Unraveled, Week 31/2026

It's Wednesday, so that means it's time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers! This Wednesday finds me with just one knitting WIP (because I did end up finishing the purple hat), and it's the handspun scarf, on which I've now started decreasing:

Apologies for the washed-out photo

I was intending to increase until I'd used just slightly less than half of the yarn, but I realized if I did that, my scarf would be very long, which kind of defeats the purpose of making a little scarf. So I decided to increase until I had 45 stitches in garter stitch (yes, to match my age) and then started decreasing. I'm a bit worried now, though, that maybe I flew past that halfway point. Keep your fingers crossed I don't have to play yarn chicken! I figure the worst-case scenario is that I have to back and reknit, and honestly that wouldn't be so bad -- it's quite lovely to knit with merino/silk handspun!

Speaking of handspun, I'm working on my third bobbin of singles for the merino/silk/angora. I'm hoping to wrap up that spin this week to correspond to the Tour de France Femmes.

Reading! I've got three finished since this time last week.

I really enjoyed The Help, so I was interested in Kathryn Stockett's new novel The Calamity Club -- but I needed some persuading when I saw how long the audio was (28 hours!). I won't bury the lede: It was absolutely worth it, and it also didn't really take that long to listen to because the readers were slow, so I was able to increase the speed to 1.75x. Set in 1933 in Oxford, Mississippi, this novel is told from the point of view of Birdie, an unmarried 20-something woman who is the sole support to her mother and grandmother following the death of her father, and Meg, an 11-year-old living in an orphanage after her mother seemingly abandoned her. Birdie travels to Oxford from her small town to ask her married sister, Frances, for a loan to help pay back taxes when the family home is at risk. But when Frances's husband disappears, along with much of his family's possessions, Birdie has to step up to help Frances and her mother-in-law. Meg, meanwhile, is poorly treated at the orphanage, particularly by the woman in charge of running it, and still doesn't fully believe that her mother left her on purpose. Birdie's volunteer work helping out with the accounting books at the orphanage brings her together with Meg and gives her a personal interest in the girl's future. And when things start to get particularly dire, a woman named Charlie comes into Birdie's life and proposes a solution that seems dangerous and preposterous -- but just might be what will save them all. There are some ugly words used in this book and some ugly ideas, but they're very reflective of the time and aren't used gratuitously. The heart and soul of the novel is its strong female characters -- Meg, Birdie, and Charlie -- who aren't afraid to work hard and make sacrifices to help those they love. They are smart, funny, and fierce, and I really enjoyed spending time with all of them. I gave the book 4 stars.

I'd heard a lot of buzz around The Great Wherever and put it on notify in Libby ahead of its publication. I got really lucky because I happened to be looking at my phone when I got the notification it was available and ended up being the first person in line to get it, and my hold came up just before we left on our trip, so I was able to read it in its entirety over the course of the weekend. It follows Aubrey, a woman in her early 30s who is struggling. She thought her boyfriend was about to propose, but instead he broke up with her. She has multiple jobs that she doesn't like in order to pay her rent but still comes up short. Her mother died when she was just a child and her father only recently passed away. When nothing seems to be going right, she gets an email from family she doesn't know and discovers that she is part owner of a homestead in Tennessee and that she and the others have to contemplate an offer to purchase the property. She flies to meet them and soon learns the full history of the place: how her great-grandfather was one of the first Black homeowners in the area, building the house with his own hands; how the family's history was tied up with that of the wealthy white family who started the town; and how the family had held on to the land all these years in the face of many attempts by others to buy it. Throughout it all, ghosts of members of the family watch over their descendants, occasionally seen by one relative or another and sometimes even managing to avert an action that might prove disastrous. Though Aubrey is the focus, the story is much bigger than her and is a beautifully written illustration of a family that has its struggles and its triumphs. I could not put it down and gave it 5 stars.

