All Good Things

Friends, the news continues to be horrible, so I thought I would use this post as a reason to share good things. (I'm also doing it because I have a dearth of fibery content to share, so yes, it's a bit of a cop-out.)

Good Thing #1:
I successfully went for my first run since breaking my foot on Monday! I took it slow (about a 10-minute mile pace) and my foot did fine, but it's clear my legs are not used to this type of exercise. This is probably the first time that I had to stop and walk not because I needed to catch my breath but because my legs and knees were yelling at me. I've been feeling it all week, but today the aching seems to be gone, so I'll be going out to run again this morning. I also bought myself another pair of running shoes earlier this week (I got an email from Zappos about a sale on Hokas), so I am all ready to resume my regular runs, albeit perhaps not three times a week for a while yet.

Good Thing #2:
While I was out on that run on Monday, I ran into a neighbor I haven't seen in a while because I haven't been outside much in the past several months. I usually see her out with her dogs Max and Star. This time, Max wasn't with her, and though I didn't ask, I presume he has crossed the rainbow bridge (he was an elderly Westie). But this time Star was accompanied by a tiny, fluffy puppy, who looked like some sort of Doodle. He is six months old and very friendly, and his name is BAGEL!

Good Thing #3:
Speaking of dogs, if you're a fan of them and you need a little pick-me-up, take a few minutes to watch these videos of dogs' reunions with their owners. Have some tissues handy!

Good Thing #4:
Today's day is 3/14 -- which means it's Pi(e) Day! I totally forgot about it until Molly reminded me this morning, but it's a perfectly good excuse to eat some pie. You know, if you needed one.

Good Thing #5:
We have had a week of amazing weather here in Pittsburgh. It's been sunny and warmer than average -- we might even hit 80ºF today! I'm not ruling out the possibility of more snow (we've had it in April before), and there are highs in the 40s in the five-day forecast, but it sure seems like spring has arrived. Case in point: I saw crocus flowers on my way to the office yesterday:

I also spotted at least one daffodil bud in my yard, so it appears we'll have some flowers soon. If that's not a reason for celebration, I don't know what is.

I hope you've got some good things in your life right now, and if not, I hope you can at least be happy about the fact that it's almost the weekend. Enjoy it, friends!

Unraveled, Week 11/2025

It is Wednesday -- already and again! Time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers!

As work is entering a busy cycle, there's been less time to craft and read during the day, so I don't have a lot to share. But I do have a finished hat, which you saw the brim of on Monday. Once I finished up the brioche, it flew pretty quickly.

There is no pattern for this, as it's just a basic beanie. I cast on 88 stitches with two colors of Knit Picks Chroma Twist on US 3/3.25 mm needles and worked in two-color brioche until I didn't have enough of the lighter color (Sandpiper) to do another round. Then I switched over to US 5/3.75 mm needles and knit until the hat measured 6 inches (about 15.5 cm) and did basic swirled decreases at eight points. I still have a bit of the darker color (Cousteau) of yarn left and could have made it a little longer, but I wasn't in the mood to play yarn chicken. This will get a bath and then will be added to the bags of charity hats, and perhaps Molly will use the leftovers in one of her many scrappy crochet projects.

I'm still working on my sister-in-law's socks and have gotten to the heel. I'm pondering what to cast on next -- one WIP doesn't usually do it for me if it's not especially engaging, but maybe I should just focus on these socks in the interest of getting them done quickly. We shall see.

I've only finished one book in the past week, but when it's a five-star read, that seems like enough. And I have Bonny to thank for putting it on my radar.

The Correspondent is a book of letters. Sybil Van Antwerp, a 70-something woman who lives alone, spends regular hours at her desk taking care of her correspondence, just as she has done her whole life. She writes to her brother and her best friend. She writes to former colleagues and acquaintances she met through her career as a lawyer and judicial clerk. She writes to a teenage boy who has shared his secret troubles and fears with her and with whom she has shared some of her own secrets. She writes to authors whose books she has enjoyed, including Ann Patchett and Larry McMurtry. She has a regular correspondence with Joan Didion. And she writes, regularly and continuously, to someone who is unnamed and unknown until the very end. Though all these letters, we get a complete view of her life's struggles and triumphs, from her early years as an adopted child who felt so unlike her peers at school; to the loss of one of her children and her subsequent divorce; to the struggles in her later life to maintain a relationship with her daughter and her diagnosis of a degenerative eye condition that will eventually take her sight. Though the letters she writes and the letters she receives, we learn about her regrets and the things she blames herself for, and we are able to see how even a woman in her 70s who has had a long, satisfying life can still learn new things, can find ways to right the wrongs, and can find new ways to experience joy. It's a beautiful, quiet novel -- one that will likely make you want to write a letter! I gave it 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. It will be published April 29, 2025. And Goodreads has a giveaway for a hard copy open right now, if you're interested! Just click on the link above and you should see the giveaway on the left.

I'm getting very close to the end of The Secret History and am pondering what lighthearted or funny book I can read next as a palate cleanser.

What are you making and reading this week?

In Which I Complete Another Trip Around the Sun

Good morning, friends. I hope you've all sufficiently recovered from the time change. While I enjoyed the later sunset time, I would have been happy to wait another month for it to occur naturally and had that hour of sleep instead. I suppose the best thing I can say for changing the clocks is that at least we don't do it on a Monday morning!

Yesterday was, of course, my birthday, and it was probably also the most relaxing part of the weekend. Our plans for Friday night went a bit haywire: We had the table set, the food waiting, and the water glasses filled and my in-laws had arrived, but my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and nephews hadn't shown. When the Mister called his brother to find out where they were, they were wondering where we were because they had apparently cooked dinner at their place. So we all loaded up in the car and went there, and dinner was good, but it was not the quiet night at home I was hoping for. I think what says it all is that my birthday cake -- a chocolate almond torte -- got smushed in the refrigerator and ended up saying "Hapy day h!"

