Unraveled, Week 47/2024

In starting this post, I looked back at my Unraveled post from last week and realized I made a pretty funny typo that no one caught -- I labeled last week as week 55 of 2024! I know this year is going by quickly, but I have yet to live through a year with 55 weeks! The irony of a proofreader missing her own typo is not lost on me, but I've always said that I'm a much better proofreader than typist.

Typos aside, it is Wednesday, and that means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers. Today is an exciting day because by the time the day is done, I will have a finished sweater!

I finished up the colorwork last night, and now all that's left is the cuff (which I very well may be able to knock out during my morning meeting) and weaving in ends. I did use DPNs for the second sleeve's colorwork, and as I was putting them away, I had a moment of panic. I thought I was using US 6 needles, but do you see the problem?

This set of DPNs was in our goodie bags from the TwinSet Summer Retreat and presumably was a bulk Amazon purchase. You get what you pay for! Fortunately, I think being unused to working with DPNs and a concerted effort to keep my work loose was enough to counteract the wrong needle size, as the sleeves seem to be the same width. The sleeves were never going to be tight in any case, and I expect they'll relax quite a bit when I block the sweater. I will also be relabeling those DPNs!

My other main focus has been the current spinning project. I finished up the second bobbin of singles on Monday, and yesterday I started plying.

I still haven't tried my Lendrum to see if I can treadle with my boot, but regardless I'd need to use the miniSpinner because I need the capacity of its very large bobbins. Even with the electric wheel, though, plying is going to be a multi-day event. I didn't weigh any of the fiber bundles before spinning; they were supposed to be 10 g each for a total of 240 g, but Lisa is often generous in her portioning, so I expect I've got a bit more than that. 240 g is about 8.5 oz., and that would never fit on one of my Lendrum bobbins in any case. I've got one of those meetings I have to attend but that isn't really useful to me this afternoon, so that time will be spent plying (along with more time today, if work allows), so maybe this'll be done by the end of the week. I'm not even thinking about how long it will take to skein up!

After zero finishes last week, I've finished three books since then:

This Strange Eventful History was the last book I'd wanted to read from this year's Booker Prize longlist, and while it wasn't my least favorite of the 10 I read, it was definitely toward the bottom of the list. This is a multigenerational family story, starting in 1940 and spanning countries and continents over seven decades. The point of view changes with each chapter, offering different perspectives on the members of this family and what happens to them. I enjoyed the beginning and the end, but the middle dragged a lot, and there was a pretty dramatic revelation in the epilogue that kind of ruined my opinion of one of the major story lines. I will say that I did learn some new things about French colonialism, so it wasn't a waste, but I was a bit disappointed in it overall. I gave it 3 stars.

My favorite book of last year was North Woods, and I so enjoyed Daniel Mason's writing that I bought his entire backlist from Thriftbooks. Those books have been sitting on my shelf for months, and I decided to finally dig into them. I started with his first novel, The Piano Tuner, which is set in the 1880s and follows Edgar Drake as he is sent by the British military to rural Burma to tune the piano that was sent there to a British military doctor. The circumstances are all very mysterious -- how much power does this doctor hold that he could get the military to send not only a grand piano to the jungle but then a piano tuner to fix it? There's a lot in this book about the complicated political situation in Burma and British colonialism, but there's also much about the power of music and its ability to transcend nationalities, cultures, and languages. It was a pretty slow read, even though it's not a very long book; events unfold at a measured pace until the last 20 or so pages, when they speed up rapidly. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

As a teenager, I was obsessed with competitive figure skating and my favorite movie was The Cutting Edge, so when I read the description of The Favorites, it seemed right up my alley. We start toward the end of the story with the release of a no-holds-barred documentary about the controversial ice dancing couple of Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha. Then we go back in time to learn their story and follow their rise in the international ice dancing world, with transcripts from the documentary interspersed between the chapters. It's a love story on the one hand, but it's also a story about elite athletes who will do whatever it takes to be the best. There is a lot of drama -- changing partners, coaches pitting teams against each other, sex, secrets, sabotage. It's fast paced and entertaining, not unlike a TV expose. And it's a bit of fanfic, in the sense that in the world of Shaw and Rocha, the Americans are regularly dominating ice dancing. If you're a fan of the sport and want a fun romp, you might enjoy it. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 14, 2025.

At the moment, I'm only reading one book -- Ina Garten's memoir, which I am about halfway through and am enjoying immensely!

The rest of the week is going to bring some big changes: Molly is getting her braces off tomorrow, and there's snow in the forecast! That means I'd better get my needles moving to get this sweater done and ready to be worn!