And now for something completely different! Glorious Exploits is set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War. After a recent battle, a group of Athenian prisoners is being held in a quarry, and two friends, Lampo and Gelon, decide to pass the time by staging a performance of Medea in which the prisoners are the actors -- because while they may hate Athenians, they still love their drama. As they work with the prisoners, they start to see their humanity, and they realize that by getting others to come see the play, perhaps they can do the same. It's a bit wacky, a bit funny, and a bit sad, and it's made a bit weirder by the fact that the author is Irish and the dialogue sounds more at home in modern-day Dublin than ancient Syracuse. Ultimately it's a creative way to show that art is a way to bring people together and help them recognize their similarities in spite of their differences. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Recovery Day

We are back -- and I am very glad I'd planned to take today off to recover from the trip. It's not that the trip was all that taxing, but we did not sleep especially well (both children and adults being loud in the hotel hallway in the middle of the night both nights), and of course now there's laundry to do and the house to get back in order, because the Mister didn't do much while we were gone -- he didn't even put away the coffee pot from Friday! Later this morning I will go pick Ruthie up, and at some point today I will give her a bath because after a weekend of playing with other dogs outside, I'm sure she badly needs one. I'm sure we'll need to do some laundry today, and Molly wants to go get her driver's license card (we had to wait to get the from in the mail from PennDOT), so it will be a full day without work.

It was nice to spend the weekend with family, though it feels a bit like all we did was sit around and eat! It's about a five-hour drive up to the Detroit area, and both on the way there and on the way back we stopped at a service plaza somewhere in Ohio to have lunch and break up the drive, so it took us closer to six hours each way. The eating included a stop at Leo's Coney Island, where I did partake of just one coney (for those of you who are unfamiliar with this delicacy, it's a hot dog covered in a meat chili topped with onions and mustard):

Our plans were largely built around the little kids and their sleeping schedule, so we had relatively early evenings, and between the time in the car, the time sitting around and talking at my aunt and uncle's, and the time in the hotel in the evenings, I got quite a lot of knitting done. My scarf has grown enough that I need to fold it up to get it all in a photo:

and by the time we pulled into our driveway yesterday afternoon, I'd started the decreases on the hat:

I'd originally intended this to be added to the charity pile, but my mother informed me that this purple is actually my sister-in-law's favorite color, so now I think it'll become a birthday or Christmas present for her.

After today, this week should be pretty typical, and I'm looking forward to a regular schedule. We'll see what I missed at work after three days away -- not much, I hope! What I did miss was puppy snuggles, so I'll be trying to get in as many of those as I can (and after being away from me for several days, I'm sure Ruthie will be extra clingy). Here's hoping your week and month are off to a good start. See you back here on Wednesday for an Unraveled update!

And Away We Go

In just a few hours, Molly and I will be headed to Michigan with my side of the family for a visit with my aunt and uncle. Ruthie's at boarding, where there are supposed to be some more dog friends to play with, and the Mister will be holding down the fort at home. It's likely to be a weekend of sitting around and talking, so at least I will get a lot of knitting time in. One project that is coming with me is the new handspun scarf:

So far, my winging it is working out. I'm taking my travel scale so that I can increase until I've used about half my yarn, then I'll start decreasing.

Molly and I went to see The Odyssey yesterday. Visually, it was impressive. As for the script, I'm afraid I have to agree with my Greek professor. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it was only loosely based on the original poem because so much was changed. But it beat spending the afternoon at work, and if you're wondering how much charity hat can get knit during a epic movie, it's about 4 inches.

We will be back sometime on Sunday and I'm taking Monday off (partly because I'll have to go pick Ruthie up), so I imagine I'll have some significant progress to show on these projects. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this final day of July and the first weekend of August!

Unraveled, Week 30/2026

Happy Fri -- er, Wednesday! It's the end of my workweek but only the middle of the week in general, and today as per usual I'm joining in with Kat and the Unravelers.

I'm still working on that sparkly purple charity hat and on my current spin, but today I'm planning on casting on a new project, a Sophie-ish scarf using this recent skein of handspun:

I figure I have knit enough shawls in my day that I can wing it without needing a pattern, though we'll see if I'm actually successful. I have a work meeting (online) right after lunch today that I have to attend but not really pay close attention to, so I'll be casting on then.

Because of a big project that got dropped in my lap late last week, my reading slowed a bit and I only have three finished reads to share this week (two of which were started at the beginning of the month). But they are all nonfiction, which is rather unusual for me!

In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that some of the policy decisions that were made decades ago and that may have been well intentioned at the time have led to major problems today: a shortage of affordable housing, worker shortages in certain industries, climate change, a problematic environment in which to conduct research. There's a lot of interesting content here, but a lot of it went in one ear and out the other (so maybe this wasn't the best book to read on audio and I would have retained more had I read with my eyes). It was a relatively short listen, despite having to slow down my usual speed (Ezra Klein can be a fast talker!), and I did feel I learned a few things, but when I finished I didn't feel like I had a solid grip on the content. I gave it 3 stars.