Fortunately the rest of the weekend's plans went ahead as scheduled. Molly and I thoroughly enjoyed Kimberly Akimbo on Saturday afternoon (did you know that they figured out a way to ice skate on the stage as part of the show?), and then the three of us had a nice dinner out. On Sunday morning, my brother and my nephew stopped by to drop off a gift, and then Molly and the Mister and I went for a fancy brunch at one of our favorite local restaurants -- including a pear cardamom mimosa! I took the opportunity to wear my vest again.

Photo taken by the Mister, which is why he's not in it

After some wet snow fell on Friday night, the sun was out all weekend, and it was warm enough yesterday afternoon (low 50s) to take a walk in just a sweatshirt:

That sweatshirt was my birthday present from my brother and his family. It's from my local bookstore -- the neon whale is above their cafe and is named August Whale-son in honor of one of Pittsburgh's literary native sons.

While most of the weekend seemed to be spent eating, there was some knitting as well. As many of you predicted, my needles didn't stay empty for long. I pulled out some leftovers from the two hats I test knit this year and combined them for a charity hat, and I also started a new pair of socks for my sister-in-law so I'd have something to knit at the show.

I didn't manage to get the full cuff of the sock knit before the show started and couldn't see enough in the low light to measure it, but I got close enough to an inch. Somehow I dropped a stitch but also created one when I switched over from ribbing to stockinette, so I had to get out my fix-it tool in the intermission to ladder down and pick it back up. I also had no idea how the yarn was going to stripe, so that was a fun surprise when the lights came up. This is a OOAK Fibernymph Dye Works self-striper on a superwash merino base that has sections of natural dark fiber. It's not as tightly plied as the Bounce base I usually use, so it's a little splitty, but I do love the colors and I think my sister-in-law will as well. I'll likely put these away for her birthday in September. The hat is just basic two-color brioche for the brim, which I knit until I ran out of the color I had less of, and the rest will be plain stockinette. I think both of these projects will be handy this week, as I'm expecting a magazine project to come in and will have a lot of reading to do.

It may be Monday, but it's supposed to be another beautiful day here and there are signs of spring arriving. Let's hope we can make the most of it!

Weekending Early

Today is my "spring break" at work; the students are off for spring break all this week, so staff get this one day off. Years ago, it was referred to as Great Americans Day, at least according to my former boss. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything useful, so maybe he was pulling our legs. Regardless, I'm happy to have the day off from work, even if I had to get up at the usual time to get Molly to school. (That just means I'm appreciating more of the day, right?)

Speaking of Molly, she has some brand-new socks to wear, which is a good thing because it snowed again yesterday. It didn't stick anywhere but on grassy surfaces, but it was cold and blew in my eyes the whole way into the office yesterday morning. Yuck.

These were knit with Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in the colorway Signature Series: Neutrals. I used 62 g of yarn or about 271 yards. They haven't been blocked, obviously, and may not be -- she may want to wear them right away. She asked for slightly shorter legs (4.5 inches), so they knit up a lot faster than I was anticipating. And I'm happy to be done with the neutrals!

At the other end of the color spectrum is the yarn I plied earlier this week, which is a welcome pop of bright color. This was Polwarth from FatCatKnits in the colorway Flamingo, but it made me think early '90s and Miami Beach (or maybe Miami Vice?).

I think I mentioned that I split the fiber up to be a fractal, which essentially means that both plies follow the same color progression but at different rates. For this particular skein, I found when I pulled the braid apart that I could fold it in half and the two sides matched up, so I broke it in half at the fold, then split one piece into two lengthwise and split the other into four lengthwise. There's a lot of barberpoling but also a fair number of spots where the colors of the two plies line up. Some people might think this yarn was overplied, but I love this round, bouncy look. After washing and drying, the yarn looks to be about sport weight on average, and I estimate its length to be about 276 yards. I have no clue what to do with it and probably will just stick it back in the stash for now, but it was great fun to spin.

The weekend ahead is my birthday weekend. The number is unexciting and I'm not expecting any big gifts, but I am looking forward to eating several meals that I do not have to cook myself. Tonight the Mister's side of the family is coming over for pizza, and tomorrow the three of us will go out after Molly and I see Kimberly Akimbo. My actual birthday is Sunday, so we're going to go for a fancy brunch at one of the places we go to for dinner a lot but for which I've never gone for brunch. I'm a bit annoyed that I will get one less hour of sleep that night, but maybe I'll make up for it by sleeping in. I've reached that stage in life where the only reason I really look forward to a birthday is because it's a chance to be with my loved ones for a happy occasion. This year I'm especially happy to be in better shape physically after two pretty traumatic injuries last year, and given the current political situation, I'm also feeling very thankful to be gainfully employed and not struggling to make ends me. I know I'm very lucky, and I'm hopeful that there will be many more trips around the sun ahead of me. In honor of my birthday, I hope you'll all treat yourself to a little something special this weekend!

Unraveled, Week 10/2025

We've made it to the midpoint of the week, one that's seemed longer than normal to me thanks to not one but two migraines (I blame the extreme swings in weather). The most recent was yesterday afternoon, which is why this post is a bit later than usual because I often get started on my Wednesday posts on Tuesday afternoon and skipped it yesterday. Joining Kat and the Unravelers is always a high point for me, though, so here I am with an update on my making and reading.

First, I have to thank you all for the lovely compliments you gave me on my vest. I've already worn it twice this week, including yesterday, when we reached the low 60s F for a high and it was the perfect light layer. I also found myself admiring the colors in the fabric frequently, so now I'm pondering how I could take fiber that's in my stash and mix it up to have that same tweedy look.

My only project on the needles at the moment are Molly's socks, which are now in the home stretch:

I took them to a long work meeting last Thursday and was able to finish the first sock and start the second over the weekend. I think I will easily finish these up by the end of the week, and I'm going to need to cast on some stockinette project soon because we're going to see Kimberly Akimbo on Saturday afternoon and I'll need something to keep my hands busy.

Yesterday afternoon I sat down at my wheel and plied up the yarn I started spinning last week; skeining and washing are on today's to-do list. It looked lots of fun while I was plying, so I'm excited to see the full skein!

