Unraveled, Week 37/2025

It is Wednesday, and that means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers to talk making and reading. But first, a thank-you for all the well wishes for Ruthie. She made it through her surgery with no problems and is now home in a onesie and an inflatable donut. I think she will not be very happy with me for the next two weeks as her activity is limited, but I am thankful that she's now spayed and I didn't have to deal with a heat cycle.

Back to the usual blog content! I have been working on my two projects a bit every day. I didn't take another photo of my socks, though they look pretty much the same as they did on Monday except that there's an additional repeat. The shawl, on the other hand, has grown quite a bit:

I was a bit worried at first because it didn't look like the pattern pictures and I thought I was doing something wrong, but it turns out that you can't really see the zig-zag effect unless you look at it at a distance or squint your eyes a bit. I am still referring to the pattern because I don't yet have it memorized (and I do have to keep track of repeats of each chart because they switch back and forth each section), but I can at least see the logic of the stitch pattern and can kind of intuit the next step. I will say that although the pattern does have both written and charted directions, one thing it seems to be missing is any indication of a repeat for when the stitch count exceeds the stitches shown on the chart. Understanding how the pattern works is how I figured out how to proceed, but a less-experienced knitter might find it challenging.

Something I did not manage to get a photo of (though there's really not much to photograph at this point) is that I started spinning something on my wheel yesterday while Ruthie was at the vet! I pulled out the Shaniko wool that I brought home from SSK and started spinning off one end of the braid. I'm planning to spin the whole thing onto one bobbin, wind the singles into a cake, and then ply from both ends. But I have a feeling that's a ways off yet. The important thing is that I am trying to actually use what came home with me from Nashville rather than just tossing it into the stash. As I did with my acquisitions last time, I took a photo of everything, and I'm crossing off what I've used:

It's worth noting that three skeins of yarn you see here are currently being used in projects, and the fiber at the bottom is what I'm spinning. I have plants for the gray cake with the three minis at the top, the other self-striping skein, and the skein of dark green, so really that leaves me with just one skein of yarn without a plan. Not bad!

My reading was not as prolific or as wonderful this week compared to last, but after a week with three 5-star books, anything is going to be a letdown! Let's just say I finished three books that were fine (they all earned 3 stars from me).

My parents are both fans of Fredrik Backman's books, so I was not at all surprised to get handed down a hardback copy of his latest, My Friends. As is the case with all of his books that I've read (I've read most of them), you don't get the full picture or the full story until the end, but pretty early on you're plopped right in the middle of it. This novel centers around a famous painting and the group of teenage friends responsible for it. An 18-year-old named Louisa, who has recently aged out of the foster care system, is the impetus for the story being told, as she has long adored the painting and wanted to know the story behind it. So the reader learns the story as she does, and it's not a completely happy one. There is a lot of darkness in this book -- domestic abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, death -- but there's also art and beauty and friendship and love. I think it's probably my least favorite of Backman's books that I read.

I have a bad habit of not having a queue of audiobooks I want to listen to so that I'm not rushing to pick something right before I need it, so sometimes I don't make the best choices. That's what happened to me last Friday, when I needed something in my ears for my run. I'd just heard someone mention The Wedding People, so I thought I'd see if the author had any other books. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is her previous novel, and it is told from the point of view of Sally Holt and addressed toward her older sister, Kathy, who dies in an accident pretty early in the book (this isn't a spoiler; we know from the beginning that Sally is looking back from her late 20s and that Kathy died when the two were 13 and 16). What this novel is, at its heart, is a book about grief and the ways people deal with it. I thought the characters were well written and multifaceted, but I also wanted to yell at many of them to go get some therapy. I think The Wedding People, which also has a dark side, is a much better book.

My last finish was The Emporer of Gladness, which I'd put on hold after Kat raved about it. I had a little trouble getting into it but was determined to persevere. This is a story set in a run-down Connecticut town that starts with a thwarted suicide attempt, when Grazina, an aging widow with dementia, spots Hai, a 19-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, on a bridge and talks him down. Hai ends up living with and caring for Grazina and going to work with his autistic cousin, Sony, at a chain restaurant that seems a lot like Boston Market and that employs its own cast of misfits and outcasts. It's a story about found family and about the lasting impacts of trauma. The writing is strong, but I found it to be depressing. There's a lot about drug addiction, poverty, death, etc. There was a scene in the middle with a pig slaughtering operation that was particularly hard to read. I might give Ocean Vuong's poetry a try, but I don't think his novels are for me.

I'm currently rereading Mrs. Dalloway -- even using the copy I read my senior year of high school with my notes in it! -- and just started Night Watch. I'll be in the market for an audiobook later this week, so let me know if you have any good recommendations!