I have been wanting to read more of Toni Morrison's work (I have read only two of her novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, as well as her short story Recitatif and a collection of her essays and speeches), and some other readers I respect recommended that I read On Morrison before I do. Written by Harvard professor and novelist Namwali Serpell, this book is like taking a graduate seminar on Toni Morrison and her writing. It covers all of her novels and some of the other writings, examining their content, context, and creation. It's a comprehensive work and clearly written by someone who admires Morrison very much, but a lot of it was way over my head, especially when it got into the weeds about the mechanics of writing and literary devices. I think I got the most out of the chapters about the books I have read, and I can see myself going back to reread chapters as I read other novels and can make more sense of the discussion. I gave it 3 stars.

I previously read and enjoyed Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing and his podcast, and I had been wanting to read his new book, so I was delighted when my parents passed along a hard copy. London Falling investigates the death of a London teenager, Zac Brettler, under mysterious circumstances made even more mysterious when Zac's parents discovered that he'd been posing as the son of a Russian oligarch and possibly gotten involved with some very shady characters. Like everything PRK does, this book is meticulously researched well beyond the inciting incident of Zac's death, even to the point of taking you down rabbit holes you didn't even know about to expect (did you know, for instance, that there was once a very large and prosperous Indian community in Uganda?). There are no clear answers and no real resolution, but it's a fascinating read nonetheless. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm now officially past the halfway mark on a very long new release on audio and have just started a digital ARC on another nonfiction work.

What are you making and reading this week?

The Beginning of the End

The end of July, that is. This month seems to gone by faster than any month yet this year, but I suppose when the weather is nice, we get busy doing a lot of things and that makes the time seem to go by more quickly. I'm not necessarily looking forward to August, but it does bring us closer to fall, my favorite time of year.

Thank you for all your good thoughts on Friday. If you didn't happen to see my midday update, I'm happy to share that Molly passed her driving test and is now a licensed driver! Amazingly she has not yet asked to take the car out ("the car" being my car), but one of her good friends has been on an overseas vacation with her parents for the past week and a half or so and will be getting home tomorrow, so Molly's already planning to drive over to see her on Wednesday. I'll admit I'm a little freaked out by the idea of her driving alone, but I know she is cautious and responsible, and frankly I'm very much looking forward to her driving herself to and from school everyday!

Our brief stretch of unseasonably cool weather ended this weekend, so it was a bit more uncomfortable outside. On Saturday morning Molly and I walked to a nearby farmers market to pick up some things for dinner that night. We came home with some focaccia, a gorgeous loaf of farm bread, fresh blueberries, and a couple of heirloom tomatoes. I had to go Trader Joe's anyway because we were completely out of coffee, so I picked up some fresh mozzarella. I picked some basil from our herb pot, and voila, caprese salad for dinner!

Your eyes do not deceive you -- that is purple basil!

After dinner, the Mister and I walked over to get ice cream and took Ruthie along for the first time. She was excited but I think a little disappointed that she didn't get any!

I did manage to get that charity hat finished up on Saturday, using up all but about 2 g of yarn (which means I used 101 g or about 495 yards!).

I almost immediately cast on for another one using the other skein I'd wound and taken with me on our family trip, when I was apparently a little delusional about just how much knitting I'd be doing. It's a one-of-a-kind skein from the now-defunct Steel City Fiber Collective. This is a sparkly base and should be faster to knit because it's only (hehe) 438 yards.

I've got a three-day work week this week, which feels like a great way to finish out the month. Molly and I are taking a short weekend trip up to Michigan with my parents and my brother and his family to visit my aunt and uncle. We'll be leaving Friday and coming back Sunday, but I'm taking Thursday and Monday off as well so I can drop Ruthie off at/pick her up from the dog sitter's (I prefer to have her in the car in the morning, before she eats, so there's less for her to throw up on the way!). Molly and I have tickets to go see The Odyssey on Thursday afternoon -- I'm excited! And I finished up a big work project at the end of the day on Friday, so I'm hoping this can be a calm and short week.

Feel-Good Friday, Late July Edition

This has been a challenging week for a number of reasons, most having to do with not getting enough sleep. I'll spare you the boring details; suffice it to say that I'm happy it's Friday. And instead of wallowing in the less-than-happy things, let's instead focus on the good in this week that was.