I've finished two books this last week.

First was a reread: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I borrowed an audiobook via Hoopla, and there are so many versions that I couldn't find the one I listened to on either Goodreads or StoryGraph! I've read the book at least once before, but it's been many years, and I wanted to reread it before I read a modern retelling that's in my Kindle library. This book tells the story of Fanny Price, who is taken in by her aunt and uncle as a young girl; she is one of many children, and her mother's sisters have decided that bringing her up is a sufficient act of charity. Though she is brought up in better circumstances than her siblings, she doesn't rank as high as her cousins in terms of the opportunities available to her and thus is mostly an observer of their lives. Like all Austen novels, the subject of marriage as a means of social advancement looms large, and though I knew to expect it, I was struck on this reread by how little regard was paid to Fanny's feelings and moral beliefs when it came to who she might marry -- and how well she stood up to the pressure. Revisiting this novel was very pleasurable. I gave it 4 stars.

You might think that The Dream Hotel, set in a technology-rich near future, is the complete opposite of Austen, but in fact it shares the theme of a woman whose freedom to make her own choices is limited by her society. In this novel, the United States has taken an extreme step in fighting violence by using an algorithm to detain individuals deemed at risk of committing a violent act. It's no longer about just making threats, either; in this world, implantable devices design to help people sleep better also can read their dreams, and the content of their dreams can be used against them. That is what happens to Sara Hussein, a mother of young twins who sought help for her extreme exhaustion and ends up in a retention facility because the algorithm predicts she is at risk of harming her husband. Once she is in the system, she finds that it is hard to escape it, because not only can her own dreams and data be used against her, but she is also of value to the private company that runs the retention facilities. She is subject to the whims of those who supervise the retainees, who enforce the endless and often changing rules of the facility, and is under constant surveillance by cameras, microphones, and the device that continues to record her dreams, and every infraction lengthens her stay. She is torn between trying to follow the rules in the hopes of being released and fighting against an unjust system. What is so chilling about this book is that it doesn't seem that far-fetched, given how much of our lives we put online and how little attention we pay to the terms and conditions of the apps and sites and devices we use every day. Who is to say that all our data won't be used against us, particularly in the current political climate? Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book was just published yesterday! And thank you to Bonny for putting it on my radar.

I'm still slowly making my way through The Secret History, with about 200 pages to go. And I've got another Bonny-recommended title up next on Kindle.

What are you making and reading this week?

A Vest for All Seasons

Here it is, blocked, dried, and modeled!

Pattern: All Season Vest by Noriko Ichikawa (Ravelry link), size 3 (41.5 in./105.5 cm bust circumference)
Yarn: Handspun from three HipStrings batts (fiber content unknown)
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm (for stockinette) and US 3/3.25 mm (for ribbing)
Started/Completed: February 16/February 27
Mods: none, other than working to a slightly different gauge (which gave me a smidge more positive ease) and picking up some extra stitches around the neck and armholes

If you think this knit up quickly, you're right; I guess not having to deal with sleeves makes a lot of difference when knitting a garment! I didn't even feel that I was particularly pushing myself to get this done quickly, so that should tell you that even with lots of short-row shaping and alternating skeins, this is a fast project.

I've really been enjoying knitting myself garments with handspun, and the two skeins that I used in this vest really begged to be something simple and without a lot of texture so that the yarn could shine. I know that the batts I spun to create the yarn were mostly/nearly all wool, and a lot of the pops of color are from bits of sari silk, but if I had any sort of tag indicating their composition, it's long gone. It really doesn't matter at this point -- I'm going to hand wash this vest in any case -- but it does leave me scratching my head a bit because I'm usually so good about keeping records of these sorts of things. It's also, of course, possible that they came to me as mystery batts and I never knew much more than I've shared to begin with! I do know that they were beautiful and that they were carded by my friend Jill, and that makes my enjoyment of the resulting garment even greater.

You might think, looking at the finished garment, that this is a very simple project, but it's impeccably designed and more complicated to execute than you'd think. I've already shared in a previous post how it's constructed and how extensive short rows are used to shape the shoulders. There's also shaping along the armhole to allow the ribbing to sit out a bit from the body and then gussets under the arm to reduce the extra stitches (which you might be able to see in the above photo -- the gusset is right on top of that slightly lighter vertical line where the vest was folded to block).

The color of the yarn and the finished garment continue to give me trouble when I'm photographing it, so I had to edit the images a bit. It keeps blowing out and showing up lighter than it is in real life. But the pops of color from the sari silk are that bright, and they bring me so much joy, as any bright color does in the gray that is a Pennsylvania winter. I ended up using approximately 658 yards and 294 grams of the yarn and have a good amount leftover (though, as per usual, at one point I was worried about a game of yarn chicken). The vest is light but warm, not enough for me for a really cold day but great on top of a long-sleeved tee for the March weather we often get, when the sun is warm even when the air temperature is still only a little above freezing. I have a feeling I'm going to be wearing it a lot this spring and fall, and I would absolutely recommend the pattern. I'm also absolutely going to knit another handspun garment, and likely soon, but I have to do some more pondering on what and with what.

Well That Was Easy!

It's Friday and the last day of the month, and I have a finished vest!

Obviously this isn't a formal FO post; this project still needs a good blocking and a proper photo shoot. But it's off the needles and the ends have been woven in, so it's just a matter of time for the last steps. It feels good to have knit a garment so quickly, especially after my last two sweaters.

I expect soon I'll be casting on another larger project, but in the meantime I thought I'd take a little spinning break because I haven't had anything on the wheel in a while. I was craving some color and pulled this braid out from my stash:

This is from FatCatKnits and purchased a number of years ago when Ginny was closing up shop (she's since reopened). I am picturing this spun as a barberpoling two ply, so I'm going to split it in half lengthwise and then split at least one of those halves again for a fractal.

I'm still making slow but steady progress on Molly's socks and got at least an inch knit yesterday while sitting through a very long work meeting:

We will likely have winter-ish weather for a while yet, but I expect that the days that are cold enough for her to wear wool socks are likely limited, so I'd better get a move on.

