama, literature, and art. She focuses on specific women whose names you will know -- Pandora, Medea, Medusa, etc. -- but whose stories, even in our times, are often misunderstood and whose reputations are thus tarnished. I've read works of fiction by Haynes before, but this book makes it clear that she's a scholar and that her knowledge of ancient Greece is vast. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to get a hard copy of it because so much of it went by so quickly in audio. If you are a fan of Greek myths, I'd recommend reading this one. I gave it 5 stars.

Daniel Mason's North Woods was my favorite book of 2023, so I couldn't wait to read his new book when I heard it was coming out and was lucky enough to get an ARC. Country People follows a family of four as they travel from California to Vermont for a year. Kate, the mother, is a renowned scholar of Milton who has been invited to hold a visiting professorship at a college there. Her husband, Miles, has been working on his dissertation for more than a decade and can't seem to settle on the right topic, though lately he is interested in the stories of Russian peasants in Tolstoy and thinks that maybe he'll be able to do some research by meeting some real-life "country" people in Vermont. They bring along their son Wesley, who's obsessed with an online game with elaborate world-building, and daughter Olive, along with their pandemic dog Guiseppe, of a breed known for truffle hunting (read: he likes to dig). What they encounter in this small town are characters who seem utterly ridiculous and yet are so fully developed that you can't dismiss them, almost as if the family has wandered into one of the folktales Miles knows so well from his dissertation research. And then things get really whackadoodle when he stumbles into a society devoted to a man who claimed he wandered into a cave one day and discovered an entirely separate world inside the earth. The description of this book calls it "joyous, absurd, and life-affirming," and I'd wholeheartedly agree with it. I found it funny and touching and, yes, absurd, but the absurdity is part of what made it so enjoyable to me. I gave it 4.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published July 7, 2026.

Finally, I completed my tour of books by J. Ryan Stradal with Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. Like the earlier two, this is a family story set in the Midwest, this time in a small town in Minnesota at the center of which is (you guessed it!) a supper club. It's not something I was familiar with, but I could understand how a family business could be a boon or a burden to successive generations of a family. I'd say this was my least favorite of Stradal's books, though that's not to say I didn't like it; I just found this one harder to follow with the jumps back and forth in time and between characters, and I also didn't care for how some of the characters treated each other. But it kept me entertained for the two or so days it took me to listen to it, and I gave it 3.5 stars.

Now that I've cleared the queue of ARCs and audiobooks (I had two checked out at once!), I am reading the fourth installment of the Thursday Murder Club series and still slowly making my way through Land.

What are you making and reading this week?

Totally Overwhelmed

Last week I mentioned that I was going to do a little digging in the stash to find some yarn for a sweater. In fact, I had a pattern and some handspun in mind. So Friday evening, I went into the stash room/guest room, opened up the doors to the closet, and started pulling out bins and bags.

Readers, I could not find the yarn.

Why couldn't I find the yarn? Well, let's just say that at one point, when Molly was moving out of this room and into the third-floor room where the stash used to live, the stash was organized. But that was several years ago, and the stash room has become a sort of catch-all for anything that doesn't have a place but needs to be out of the way. And often things are tossed into the closest willy-nilly. I have only myself to blame. This photo doesn't really give the full picture of the situation, but at least you can get a sense of the scale:

The bottom line is that I'm feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed by the amount of yarn I have. I know there are likely people who have much more and I am not in the least judging, but right now I feel like I don't even have a good sense of what I have, nor can I apparently get my hands on something that I know is in there, and that makes me anxious. I've been focusing on using yarn I already have for the past couple of years, but clearly that has not been enough.

So. Now it's time to get serious. Part of the solution to this problem is organization. If things are stored in a logical way, it'll be easier to find what I'm looking for as well as sort out what I may no longer want. That's a big project that requires space to spread things out, and I may not be able to do that until the next time the Mister is on a work trip and I can use half of the bedroom. In the meantime, the fastest way to relieve some of the anxiety of having too much is to use some of it us, so that's what I'm going to do.

I've joined a couple of charity-related groups on Ravelry that are seeking warm items made from wool (machine washability not required), and my plan is to prioritize making items for them. Thinner yarns can get doubled or even tripled. I can crochet more (it tends to grow a little faster). And I'll also encourage Molly to use up whatever she likes as well (she's a much better and faster crocheter than I, and she's made some really cute hats in the past, not to mention that she's been on a blanket kick lately).

All of this is to say that while I'll still be making gifts for family members and also probably sweaters for myself, you can expect to see a lot of the same thing over and over in the months ahead, and I hope it won't get too boring! Also, I may have some yarn I'm willing to offload on crafting friends, if that might interest any of you. But mainly I'm putting all this here for accountability and hoping for some moral support!

