A Mixed Bag

TGIF! It's been a long week, with the Mister on a work trip and wintry weather moving in. But at least we're now at the end of it.

I appreciated all the good thoughts for my visit with the orthopedist! The bad news is that I'm not done with the boot altogether. He said to keep wearing it for the next three weeks, especially when I'm out of the house -- BUT I am supposed to start walking around without it when I'm at home and I can take it off to sleep! And I can drive again! The timeline means that I'll still be wearing it for a bit when we go to Florida, but maybe they'll have some pity on me when we're boarding the plane and let me get on early. He gave me a bunch of exercises to do to, so I will be working those into my routine and trying to get around bootless as much as possible at home so that my foot gets stronger. While part of me is disappointed that I couldn't ditch the boot completely, I had a feeling it wasn't going to happen anyway, and now I officially don't have to worry about showing up at the office for the rest of the year.

In other good news, look what I finished on Wednesday night!

Pattern: Someone to Write Gnome About by Sarah Schira
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in Mid-Winter (hat and socks), Knit Picks Gloss Fingering in Dusk (body and legs), and handspun wool of mystery (nose, beard, and sock accents)
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm and US 1.5/2.5 mm
Started/Completed: November 24/December 3

I think I may have mentioned before that I really had no idea how big this guy was going to be, despite the fact that the dimensions are written right there on the first page of the pattern. (I fully admit that other than the needle sizes needed, I didn't really read the first page all that closely.) But I'm not sure this photo really gives you a good sense, so how's this for scale?

I know my brother will love him, so knitting him was worth it, but I doubt I will do it again. And I'm quite happy that I've chosen a much simpler pattern for my nephew. There is nothing wrong with the pattern -- Sarah writes excellent patterns with lots of great information about techniques! I just found it a bit too fiddly for my taste.

Now that the big guy is done, I'll be casting on soon for the one for my nephew, and I've pulled out my sister-in-law's socks. I've just started the heel on the second sock, and they're in stockinette, so I can easily work on them while reading, in a meeting, etc.

Tomorrow night Molly is performing with the school Glee Club at a local neighborhood's light-up night, and on Sunday evening we've been invited to dinner at the new house of some friends. Now that I can drive again, we girls might also get wild and crazy and do a Target run! Mostly I want to hide inside where it's warm and get used to not having a boot on. Stay warm out there, friends, and have a restful weekend!

Unraveled, Week 49/2024

Oh dear, that number is getting awfully close to 52 and the end of the year! It's Wednesday again, so time to join Kat and the Unravelers. I'm sure not one of you will be surprised by what I'm working on at the moment:

If I'd used brown for the body, this would look like a potato.

Don't let appearances fool you; this gnome is not as close to being finished as he appears. But I am pretty confident that he will be finished up today or tomorrow at the latest. I finished up the body on Monday, including the wonky stuffing (but I think in a gnome, wonkiness adds personality). My big accomplishment yesterday was finishing a leg that ends in a tiny sock, and lest you think that's not a big deal, here's a close-up photo of it:

Including the color used for the leg, there are five color changes involved with this sock! I did make a minor modification to the gusset set up (yes, there is actually a heel flap and gusset!) so that I could avoid cutting my main sock color, but I still had nine ends to deal with in a sock that's only a few inches long. Fortunately, because the leg is sewn closed at the top when it's attached to the body, it's just fine to let those ends hang out on the inside. I secured them so the knitting would start to fall apart, but I didn't worry too much about weaving in my ends all that carefully. Once leg/sock number two is complete, all that will remain is knitting the beard and the nose and assembling everything.

This project has been taking up pretty much all my time, but I will pull out my sister-in-law's socks and start the much simpler gnome for my nephew once it's complete.

I did not get as much reading time in as I would have liked over the long weekend (frankly, I think I was so overwhelmed by all the peopling that my brain wasn't up for thinking much), but I have finished two books this past week.