We've got a fairly quiet weekend ahead. We're having a pre-birthday dinner with my parents tomorrow (my birthday is next weekend, but they're going to be away, so we're celebrating a bit early), and I expect we'll watch some of the Oscars on Sunday, but that's all that's on the calendar -- and that's just fine with me! I will Molly take some photos of me modeling the vest at some point, so you can expect a full FO post on Monday. Have a good weekend, friends!

Unraveled, Week 9/2025

Another Wednesday, another day to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I'm still flying along on my vest, though things have slowed a bit now that I have reached the ribbing at the bottom of the body. I'm working with just one strand of yarn now, but even without having to switch and occasionally untangle, 1x1 rib is always going to be slower than stockinette.

I took this photo yesterday, when we had rain, a few glimpses of sun, and then some very dark clouds for most of the day, so the lighting leaves a lot to be desired, but I think this is sufficient to show my progress. For anyone who might be worried about such things, I'll reassure you that I tried the vest on over the weekend and confirmed that it fits with the desired positive ease, so now it's just a matter of dealing with all the ribbing that remains (it's at the neckline and armholes as well at the bottom). It seems very likely that this will be an FO quite soon, so expect some modeled photos before too long!

Reading has continued to be slow and deliberate, which isn't entirely a bad thing! I have two finishes this week.

I mentioned last week that I had managed to snag Blue Light Hours from the library right after it was made available and that it was a short audiobook. Even while working and parenting and cooking and doing all the other things life demands, I started it one day and finished it the next. This book tells the story of a Brazilian mother and daughter (we never learn their names) who are separated when the daughter gets a scholarship to a college in Vermont and isn't able to travel home easily, so their relationship becomes contained to their conversations on Skype. While the daughter learns how to navigate life in a new country, forms friendships with other international students, and makes her way through her classes, the mother worries about the dangers that seem to be all around her daughter and struggles with poor health. There are changes in both their lives, but the constant for them is their Skype calls and the hours they spend hearing about what is happening in their respective days. Their relationship grows and changes as time passes, as the daughter moves further into adulthood, and as both women come to the realization that they have to become their own caretakers. It's a quiet but beautiful novel that I really enjoyed. I gave it 4 stars.

I suspect that given the current political climate in the United States, many of us are struggling with trying to understand this country. In an effort to increase my understanding -- an ongoing effort, to be sure -- I read South to America, in which Imani Perry takes us on a virtual trip to cities throughout the American South (and beyond) to examine how the legacy of slavery and endurance of racism have shaped this country since before its founding. Her focus on so many locations and so many different facets of culture -- music, food, architecture, language, art, clothing -- shows that "the South" is not one entity that can easily be defined, just as Black/African American people are not a monolith. There is so much in this book, a lot of it that was unfamiliar to me, and led to a lot of searching online; it could easily form the basis of a course in U.S. history. I have a feeling this is one I will come back to in the future. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm still slowly working my way through The Secret History; I knew it would take me a while, so I started it early enough that I'd have time to finish before the Zoom discussion. I've also been listening to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, which is a reread for me, but it's been a while and I wanted to revisit it ahead of reading a modern retelling.

What are you making and reading this week?

LESS in 2025: February

While January seemed to go on forever, February has flown -- I can't believe it's already the last Monday of the month and time to check in with my One Little Word! Thanks for Kat for hosting our monthly link-ups this year.

My general approach to this year's word is, as the word suggests, diminishment. In many respects, that can take the form of a reduction of physical things -- and I expect to come back to that meaning over the course of the year. But early on, I'm focusing more internally. Last month, it was about less negative self talk. This month, it was about doing a lot LESS procrastination.

For the better part of the past year, I've gotten into the habit of making myself a daily to-do list. I'm the kind of person who derives a lot of satisfaction from crossing things off a list, and that's especially the case on the days when it seems like I haven't done all that much because it reassures me that I have accomplished something. And I've also discovered that if I put something on the list, I am more likely to do it. So those things that I've been putting off, either because they're going to require some time or force me to make a phone call (I hate talking on the phone)? I've sort of tricked myself into doing them by putting them on a to-do list. 

Here's an example: This past weekend, I finally went to get my Real ID because my driver's license was up for renewal anyway. To get the Real ID, I needed a bunch of documents that I knew I had but not exactly where. So on the to-do list last week was to locate those documents -- which I did, and in the process, I also cleared out some old files with documents I didn't need (receipts for oil changes for the car I sold in 2018; old cell phone bills), meaning there's now less to sort through when looking for other important documents. The next big thing to take care of is getting Molly a new passport, which means we'll need to get out her birth certificate, get photos, and make an appointment to submit the application. But I've already filled it out, and that's the first step!

In-Vest-ed

We've finally made it to Friday after a long week. The Mister got home very late last night (actually, I think it was technically very early this morning) from his latest work trip -- thankfully the last one he'll take for the month. Next week he'll be home, which will be nice but a bit of an adjustment.

It's been a really cold week here, not the coldest we've had this winter but close to it, and when I came downstairs yesterday morning it was noticeably colder on the first floor of the house than the second. It turns out that the power went out (briefly, I assume) overnight, and our thermostat's set point when that happens is about 62ºF. In the summer, that wouldn't be so bad, but when it's not even freezing outside? Brrr! The power ended up going out again for a few minutes while we were finishing up breakfast but fortunately stayed on the rest of the day. Considering that we woke to more snow and temperatures that stayed in the teens and low 20s, it would have been a very bad situation if we'd had no heat!