I have to say I already feel a bit better having written all that, and I hope I haven't made anyone else anxious about their stash. I will be back on Wednesday with a project and reading update -- assuming I haven't melted into a puddle of warm goo by then, of course.

A Free Friday

Happy Friday, friends! I'm off from work again, though the only thing I'll really be free from is my work laptop. In every other way, it's going to be a normal Friday. As long as the weather cooperates, I'll go for a run this morning, then clean bathrooms and wash the towels. I've got a couple of returns to drop off with UPS and will need to go to Trader Joe's to get ingredients for the Father's Day make-up dinner. But after all of that, I'll be able to relax all afternoon while Ruthie naps. Considering that the past several days I've been buried in work, that alone is worth having the day off.

What I am really looking forward to doing this long weekend is focusing a bit more on my knitting. Here's where things stand with my current WIPs:

I've reached the heel flap of the second sock of my current pair and finished the decreases on the BSJ. As these socks for for my small-footed sister-in-law, it's possible they'll be finished this weekend. The BSJ will take a bit longer, but there's no rush. I'm hoping to find some time to dig through my stash this weekend to find something suitable for a sweater or summer top of some sort -- I'm thinking ahead to when we're on vacation (we'll be away for most of the week after July 4) and I'll have more free time to work on a bigger project.

Once again Molly has much more going on this weekend than I, with another driving lesson and a graduation party to attend. I’ll be walking, weather permitting, and I'll be bracing myself for a predicted heat wave that's coming at the beginning of next week -- temps are supposed to get up into the 90s, ick! 

Whatever the last weekend in June holds in store for you, I hope you can enjoy it. See you back here on Monday!

Unraveled, Week 25/2026

It's Wednesday, so I'm joining in with Kat and the Unravelers as per usual, but first I have a cautionary tale to share. This all happened on Sunday after I got Monday's post ready to go, and I was too tired afterward to go back and edit, hence my sharing today.

The Mister had requested chicken piccata for dinner on Father's Day, so I was pan-frying the chicken breasts on the stove. I'd made a bit of a mess on the counter getting the chicken breaded, so I had the baking sheet with parchment paper and paper towels (to absorb the extra oil) sitting next to the pan on the stove. Molly was in the kitchen with me, mixing up a batch of brownies for dessert. I think you can likely guess what happened next: The baking sheet got just a little too close to the burner that was lit, and the next thing I knew, there were flames. Thankfully, we have always had a small fire extinguisher in the kitchen for just this sort of emergency and it did the job well. But it also made quite a mess.

Needless to say, we did not have chicken for dinner. The Mister was very understanding (I told him I'd make the dinner on Friday) and we were able to go out to get dinner at a place in the neighborhood -- and the brownies were already in the oven, so we still had a good dessert! Cleanup took quite a while, but I'm fairly certain the kitchen and especially the stove haven't been so clean in a long time! And yes, we did immediately order a replacement fire extinguisher (and an extra) right away, though I'm hoping I'll never need it -- for the record, the one I used was in the kitchen in the townhouse where before we moved into this house back in 2008, and it was the only one I've ever had to use.

PSA done, let's talk knitting. Not a ton has gotten done in the last couple of days -- I feel like I barely sat down on Monday between my run, going to donate blood, and walking Ruthie -- but I've at least made forward progress, which is better than having to unravel or tink. I've nearly finished the first sock in this pair (just a handful of rounds left on the toe!):

Reading hasn't been as plentiful in the past week either, at least if you go by the number of books I've finished -- only two, and audiobooks at that. But the two books I'm reading with my eyes are on the longer side, and that pesky job thing keeps taking up prime reading hours.

The first book I finished this year was by Jess Walter, so I thought I'd try a title from his backlist. Beautiful Ruins came out back in 2012 and is one of those books where there are multiple storylines taking place at different times that seem entirely unrelated but somehow all come together. There's one in 1962 in Italy that takes place during the filming of Cleopatra. There's one in the '90s at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And there's one in "recent" past in Hollywood. It takes a while to get to the connection and bring all these strands together, but it's an enjoyable trip. I also enjoyed all the Italian (it's translated, but I understood a fair amount!) and the excellent narration. I gave it 4 stars.

I read a second title by an author I'd enjoyed earlier this year in Underland. After enjoying my journey into rivers with Robert Macfarlane, so I thought I'd take a trip underground with him. This work focuses on spaces inside the earth, both natural and human made, and explores all the reasons why humans have sought out those spaces -- to live in, to inter remains, to bury toxic materials, etc. -- as well as our fascination with what lies beneath our feet and our urge to explore it. It's highly possible the issue this time was me, but I had trouble staying focused and engaged with this one. I have a feeling I would have gotten more out of it had I read with my eyes. I gave it 3 stars.

