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?