All of that is to say that I've had good motivation to work on my All Season Vest this week. I've been pleasantly surprised by how quickly it has been knitting up giving all the short rows and direction changes. Last night I finally reached the exciting "join front and back" instruction, but I took some progress photos yesterday afternoon while there was still some light:

If you look closely in the photo of the front, you might be able to see that I pinned it in place so it wouldn't curl up, so what you're seeing here isn't quite representative of the dimensions. I've got a little bit of waist shaping to do and then it's just knit straight to the ribbing at the bottom. At some point soon, once I've got enough fabric under the arms to be stable, I will try it on to verify that it fits (I'm not too worried, as I picked a size with several inches of positive ease, but I want to check it all the same). This project has been bringing me so much joy, in part because it's just engaging enough to keep my mind off the bad stuff and in part because of the surprise of the different colors in the yarn.

I hope you're able to find some joy yourself in this last weekend of February! I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word reflection for the month.

Unraveled, Week 8/2025

Happy hump day, friends! It's still quite frigid here -- it won't get above freezing until the weekend -- so I am making liberal use of all handknits. It's Wednesday, so that means it's time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I've made a bit more progress on my vest since you last saw it, and it occurred to me that I could pin it out so you could see the shape a bit better (though you'll have to forgive this somewhat awkward angle):

I've completed the shoulders and am now working down the length of the armhole on the back. I'm alternating my two skeins every two rows and will switch to alternating every round once the front and back are joined for the body. I don't expect that much variation between the two skeins given how the yarn was spun (I had three batts that I spun onto their own bobbin and plied all three together), but it seems like the best way to manage the yarn. And I'm glad I decided to go with the handspun on its own, because that lace yarn would have obscured a lot of the flecks of color in it:

I'd encourage you to click on this to make the photo bigger.

I don't think I really knew exactly what the content of those batts was, but I know that there were bits of sari silk in all different colors, so there are bright pops here and there.

At the other end of the color spectrum are Molly's socks, which have seen a bit of attention this week because I've been editing an annual report and needed something in my hands that didn't also require my eyes to knit.

These are precisely the wrong colors to knit right now -- I'm so sick of the gray and drab of outside -- but the yarn was her choice and she so rarely asks me to knit her something that I couldn't turn her down.

Reading progress has slowed a bit, partly due to work and partly because I'm reading some longer books, but I did have one finish this past week.

Technically Permafrost isn't part of our Women in Translation study, but it was Eva Baltasar's debut novel, was translated by the same woman as Boulder, and includes a translator's note that I think we'll be discussing when we talk about the second book. This one similarly has an unnamed no-nonsense narrator who doesn't feel like she fits in in her family and often feels the need to uproot her life and move somewhere new. Amidst all of this, she is constantly thinking about suicide and how to do it, but the way she thinks about it is, ironically, a bit humorous. It takes a twist of fate toward the end of the book (which I won't spoil) to give her a sense of purpose and place in life. My one complaint is that there is some jumping back and forth in time but without any real indication of when the story is other than context. I gave it 4 stars.

I am currently reading South to America on Kindle and have started my reread of The Secret History on paper for the next Read With Us discussion. I also had a minor library victory yesterday: I got a notification from Libby that my library had acquired the audio of Blue Light Hours (gotta love the "Notify Me" tag!), and though it took me a few minutes before I could open the app, there was a copy available! It's only four hours long, so it should be an easy listen.

What are you making and reading this week?

A Wintry Start to the Week

We had quite the weekend of weather here in Pittsburgh! On Saturday, it was snowing heavily when I got up. I'd planned to go to Costco when it opened, but after looking out the window and seeing the weather forecast, I decided to push that trip back a day. Over the course of the day, the temperature rose a bit and the snow transitioned to rain. Thankfully that improved the conditions of the roads so I could drive to a friend's house to play mahjongg and so the Mister and I could go out for a date night, but it was still gross out there. Yesterday, I woke to rain (and most of the snow had melted), so I had a wet trip to Costco. By early afternoon, temps had dropped and the rain changed to snow. And this morning I woke up to this:

I am glad that Molly does not have school today and I don't have to go outside in this mess! Though it's supposed to be frigid this week, so this stuff isn't going anywhere for a while and I'll have to deal with it tomorrow. For today, though, I can stay cozy inside. And there's more good news -- I had coffee again this weekend with no ill effects, so I can be fully awake this week!

Although the weekend had its fair share of cleaning, laundry, and errands, it also had a good amount of knitting time. I finished up the hat I am testing yesterday morning during my weekly friend Zoom:

This will be getting a good soak today because it's a very snug fit on me. I'll admit that I only did one swatch, with a US 6/4.0 mm needle, and I was so far off on gauge that I decided to follow the recommended needle sizes in the pattern (US 4/3.5 mm and US 3/3.25 mm for the ribbing). I have a feeling the fabric is going to relax a bit when it gets wet, but I want an accurate measurement of the gauge I got with the recommended needles to report back to the designer. I may be that I should have gone down only one needle size rather than two, but we'll see. This can always be added to the donation pile if it's still too snug for me or Molly.

I also cast on for my vest yesterday! The opinions to my blog post were unanimous in favor of handspun alone, and the responses to the poll I posted on Instagram were heavily weighted in that direction (at last check, 83% voted for handspun only). While I liked the feel of the fabric with both yarns, probably because the laceweight was a fuzzy 100% merino, the handspun was so much prettier on its own, and my gauge was closer with just the handspun was closer to the pattern gauge anyway. So that's the way I went. I didn't get very far because the start of this pattern has a lot of short rows, and it's hard to see in any case because it's in stockinette, but here's the humble beginning:

While I'd glanced over the pattern after printing it out, I didn't really get a complete sense of the construction until I read through it to highlight the instructions for my size. It's knit from the top down, starting with the back. The shoulders are shaped with short rows, and then you work down to the underarm, incorporating shaping for the armholes. Next, you place those stitches on hold and return to the cast-on edge, picking up stitches for the front, which is worked to the same spot, incorporating neck shaping as well as that for the sleeves. When the front and back are both knit to the same point, they're joined to work in the round for the body, and then the armhole and neckline ribbing is added at the end. The pattern is extremely detailed, with helpful diagrams scattered throughout. It's an excellent example of a project that appears to be very simple is actually very well designed.