Katie alerted me to the fact that the audiobook of Louise Erdrich's Antelope Woman (read by the author) is available on Hoopla, so I'd had it bookmarked until I had time to listen. First of all, listening to Louise (in my head, we're on a first-name basis) read her book is always a treat and is a rare occurrence. But this book also has an interesting history. It was first published in 1998 as The Antelope Wife, but she has since revisited and revised it, and the audio version just came out last year. I found it to be pretty typical Erdrich: It centers Indigenous characters and incorporates their legends and stories, and there's humor even when dealing with very sad and serious subjects. I have to admit that I had the problem with this book that I often do with audio: I missed bits here and there because my attention wandered, so there were several moments when I couldn't identify a character name or where I was confused about what was happening. But the writing is magical as always. I have a hard copy of the original book, so at some point I will get it out to see both what I missed and where it differs from the new version. I gave it 4 stars.

I have gotten better about not downloading the monthly Kindle freebie books (there have been only a few good ones over the years), but I still look at what's there, and when I saw Fredrik Backman's name last month, I didn't even really read the description. The Answer Is No is technically a short story and at only 60-some pages took me maybe an hour to read, but it was a fun little diversion. Lucas is a 30-something man who lives by himself, works from home, and orders his pad thai to be delivered to his door so he doesn't have to deal with other people. But then people start knocking on his apartment door, and soon he finds himself dealing with rather a lot of people. It's all rather ridiculous and not particularly realistic, but it has Backman's signature feel-good moments -- and did I mention it took only about an hour to read? I gave it 3 stars.

I am still reading Madness, taking my time both because I'm reading it before bed and because it deals with subjects worthy of thought and consideration, and yesterday I started Our Wives Under the Sea. The latter is a real departure from what I typically read given that it's classified as horror. I heard about it on a podcast and was intrigued enough to give it a try. I'm only a few chapters in, so there's nothing truly scary yet, but I continue to be intrigued. It's a short book, so I should be able to give a report next week.

What are you making and reading this week?

P.S. I'm headed to the orthopedist for my follow-up appointment tomorrow morning. Good thoughts are appreciated!

Back to the Grind

It was especially hard to get up this morning, even for a Monday, but today it's back to the usual routine. After a major coffee-making fail over the weekend, I've got two cups in my system this morning to get me going.

It was a cold weekend, but I did manage to get out on Saturday to visit an LYS where my friend Amy was having a pop-up. I don't think I've seen her since I last went with her to Rhinebeck (that was in 2021), and she was absolutely gobsmacked to see Molly because the last time she'd seen her was, we believe, 2019.

It was my first visit to this particular store, so naturally I couldn't leave empty handed. Molly picked out this set of mini skeins, and I picked up a much-needed set of 40 inch size 6 needles (that was the size giving me trouble on the sleeves of my sweater). Amy also has asked me to design something new using her yarn, so I came home with this skein of her Funky, designed to be a dupe for Spincycle. She's going to be sending me a skein of a natural color to go along with it, as I have a colorwork pattern planned.

Much of my knitting time over the weekend was spent working on my brother's gnome. I've included a ruler in this photo because before I started knitting, I really didn't have a sense of just how big this gnome is.

The pattern does give the finished dimensions, but I didn't even glance at them until recently. Fully completed and stretched out, it'll be almost two feet tall! I should be able to finish the body today, so at some point I need to dig out the poly pellets and stuffing.

I am starting to get a little panicked about not having enough time to finish all my holiday knitting -- in addition to this gnome, I need to finish my sister-in-law's socks (sock 2 is started) and cast on my youngest nephew's gnome and a hat for my oldest nephew. I know that if I really focus, I should be able to get it all done, but I also have to work and do all the usual chores around the house and pack for our trip to Florida and do all the other social things on the calendar this month. Too much to do and not enough time -- must be December!

And Now We Recover

It doesn't feel like a Friday, but I know that it is and I am glad that I have three days to recover from yesterday. It turns out that even when you don't do all the cooking, hosting a crowd of more than 20, including half a dozen little kids, for Thanksgiving dinner is utterly exhausting. It was nice to have everyone together, but truthfully I spent a lot of the evening at the fringes of the crowd (the introvert in me fully coming out). I had planned to take a lot of photos and barely managed any, though I did catch a rare moment with my youngest nephew:

We'll have to work on looking at the camera, but it was a big triumph to get him to sit still next to me and smile long enough to take a photo.