I've got another long weekend coming up (I'm taking my last personal day on Friday), so I'm hoping I can get some good reading time in all three days. I want to finish at least one of those long books!

A Summer Long Weekend

I'm starting a new week fairly well rested and also convinced that every weekend should last more than two days! It may not have been the most productive long weekend on record, but it was an enjoyable one. We spent a lot of time with family -- dinner with my parents on Friday night to celebrate my mother's birthday, dinner with the Mister's side of the family on Saturday to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday, and breakfast with my side of the family yesterday morning for Father's Day. Other than a sudden deluge last Saturday afternoon/early evening that never showed up on the radar, we had beautiful weather, too. I even managed to run 8 miles on Friday morning!

And of course there was knitting. I've made progress on my sister-in-law's sock, finishing the gusset decreases and moving on to the foot:

Again, it's not a great photo, but at least the colors are more accurate in this one.

I also took my bin of sock yarn out of the closet and moved it into my bedroom in the hope that looking at it would inspire me, and indeed it did. I heard late last week that Tina Newton, the dyer behind Blue Moon Fiber Arts, had passed away, and that encouraged me to dig out a long-stashed skein of Socks That Rock Mediumweight from back when I was in the Rockin' Sock Club (we're talking before Molly was born, so in the 2007/2008 time frame) and cast on a Baby Surprise Jacket to go with the baby pants:

I've only managed a couple of brief sessions with this since it was cast on, so obviously I haven't gotten too far yet, but I've knit enough of these over the years that I know what to do and won't have to puzzle over the instructions.

I've got another shorter workweek ahead because I'm taking Friday off again, and today I'm scheduled to donate blood (hemoglobin level permitting). We're supposed to get more rain today, which is of course one of the most inconvenient days because I'll be walking to my appointment, but I'm trying to focus on the fact that rain means I don't have to drag out the hose or lug the watering can to water all the plants. Here's hoping the rain lets up when I have to be inside and the short week moves quickly!

Garden Update

We pause our usually scheduled programming of knitting and reading for this update on the state of my garden.

I got a late start this year because we kept having cold snaps and late frosts, so the garden isn't as full as it has been at this time of the year in previous summers. But things are growing! First, let's take a peek at the raised beds:

On the far left is a bell pepper plant and the rest of the green things are zucchini. The pepper came from the plant sale, but the zucchini were grown from seed directly in the planter.

The other planter holds the tomatoes -- full size on the left and cherry on the right. I've had huge success with tomatoes here for several years because the front of the house gets full sun for at least half the day. These plants went from having a few flowers a couple of days ago to having a bunch of small green fruits on them yesterday, so clearly things are going well again.

For a number of years I've planted impatiens in the beds just above the lawn in front, but this year Molly convinced me to give "chaos gardening" a try. The idea behind this method is that you mix up whatever seeds you have, throw them into the ground, and see what grows. We had about a dozen packets of seeds, some mixed, some type specific, so we mixed them up and scattered them across the beds about a week ago. Now we've got a bunch of little green leaves coming up. Let's hope that the bunnies don't eat them before they turn into flowers!

Here you see some sunflowers (the janky mesh around them is to keep the bunnies from eating all the leaves, as they did last year). These were actually volunteers -- I had a sunflower in a pot last year, and I just left it there to dry out at the end of the summer. Some of the seeds from the dried-out head found their way into the dirt and sprouted, and when they were large enough that I thought they'd survive, I transplanted them to this space along the driveway where we had a damaged shrub removed.

Finally, the herb pot:

I bought the (purple) basil and rosemary from the plant sale, and the tiny green basil plant was a gift from my next-door neighbor.

Still to come: I'm hoping to start some squash (butternut and spaghetti) seeds to plant in the strip between the driveway and the fence. We used to have rose bushes there, but all but one of them died over the past few years and we have a lot of empty space. Eventually we'll plant something else there, but for now that spot is great for growing vining plants because the vines can be draped over the fence.

I know my garden isn't very impressive compared to what some of you have, but it's a work in progress! Over the years, we've removed a number of plants that were here when we moved in and that I didn't like, and as they've been replaced, I'm getting a better idea of what I want the spaces to look like going forward. Please keep your fingers crossed that I have some flowers to share the next time I have a garden update!

Unraveled, Week 24/2026

It's Wednesday today, but it's also kind of Friday for me, given that it's my last workday of the week. How nice to get to use it to talk about what I'm making and reading! As usual, I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I've got another hat off the needles, though it still needs a good bath to get the stitches to settle down.

This photo, taken in natural light, is a better representation of the color. I added an extra half inch of length to this one before starting the decreases, and I was worried I was going to play another round of yarn chicken because the ball was getting pretty skimpy toward the end. The finished hat weighed in at 88 g and the remaining yarn at 6 g, so once again I had a pretty underweight skein. Thankfully it was enough to finish, but I'm really starting to wonder if this was a regular problem and part of the reason why the yarn was discontinued! This was the last of it in my stash, though, so I won't have to worry about running short again.