I'm working today, but it's a work-from-home day and I won't have to do school pickup, so I should stay nice and cozy. I got us a rotisserie chicken from Costco for dinner last night, so I'm planning to pop the carcass into my slow cooker and make some chicken broth for the freezer (this is the first time I've done that not using the whole chicken, so I'm excited to see how it goes). I baked banana bread yesterday afternoon, and we're having spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner -- we are all about the comfort food right now! The Mister has yet another work trip this week, but luckily it's only a couple of days and not the whole week. And while my stomach issues have settled, this week's anxiety-induced fun is an eczema flare around my eyes, one of which looks like I've been punched in the face, so I'll be getting in touch with my dermatologist to see if there's anything I can do beyond leaving it alone and keeping it covered with Aquaphor. It's always something, isn't it?

I hope your week is starting out with as much calm and warmth as you can find.

A Conundrum

Happy Friday, friends, and happy Valentine's Day! My original valentine has just landed from his trip across the country; my other valentine is still sleeping (she is off for an in-service day today; yesterday was the last day of her second trimester at school, so the teachers are busy working on grading). We got a very light dusting of snow overnight, and we're expecting snow changing to wintry mix changing to rain tomorrow -- we're actually under a flood watch. Today, though, will be dry and cold, and even though I'm working today, it feels a bit like the start of the weekend.

I finished and blocked my vest/slipover swatch on Wednesday afternoon, and now I'm trying to decide what to do next. Amazingly, I had perfect stitch and row gauge on both sections before blocking, but of course the fabric changed after. Here's the blocked swatch:

On the left is the handspun held together with the lace yarn. On the right is the handspun alone. I am pretty close on gauge on both -- 20 stitches over 4 inches on the left and 20.5 stitches over 4 inches on the right compared to the pattern gauge of 21 stitches/4 inches. There's a fair amount of positive ease built into the pattern, so I think I could make both work. The conundrum is that I'm not sure which way to go. Certainly the handspun alone is closest to gauge, but the fabric is also a bit thinner. The handspun plus lace creates a sturdier fabric, but the gauge isn't as close and I think the lace yarn obscures the colors in the handspun a bit. I could go down a needle size with the handspun alone and see if I can get closer to gauge (though I suspect I'd then have too many stitches per inch), but I think my fabric would be too stiff with a smaller needle using the two yarns together. So what would you do?

Unraveled, Week 7/2025

Good morning and happy Wednesday, friends! Another winter storm is moving through, though thankfully it doesn't look like we're going to be much impacted (a little snow overnight and this morning and then rain later today). My sinuses aren't a big fan, but at least I won't have to dig out the driveway and sidewalk this time. I am happy to report that I am feeling loads better, if a little sleepy -- I love tea, but it just doesn't wake me up as well as coffee does. But without anyone snoring next to me in bed, I'm sleeping better, so I think it all evens out right now. Time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers!

I did manage to finish one last charity hat Monday night, so my total for this particular hat-knitting fever is six, which used up a total of a bit more than 2,400 yards of yarn, or about six average skeins of fingering weight. That's a lot!

These will get washed and then safely put away for donation the next time they're needed. And now I can move on to new projects.

There's not much to see at this point, and the terrible lighting doesn't help the fact that there's a lot of gray here. On the left is the start of my swatch for my vest, knit by holding a strand of very old Knit Picks laceweight alongside my handspun. I'm going to continue with the handspun alone because I think the two strands held together might actually be too thick, but I do like the look of the combination. We'll see what happens after blocking. In the middle is a swatch for the hat I'm testing. I normally wouldn't swatch for a hat, but the needle size called for in the pattern is a lot smaller than what I'd normally use for worsted, and the gauge listed is also in the textured pattern rather than stockinette, so I didn't want to just guess on the needle size. Finally, the cuff on the right is a new pair of socks for Molly using Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed in neutrals (you saw the skein earlier in the week). I am hoping that by the end of the week the swatching will be complete and I'll have actually cast on those new projects.

It's been a good week for reading, with four solid books completed.

The longest of the four was an audiobook, The Unseen World, written by the author of The God of the Woods and Long Bright River. Most of the story is about Ada, a young woman raised by her single father, David, a computer scientist in the 1970s and '80s at the "Boston Institute of Technology" (presumably a stand-in for MIT). Her childhood is unconventional in that she is home-schooled by her father and is a regular in his lab, where he and his team are working on the precursors of artificial intelligence. But when Ada is entering her teen years, it becomes apparent that something is wrong with David, as he becomes more and more forgetful and confused as dementia tightens his grip on his mind. Ada eventually moves in with one of David's colleagues when it's clear that David needs full-time care, and then a new mystery arises when none of the details of David's life seem to be true and all she has left of him is a disk with a string of letters he has left her to decode. In near present day, Ada is a computer scientist herself working on virtual reality, but she is still haunted by the code she could never solve. I could have done without the repetition of those letters and some computer code in the book; had I been reading with my eyes, I probably would have skipped over them. But the story was really intriguing, and even though it's told against the backdrop of computers and AI, at its heart it's a story that raises questions about how well we can know people and when the stories we tell ourselves become the truth, even if they're not actual facts. I gave it 4 stars.

Next was the first in the next series of books that a small group of us is focusing on this year -- women in translation, translated by other women. Boulder was short-listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023 and follows our nameless narrator (the title is her nickname), who goes from being a cook on a merchant ship to living in Reykjavik when she falls in love with Samsa. All seems well until Samsa decides that she needs to have a baby. Boulder, in contrast, doesn't want to be a mother, but ultimately her love for Samsa wins her over. The pregnancy and the baby change Samsa and ultimately the relationship in a dramatic way, causing the narrator to reassess her life and her partnership. Eva Baltasar is a poet, and this comes through in the prose and the translation. I gave it 4 stars.