Molly and I remembered to take a photo together at the end of the night:

Please appreciate her hair -- I spent a good half hour blowing it out for her.

The food was delicious and plentiful; I had a couple of glasses of Cava; and because the majority of the kids in attendance were under the age of 10, everyone was gone by 7 p.m. By 8, we had the house cleaned up and pretty much back to normal, and we all passed out at more or less the normal time. We slept in this morning, and I'm now nursing my second cup of coffee after a breakfast of pumpkin muffins. We're headed to some family friends' to enjoy leftovers this evening. Today, though, I plan to do some knitting. Here's where things stand on my current gnome:

I finally finished the hat -- which I certainly hope is the most involved part of the pattern -- and started what I suppose is technically the gnome's butt. I'm planning to be pretty much monogamous with this project for the next several days because I have a feeling it will take me longer to finish than any of my other planned gifts.

We have very little planned for the weekend. I'm hoping that the Mister can drive me and Molly to an LYS tomorrow, because my friend Amy is having a pop-up there for Small Business Saturday, but there's nothing else I really want to do other than my usual weekend stuff. I think we all need a calm, quiet weekend to recover from all the work of yesterday and prepare for the holiday rush that's ahead. I hope you have the same!

Unraveled, Week 48/2024

We've reached that special Wednesday -- the one right before Thanksgiving, when it feels like everyone else is already on vacation. I used to actually enjoy working this day, in the time when I still went to the office every day, because there was usually almost no one there and I had nothing to do, and often we'd be allowed to leave early. Of course, now I can be a lot more productive on a quiet work day.

I am joining in with Kat and the Unravelers as I do every Wednesday to talk about what I'm making and what I'm reading. Now that my sweater and my big honking skein of yarn (more on that in a little bit) are done, what I'm making is gnomes. Yes, gnomes!

I think I have mentioned before that my brother has a thing for gnomes. I made him and my sister-in-law coordinating gnomes years ago and have given him gnome-related gifts in the past. This year, I think he's due for another one. I am making him Someone to Write Gnome About, Sarah Schira's most recent mystery gnome. I have signed up for one of her mystery make-alongs in the past and ended up not really caring for the resulting gnome, so I have learned to wait until I see finished projects and then decide if I want to buy the pattern. That was the case with this one. A number of people I follow made it, and I thought it was adorable. As you can see, I decided to go with the more muted skein of yarn for the hat (which is a lot bigger than I realized). It's Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in the colorway Mid-Winter, which I think has a muted University of Michigan colors look to it, making it quite suitable for my brother. I'll be using that dark blue (a very old skein of Knit Picks Gloss) for the body and the cream handspun for the beard and nose. And my nephew will also be getting a gnome, now that my brother has taught him the word and he can identify all the gnomes they have around the house. His will be the much simpler Never Not Gnoming using the bright blue and light brown (as well as that little ball of white). The pattern calls for fingering, but I'll be using DK to make a bigger gnome that's more of a stuffed animal size.

Speaking of the big skein of handspun, it's done and I have a color photo to share with you all -- I certainly hope I'm not spoiling anyone! It took me a good hour and a half to skein this yarn baby on Saturday afternoon, even with my Super Skeiner (which my shoulder was very glad I was using). I knew I was going to have a lot of yarn, but I didn't imagine it would end up being as much as it is: a bit more than 960 yards of fingering! It also weighs 270 grams, so clearly the bits of fiber that were supposed to be 10 grams each were a bit heavier.

I spun this as a two-ply fractal. What I did to achieve this was to go through the fiber packets in order, splitting each in half and spinning one half in order on one bobbin for the first ply. For the second ply, I split the remaining fiber in half again and went through the order twice (so if I had five colors, the first ply would have been spun ABCDE and the second ABCDEABCDE). The colors were clearly dyed and arranged to flow from one to the next, so the yarn I spun is very pleasing in that respect. Molly suggested I use this to make a big squishy shawl, which sounds good to me, but I won't be casting on just yet. I think this needs to marinate in the stash for a bit.