I mentioned at the beginning of the week that the Mister was going to be out of town for work for a few days this week. I took advantage of his absence to completely empty the stash closet and put everything on his side of the bedroom. Molly took a stab at organizing things on Tuesday while I was working, and then Wednesday night, after I put Ruthie to bed, the two of us went through all the bins and bags to put things together logically. Molly claimed some leftovers, some mini skeins, and some full skeins for herself (she's been doing a lot of crocheted motifs to make blankets). I consolidated handspun and unspun fiber into fewer containers. And we organized the yarn into bins containing full skeins/sweater quantities and collected all the fingering weight bits that could be used in charity projects. Some things were just plain thrown out because they were of no use to me or anyone else. And now the closet looks like this:

Spinning fiber is all on the left, handspun is in the center, and yarn is to the right. The Cascade bag on top of the fiber is all the bits of fingering, so I can just pull that out and pull out scraps as needed, and the soft plastic cases on top of the yarn bins is projects that have been packed away. I also want to point out that right at the top of the handspun pile is a smaller plastic bag that I deliberately left out -- it's the handspun I couldn't find that triggered this reorganization process in the first place!

Other good things: I finally blocked and photographed my most recent pair of socks (I'm writing up the pattern and will need photos, so that was good motivation):

And I've been continuing to spin almost every evening and finished the first 2 oz. (of 6 oz. total) of this lovely merino/silk/angora fiber that my friend Margene sent me:

I'm hoping we can finish up this week with some really good news: Molly is scheduled to take her driving test later this morning. She's been getting good feedback from the driving instructor (all the credit goes to the Mister for getting her out on busy and difficult roads), so I am feeling good about her chances. I know she's very much like me and won't be reckless, but nerves are always something to contend with. If you have some good thoughts to send her way at 11:30 this morning, I'm sure she'd appreciate it! Update: She passed!

I hope this past week has brought you clearer air if, like me, you were recently dealing with smoke from the forest fires. Our air has been so much better and our weather has been absolutely stunning the past couple of days -- it was in the 50s when I took Ruthie out first thing yesterday! I also hope you've been able to find some things to feel good about, and please feel free to share them in the comments, as I think we can all use a good lift! Have a lovely weekend.

Unraveled, Week 29/2026

It's Wednesday, so it must be time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers! This week's update finds me in an unusual spot: I have only one active knitting WIP. I have been spinning in the evenings when I'm upstairs, so the only knitting I've been doing regularly has been during the afternoons while Ruthie naps (and while I read or do work). That knitting, by necessity, has to be fairly simple, so it's generally socks or a hat. And a hat is what I've been working on this week.

It's been a while since I measured anything in Ruthies, and I think this particular system is well suited to this hat. The yarn I'm using is a light fingering weight, at 490 yards per 100 g. As if that's not enough, my skein was a bit heavy at 103 g, so I have a bit more than 500 yards. This is going to be for charity, so I figure I might as well use up as much of it as I can; worst case is that whoever ends up with it can fold the brim a couple of times. My parents were kind enough to drive me to and from the dinner Monday night (they were also attending), and the round trip took probably an hour and 45 minutes thanks to traffic, so I've gotten a fair amount done this week. I'm hoping I'll be able to finish in the next few days.

I've also done a fair amount of reading this week, but I'm busy enough that I don't have time to do full reviews and I apologize for that. I've finished five books since last Wednesday:

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (digital from library): A tradwife online influencer wakes up in 1855 and has to figure out how she got there and how to get back to the life she knows. A wild ride with a highly unlikeable main character that is nevertheless a page turner. 3 stars
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (audio from the library): A riveting true story of a rash of murders of members of the Osage nation and the investigation by the burgeoning FBI that revealed a pattern of efforts by white men to get the oil money of the Osage. 4 stars
• The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews (digital from library): A thriller set in the world of fine art. Clare was ABD on an art history PhD when she married into a wealthy family and has become unfulfilled with her new life. She has an affair with an art dealer, and when he is murdered, it soon becomes clear that someone is trying to frame her for his death. Outrageous but fun, especially if you know art. 4 stars
• Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz (audio from library): The third in the Susan Ryeland series finds her back in London working with a tumultuous author hired to write a continuation of the Atticus Pund series. She discovers that his book is actually a thinly veiled account of his own family, and once again she finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. Well performed (by actors) but too long. 3 stars
• Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julie Langbein (digital from library): Jean, in her mid-40s, can't seem to move on from an affair she had with a professor while a college student studying abroad in France. So she turns to Monica Lewinsky, as one would pray to a saint for intercession, for help as she revisits that summer. Funny, irreverent, and empowering and totally original. 4 stars

I'm still slowly making my way through London Falling before bed and, now that a flurry of three library holds in a row coming in has subsided, will be getting back to On Morrison.

What are you making and reading this week?