Colum McCann's Apeirogon is one of the most memorable books I've read in the past several years, so I was delighted to be invited to read an ARC of his forthcoming novel, Twist. In three sections, we learn about an experience the narrator of the book, Irish writer Anthony Fennell, has had and his struggles to make sense of it. In the first, he travels to South Africa after he learns about the crews that repair the undersea cables that enable transcontinental communication and proposes an article about one of them. He is connected with John Conway, a fellow Irishman who is chief of mission for a repair ship, and through Conway meets his partner, Zanele, an up-and-coming South African actress. In the second part, the two men get on board the boat to embark on a repair, and Fennell learns about the hierarchy of the ship and the process of the repair. But something dramatic and unexpected happens at the end of the mission, and in the third part of the book, Fennell grapples with making sense of what happened then and afterward. I thought the writing in the book was spectacular and the characters intriguing, but I also felt a little at a loss for why the story was being told. There is, of course, some pretty big symbolism in the need to repair connections, but I also felt that there were a lot of things that weren't explained. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published March 25, 2025.

Finally, I read The Message, a collection of four essays by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I enjoyed the first three very much, but the final (and longest) essay was a difficult read. It discusses his trip to Israel and Palestine and his efforts to make sense of the long conflict and the current state of affairs. Though he opens his essay by recounting the impact of his visit to Yad Vashem, it is clear that he sides with the Palestinians and believes Israel to be an apartheid state and a colonizer. While I admit that much of the knowledge of Israel I was raised with was very one-sided, I have to disagree with Coates' position that Zionism is about colonialism and subjugation. I think that like so much about this conflict, there are many sides and any opinions -- lots of shades of gray and no black and white. His position did make me think a lot, though, and I think that's a good thing when it comes to writing. I also gave this book 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

I'm currently reading Eva Baltasar's debut novel, Permafrost, and plan to start something new on Kindle soon. What are you making and reading this week?

Bring On All the Tea

I suspect many of us are dragging this Monday morning, though unlike many people, I am not tired because I stayed up watching the Super Bowl. I turned it off after the halftime show and opted to read until bed instead, but the Mister was up at 3:15 to catch a 6:30 flight -- and because he had to get up so early, he went to bed early, which meant the nighttime "symphony" of snoring started early. Fortunately, I'll get a break from that soundtrack tonight, so if I'm dragging a bit today, I can catch up on the sleep later on.

Thank you for all your kind thoughts last week. I felt better on Friday but then had a terrible reflux attack on Saturday morning, so I am off coffee for the time being (hence all the tea). I had thought I was handling the general state of the world well, but apparently that was not the case. For the time being, I'm off coffee and alcohol and anything else that's really acidic or spicy. It makes for a boring diet, but I'll take boring if it means not feeling sick.

Partly because of the reflux and partly because it was just gloomy winter, it was a quiet weekend. I did get out for a walk, my first one in a while, on Saturday morning before wet weather moved in by the afternoon (we actually had a thunderstorm!). I spent most of the weekend knitting hats and reading, and I've just about gotten this multi-stranded hat thing out of my system.

I've got one last blue hat on the needles that I'm trying to finish up today and then I will take a break from this particular hat for a while. Six hats in about a week isn't bad, though! They were just the right break, but now I'm ready to start some new projects, which today will require winding some yarn.

This is a terrible photo (it's very overcast here today, as per usual for winter), but those two skeins on the left are handspun that I'm planning to use for an All Season Vest (Ravelry link). Of course, I've got to swatch to see if it'll work because the pattern calls for DK or worsted and this yarn is probably sport to DK. I may need to carry along a strand of laceweight to get gauge, but we'll see. The skein on the right is for some socks for Molly, at her request. I also just got approved to test knit a hat for Kerri Blumer, so I'll be digging in my stash today for something for that. I guess I'm not entirely done with hats!

I hope your Monday treats you kindly! See you back here on Wednesday.

Can I Get a Break?

We've made it to Friday -- thank goodness! It's been a long, exhausting week. I've spent a lot of it not feeling well, first thanks to an IBS flare and then, I suspect, due to the wild fluctuations in the weather. I've had terrible sinus pressure, haven't been able to get warm, and have been exhausted. And the Mister was traveling for work this week, which meant I had to do everything to keep our household running. This morning I'm finally feeling more like myself and keeping my fingers crossed that I continue to feel okay. At least there is a weekend coming up and I can get some extra rest!

First up, I want to share with all of you that I published a new pattern this morning! Or new-ish, I should say -- it's a lightweight version of a previously published pattern.

This is Funnel Vision Light (Ravelry link; Payhip link), a fingering weight version of the Funnel Vision Cowl I published with Knit Picks back in fall of 2023. Although I'd proposed the pattern for a heavier yarn (I had DK or worsted in mind but was given bulky), I'd always thought of what this design would look like in fingering, and I actually knit this sample nearly two years ago. It wasn't until late last year, though, that I finally decided to write it up as a pattern after I wore it in public and was asked about the pattern several times. It's all knit it brioche, so it's super squishy, and I knit this one in an MCN yarn, so it's extra cozy. I'm thinking I might need to knit myself another one in two colors.

The knitting this week has been pretty boring -- it's all scrappy hats, all the time! I finished my third yesterday (the one on top of the pile):

This latest one is the scrappiest of the latest bunch, with five different yarns represented. Though I started out knitting the largest size in the pattern, I'm now making the next size down because its stitch count plays more nicely with the adjusted decreases I'm doing for the crown (the original pattern decreases rapidly, leading to a sort of rumpled top, so I've changed them to a more standard eight decreases every other round). Would you believe that these three hats have used up more than 1,200 yards of yarn? That's more than I used in my most recent sweater!

I'm clearly not done with this current spate of hats, either, because I dug into my bin of full fingering skeins and wound up three blues to start some more:

That deep royal blue on top is Socks That Rock Lightweight that I bought at my former LYS, which closed more than eight years ago. The blue/gray variegated on the bottom left was purchased on our trip to Cape Cod back in 2017. And the light blue/white is from Knit Picks, purchased who knows when. I'm still feeling quite overwhelmed by the size of my stash -- each time I go digging, I swear it's gotten bigger -- so these hats seem like a great way to use up a bunch and do some good in the meantime.