On to reading! I've finished two books this week.

I've been a big fan of Ina Garten for a long time. I always enjoy watching her Food Network show, and I've never had a miss when cooking from her cookbooks. I knew a little bit about her background, but not much, so when I heard she had a memoir coming out earlier this year, it immediately went on my list. I found Be Ready When the Luck Happens for sale at Costco last month and didn't think twice about buying a copy. In a word, this book is a delight. If you like Ina's personality on her cooking shows, you'll like this book. It's an easy read (but well written!) and reveals quite a lot about her life. If you think she's always been a rich lady from the Hamptons, you'd be wrong. As a bonus, there are photos and recipes sprinkled here and there. If you're a quick reader like my mother, who I've passed my copy on to, you could read this in a day. I gave it 4 stars.

I was invited to read and review All the Water in the World and was intrigued by a comparison in the pitch to Station Eleven, one of my all-time favorites. In an unspecified time in the future, global warming has become so severe that glaciers have melted and cities on the East Coast have flooded. Thirteen-year-old Nonie, her parents, and her older sister have taken shelter in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City with a small group of others committed to protecting the museum's collections. But life is precarious, with no medicines, new insect-borne illnesses, and superstorms that threaten all remaining structures. When one of those storms breaches the museum, Nonie, her sister, her father, and a friend -- the sole survivors -- must set out on a boat to try to get to higher ground, and there are plenty of dangers other than the water and the weather to contend with. While I appreciated the warning about our failure to address the threat of climate change and a look at what might happen if we hoard resources rather than work together to help each other, much of this book felt to me like something I had already read. In particular, I kept thinking of Parable of the Sower. I also felt that the writing was a bit lacking and at times confusing, and the editor in me couldn't stop myself from thinking of ways to improve it. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 7, 2025.

I am currently reading two books: Antelope Woman (on audio) and Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, which has been selected for a local community read.

Tomorrow, of course, is Thanksgiving here in the United States, so I want to end this post by saying how thankful I am for all of you, dear readers. Those of you who read and comment regularly have become dear friends to me over the past several years, even though I've only actually met a few of you in person. I am so grateful to have found this community of like-minded crafters and readers who have been there to celebrate my successes, cheer me up when I've faced obstacles, and give me sage advice. I hope that those of you who will be celebrating tomorrow have delicious food and wonderful company to be thankful for.

Better in 2024: November

Somehow it's the last Monday of the month (I swear that the months go by faster as we get later in the year), and that means it's time for a monthly check-in with my One Little Word. Thanks, as always, to Carolyn for hosting our monthly link-ups!

Over the course of the past week or so, I've really been checking in on myself and thinking about how I'm feeling relative to the beginning of the month. Because the start of November was hard, no matter how you look at it. I was still coming to grips with my injury and trying to figure out not only how to get around and manage my day-to-day activity but also how to continue to stay active and continue to get the amount of exercise I've gotten used to getting every day and how to change what that looks like now that certain types of activities are limited. Then there were all of the emotions surrounding the election and the ugliness of the campaign. On top of all that, it's been a really busy month at work, with unexpected high-profile projects in addition to the stress of putting together the commencement program.

The good news is that I feel like I'm in a better place as we approach the end of November. Physically, I'm definitely seeing an improvement. The swelling and bruising on my foot are both nearly gone, and it feels much less scary to stand with my boot off when I take a shower (really the only time I take it off). There is still slight tenderness where the break was, but I feel like I can stand more or less normally on my right foot, whereas at the beginning of the month, I was afraid to put any weight on the outer edge of it. And while it's a very poor substitute for getting outside to run or walk, I've been exercising every day by doing various chair aerobics workouts on YouTube in addition to lifting some light weights and getting back into the habit of doing crunches and pushups to work my upper body and core more. I'm moving around much better with the boot on, too, which is a great thing because I still have some bruises from bumping into things from the early days when my balance was off.