I've just cast on a pair of socks for my sister-in-law (either for her birthday in September or Christmas), and I pulled my bin of fingering skeins out to see if I could get inspired about what to knit next.

It's been another productive week of reading, with five books finished.

Ann Patchett is one of my favorite writers, so naturally I preordered her newest, Whistler, from her bookstore, Parnassus Books. (I like to support my local indie bookstore whenever I can, but ordering from Parnassus means I get a signed copy on the day it comes out!) If you're already an Ann Patchett fan, then this book is already on your radar and I don't have to tell you what it's about, but I will tell you that I loved it. It's beautifully written but also easy to read. The relationships between the characters are the focus, and you can feel their emotions and want to hug them all. And if you know about Ann Patchett's own life story, then you'll see a lot of her in the book, too. This is one of those books that, although it contains sad moments, just makes you want to smile the whole time you're reading it. Highly recommend -- 5 stars!

I had bookmarked Uncultured on Hoopla when I read the description and saw it was compared to Educated and The Glass Castle. Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in a cult in which physical, emotional, and sexual abuse ran rampant and education of the world outside was severely restricted. She always knew that what was happening to her wasn't right and finally left the group as a teenager to go to high school and college in the United States. After college, she entered the military, only to discover that it had some eerie similarities to the life she left behind. This was a hard book to read in many instances, but I always find it inspirational to read about people, especially women, who are able to stand up for themselves and leave situations in which they are victims. I gave it 4 stars.

I adored A Ghost in the Throat, so when I learned via Katie's blog that the author has a work of fiction coming out later this year, I immediately requested it on NetGalley. Said the Dead is one of those books that's nearly impossible to categorize. Is it fiction? Is it memoir? History? Fantasy? All of the above? The person telling the story (at times described using the first person and at times called simply "the Reader") comes across a former mental hospital being redeveloped into condos. Exploring some of the grounds and buildings, she feels a strange connection, which leads her to seek out the archives of the institution. There she comes across the unusual history of Lucia Strangman, one of the first female doctors to work with the mentally ill, and becomes obsessed with her case notes. The Reader becomes so immersed in the stories of the women who Lucia treated -- so often committed to the hospital not because they were truly ill but because they were at the mercy of men in their life or because they didn't fit in with the society of the time or simply due to extreme poverty -- that she often neglects her own life and family. The narrative is interspersed with haunting images of Lucia, her family, and some of her patients, and throughout there is a mysterious commentary to one side that suggests that as the Reader is somehow watching the lives of these patients unfold, someone is watching her. There is a dreamlike quality to the book, and there's never a clear sense of what is real and what is fiction, but overall there's an immense respect for the many women whose names and lives were utterly forgotten in time. As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to go back to the beginning and read it again, certain there was so much I missed. I gave it 4.5 stars, rounded up. Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 22, 2026.

One of the challenges I'm signed up for on the StoryGraph is winners of what is now the Women's Prize for Fiction, so I decided to see what was available without a wait on audio on Libby from that list late last year. The Tiger's Wife came out 15 years ago, but as I had a 1-year-old then, it wasn't on my radar. This is a weird one to describe. It's set in an unnamed country in the Balkans and frequently refers to "the war," though it's never completely clear which war. Natalia is a doctor, on a trip with a friend to deliver medicine and vaccines to an orphanage, when she learns that her beloved grandfather, also a doctor has died. Over the next several days, she remembers the stories he told her of his childhood, where a deaf woman was believed to have had a relationship with an escaped tiger and was referred to as the tiger's wife, and of his encounters with "the deathless man," who appears when people are close to death to help ease their transition. I thought the writing was good but the story was bizarre, and I wasn't entirely sure what the point of it was. The lack of specificity also got a little on my nerves. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally, Molly had asked me to read The Memory Police, which she read for school toward the end of the year and wanted me to read so we could discuss it. This book was published in Japan in 1994 but was only translated into English in 2020. An unnamed narrator is a writer of novels who lives on a remote unnamed island where things are disappearing. When something disappears, so do the island residents' memory of that thing. But there are some people who still remember, and if they are discovered, the Memory Police take them away. When the writer discovers that her editor is one of those people, she decides to hide him in a secret room in her house, and he tries to help her recover her lost memories even as more and more things disappear. In the novel she is writing, a woman becomes romantically involved with her typing teacher, but one day she discovers that she no longer has a voice and has become his captive. The book gets really, really strange, but on a metaphorical level, it's an interesting illustration of how authoritarian governments can maintain control through fear and how easy it can be to acclimate to the loss of things that were once thought necessities. I gave it 3 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?