The weekend ahead is looking pretty wide open, which is quite welcome. I think we could all use some extra down time. We'll be watching the Super Bowl (me because I like the commercials, Molly because she's cheering for Taylor's boyfriend) but otherwise laying low. There's been a lot happening the past several weeks, much of it terrible, so I think all of us could benefit from rest and self-care. Be well, friends, and keep looking for the good -- it's still out there.

Unraveled, Week 6/2025

Happy first Wednesday in February! Like many of you, I've been trying to avoid the news and instead focus on happy things, and joining Kat and the Unravelers is always one of the highlights of my week, so I'm all in on this update on my making and my reading.

But first I have to say a very heart-felt thank you for all the beautiful compliments you gave me on my sweater. I have worn it twice already this week, and I would not be surprised if I wear it at least once more. It is incredibly comfortable and warm without being stifling, so it's been great for this up-and-down weather we've been having.

There was so much of a focus on the sweater in my last post that I didn't mention that I also finished up a hat over the weekend:

Originally this was going to go in the charity pile, but then Molly tried it on after I finished it and it looked adorable on her, plus she gave me that look, so how could I say no? I did tell her that if I was going to give it to her, I expected her to wear it, and so far she's made good on her promise that she would. This is my Same as It Ever Was pattern (Ravelry link), which I recently published an update to that tells you how to work it at any gauge using any yarn. I've really been enjoying using fingering weight yarn and US 2.5/3.0 mm needles. For this particular one, I used Urban Girl Yarns Virginia Fingering, which comes in a very generous put-up of 480 yards per skein, in the colorway Duke of Hawtness (apparently it's a Bridgerton reference).

I seem to have gotten into a hat mood this week in general, because once those two projects were done, it's been all about hats.

It's the last week of the Pigskin Party, so I thought I'd try to sneak in a couple more projects to get some last-minute points. I'm using the Sagamore Flyover pattern, which calls for a bulky yarn, but instead I'm using fingering held triple. I think that's closer to Aran than bulky, but I'm knitting the largest size to make up for the difference. The bluish hat was knit with two strands of Bella Fio fingering that I won as a prize earlier in the Pigskin Party and one strand of LolaBean Yarn Co. fingering that was leftover from my Oh My Cod socks. The one in progress is using the rest of the skein of the Bella Fio yarn, leftovers of another LolaBean fingering that I used for a baby top last year, and leftover Geektastic Fibers (now Fandoms and Fibers) fingering from this cowl. These hats knit up really quickly but also use a lot of yarn -- that first one used 374 yards! These will be added to the charity pile for sure.

After having only one finished book to share last week, I've got four this week!

Bonny is responsible for putting Small Rain on my radar, though since she mentioned it, I've heard about it other places as well. This is a fairly quiet but incredibly powerful book. The unnamed narrator (who shares many similarities with the author, though he has maintained this isn't a memoir) suffers a life-threatening medical emergency in the summer of 2020 and ends up in the ICU. He sees plenty of doctors and nurses but is allowed only one visitor per day for a limited amount of time, and thus he spends a lot of time alone, giving him ample opportunity to think and reflect on his life, his family, his relationships, and his place in the world. The uncertainty and confusion that many of us felt in the early days of the pandemic is amplified here, but so is the beauty that can be found in simple human kindness. It's hard to know how much of the book is truth (or at least modeled on truth) and how much is pure fiction, but regardless it's a beautiful and heartwarming work. I gave it 5 stars.

Next was my first audiobook in quite a while (I was way behind on podcasts because I usually listen to them and to books while I'm walking and running, and obviously I hadn't done that for several months). Typically the Read With Us Zooms include an opportunity to make recommendations or talk about what we've read lately, and during the call last fall, someone recommended Beautyland, which I recently found on audio on Hoopla. This is a quirky novel that follows Adina, who believes she is an alien sent to Earth to observe humans and report on them to her superiors, with whom she communicates via an old fax machine. Adina finds humans to be incredibly puzzling and spends many years trying to understand them through her observations. Is she actually an alien? I'm not sure, though I thought a lot of her difficulty in understanding human behavior and relationships could also said to be true of someone who was neurodivergent, so perhaps she's not actually an alien but feels like one. I thought it was charming and felt myself sympathizing with Adina frequently, even though I am definitely not an alien. I also got a kick out of the fact that at one point she is made fun of for mis-singing the chorus to this song as "Simeon the whale" because not only is the song from a local band, but back when I was a tween going to summer camp, there was a staff member at my camp named Simeon and we deliberately sang the wrong lyrics to the song. I gave this book 4 stars.

Molly recently had to read The Penelopiad for English class, so I borrowed her copy after she was finished because I'd long had it on my TBR list. It's a quick read, but it packs a punch. Penelope, wife of Odysseus, gets to tell her side of the story, from her youth and her love/hate relationship with her cousin Helen (yes, that Helen) to her marriage to her long wait for Odysseus's return from the Trojan War. In Margaret Atwood's hands, Penelope is anything but the patient, loyal wife; rather, she's a smart, cunning woman well aware of her place in the patriarchy who's not willing to sacrifice any more of her rights or herself than she needs to. She's critical of men -- rightfully so -- and gives a view of some of the famous names from The Odyssey that suggests that their legacies might be different if a woman had been the one writing it. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, I read The Rachel Incident from my Kindle shelf. The Rachel of the title is the narrator, and the bulk of the book takes place a number of years earlier, during the economic downturn in Ireland, when Rachel is finishing up her college degree and working at a bookstore, where she meets James, who quickly becomes her flatmate and best friend. The two of them become involved (perhaps over-involved) with one of Rachel's professors and his wife. To say much more would give away a lot of the plot, so I'll leave it at that. I think what this book does well is capture that difficult period of the early 20s when "real life" is supposed to be starting but the situation isn't ideal -- when you've finished college but your degree feels useless because there are no jobs. I found a lot of the book to be a little on the bleak side, but it did wrap up rather nicely, and I gave it 4 stars.

I am currently reading Boulder on the page and listening to The Unseen World. It's good to be listening to books again!

What are you making and reading this week?