Mentally and emotionally, I'm also feeling better. I'm still concerned about what will happen starting next January, but I think I've gotten to a place of acceptance in the sense that I know it's all going to happen and I can't stop it. As I often told Molly when she was younger, you can't control the actions of others, but you can control how you react to them, and that's pretty much the approach I'm taking now. There will be people with much more influence and pull who will be focused on doing things like going to court over problematic legislation and policies, while I can focus on areas where I do have influence and on the good things in my life -- like my new niece, my family, my friendships, and making beautiful things. I guess you could say I've gotten better at acceptance and compartmentalizing. Things may not necessarily be Better, but I can focus on being Better in many ways.

Overachieving

Friends, it is done. But unfortunately you'll have to wait a bit for photos that really do it justice because I probably won't be in the same place as my photographer in the middle of the day (when there's sufficient natural light) until the weekend. So until then, a mediocre selfie will have to do:

Warning: Arms are not as long as they appear

Pattern: Goldenfern (Ravelry link) by Jennifer Steingass, size C/40.75 in. bust
Yarn: my ABBA-themed handspun yarn 
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm), and US 6 (4.0 mm)
Started/Completed: October 9/November 20
Mods: worked at a different gauge than specified; shortened the sleeve colorwork; worked a 1x1 ribbed cuff on sleeves rather than corrugated ribbing

Let's go back to the beginning on this project. You may recall that I spun the yarn with this sweater in mind. The pattern calls for using several colors for the colorwork, so I had done all this elaborate planning and splitting of the fiber so that my contrast yarn would start off all silver and gradually change to all burnt orange. The spinning portion of the project really turned out perfectly, and it would have worked as intended if I'd either knit a much larger size of the sweater or if I'd kept knitting and made it a dress. In the end, I didn't even use up a quarter of each of the three contrast skeins I spun. And the reason for that is because I guess you could say I was an overachiever.

Walking boot cameo

You see, when I spin yarn for a sweater, it's obviously one of a kind and I can't get any more, so I always worry about running out. That fear, combined with the fact that this yarn was spun from a silk blend (silk always wants to be spun finely), resulted in what was, if I'm honest, a light fingering weight yarn. I suspect that's part of the reason I had such trouble with my gauge -- my yarn was just too thin. It ended up working out okay as far as the sizing, but when your yarn is skinnier than it needs to be, it also ends up being longer. I certainly had more than the pattern called for (which is what I wanted, both to allow for gauge differences and so I wouldn't have to panic about playing yarn chicken), but it wasn't until I finished the sweater and weighed the leftovers that I realized just how much more yarn I had than I needed. I started out with just shy of 2,000 yards. I still have about 860 yards left. Yeah. That's a lot. Most of it is the contrast -- about 680 yards. And this is all despite the fact that I knit a size larger than I was originally planning!

I am happy to tell you that the fit is good and everything worked out just fine with my gauge. There's just enough positive ease in the sweater that I can wear it comfortably over a long-sleeved tee (which I always do with my sweaters) but not so much that it looks sloppy. I did figure out where I went wrong with the stitch count on the first sleeve -- suffice it to say that I didn't read the directions carefully enough and had picked up two fewer stitches under the arm -- but I replicated the mistake in the second sleeve so they match. The only real modification I made was shortening the colorwork a bit in the sleeves and finishing the cuffs with 1x1 rib to match the body.

Our first snow of the season is falling!

I think this is now the second Jennifer Steingass sweater I've knit, though I have several others in my library. Her patterns are well written (provided you take the time to read them, ahem), but my one complaint about this pattern is the same one I had with the last one: She has floats that are way too long in her colorwork. That wasn't as big of an issue the last time because the colorwork was all in the yoke, but in this sweater, long floats could be especially problematic in the sleeves and could sang on fingers or rings. I added ladderback jacquard floats in several places on both charts that resolved the issue for me, but I don't know how many knitters would know to do that if they hadn't knit another pattern that explicitly used them (in my case, that was my Threipmuir). I wouldn't let this deter you from knitting one of her patterns, but it's certainly something to keep in mind.

I'll leave you all with a photo of Molly's new and improved smile:

It'll only get better once her gums aren't so swollen and after she gets a professional cleaning, but doesn't she look great? I know I'm biased, but I'm also very impressed with what modern orthodontics can do.

Have a wonderful weekend, all!