National Poetry Month Lightning Round

Greetings, friends! I know you're not used to hearing from me on a Thursday, but it's the last day of National Poetry Month and I didn't want it to pass by entirely unnoticed. You may have noticed that I haven't shared any poetry this month, and that has been intentional. In preparation for this month, a group of us who regularly post to celebrate it were conferring about it in light of the realization that we were actually violating the copyright of the poets whose work we'd shared in past years. While we tried to come up with some creative and interesting ways of celebrating poetry without sharing poetry, we didn't come up with anything much -- at least until Kym came to the rescue earlier this month with a series of quick questions related to poetry and our enjoyment of it. I don't know that everyone will participate, but I thought it was a fun activity for an otherwise non-blog day.

This photo has nothing to do with poetry,
but I thought it was too pretty not to share.

When was the first time you remember being moved by a poem? Bonus points if you remember which poem.

When I was little, I had a beautiful illustrated version of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." To this day, it's still one of my favorites because of the feeling of calm and quiet that washes over me when I read it.

Favorite nursery rhyme?

I'd have to say "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" (technically a poem!) because we performed it in kindergarten -- I was the moon!

Favorite Mary Oliver poem? (Just one…)

I don't have one -- simply because I haven't read them all yet!

Song lyrics: Poetry? Or something else?

Definitely poetry!

Favorite Dr. Seuss book?

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish -- it's the first one I remember owning.

A poetry collection you’ve read recently? 

I'm ashamed to say I can't remember! I had intentions of reading several collections this month, but life got in the way. But I'm hoping to read through Billy Collins's Dog Show collection soon because I have a lovely signed copy that was sent to me as a gift.

When do find yourself reaching for poetry most often?

I find I need poetry most often when I'm in need of soothing or calming, but in my opinion, there's no bad time for poetry.

How do you keep track of poems you especially like?

Post-its, bookmarks, or folded-down corners of books

Favorite movie having to do with poetry?

Possession (the book wasn't bad, either!)

Which poem are you keeping in your pocket today?

Probably the next one I read!

Unraveled, Week 17/2026

It's Wednesday again -- and it's a wet one here. I'm not sure if I'll be able to run this morning (I dislike running in the rain, but I'll do it if it's not too heavy), but for sure I'll be walking with Ruthie later and making good use of my raincoat.

This Unraveled Wednesday finds me at a pretty exciting place in my sweater WIP: the ribbing at the bottom of the body!

Now, don't get too excited -- it's still fingering weight yarn that's now being knit in ribbing on a US 2.5/3 mm needle, so it's not like this is particularly quick knitting. But at least the body is nearly done, and though I know many people hate knitting sleeves, I don't mind them as much because they're smaller in circumference and get even smaller as the decreases are worked.

My reading has been keeping up a good pace thanks to audiobooks -- I'm listening to more this year than I ever have before! Here are the four books I finished this week:

Sweet Pea by Kit de Waal

4 stars

Paulette believes she's about to have everything she wants -- a life and family with the man she loves -- when that man is killed in a car crash. What's more, she finds out that he was married with children. Grieving for the love and imagined future she lost, she takes up with the dead lover's friend and ends up having a child with him. Though she doesn't love her son's father, motherhood transforms her, and she is determined to give her son the best life possible. In a twist of fate, she meets the man who was driving the car that killed her lover. When she discovers that he is raising his grandson (but doing a poor job of it because of his own struggles related to the accident), she steps in to help. In the years that follow, these two broken families' lives are intertwined, with the two boys, Bird and Nellie, growing up together and Paulette serving as a surrogate mother of sorts to Nellie. As in any family, of course, there are challenges and struggles. Both boys go through periods of rebellion, and Bird increasing spends time with his father and his new family, leaving Paulette alone. Paulette finds she still isn't over her dead love and struggles to forgive Nellie's grandfather, even as she pities him. And through it all she regularly finds herself alone, missing the grandmother who raised her in St. Kitts and grieving the life she thought she'd have. But Paulette eventually realizes that she's not truly alone; through her love and care, she has created her own family, strange though it may be. This is a beautiful novel about the power of found family, of forgiveness, and of the power of love. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published November 3, 2026.

Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley

3 stars

As was the case with Boulley's two previous novels, this one draws attention to an important issue in the Indigenous community. This time, it's the treatment (or mistreatment) of Indigenous children in the foster care system and the disregard of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Lucy, the main character, ended up in the system after her mother left when she was an infant and her father died when she was a young teen. Though many people suspected she was at least partly Indigenous, her father had always denied it. After a couple of troubling foster placements, she's finally aged out of the system -- but she's not completely free of it because she's being followed because of something that happened at one of them (which we don't find out about until very close to the end of the book). A lawyer and his friend Daunis (a character from Boulley's debut) want to help her and reveal to her that her mother was in fact Indigenous, but she isn't ready to trust them. I thought the attention paid to ICWA and the foster care system were worthwhile, but I found the plot to be a bit unbelievable. I still think Firekeeper's Daughter is Boulley's best work.

Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love by Marianne Cronin

4 stars
I was delighted to find this on Libby with no wait after hearing about it on last week's episode of the What Should I Read Next podcast. Eddie Winston is 90 years old and has never been kissed. He keeps busy by working in a charity shop, and his special talent is sorting through donations and finding items that he knows the donors will regret giving away and come back for. That's what happens when Bella, a 20-something woman grieving the death of her boyfriend, drops off a bag of his things; Eddie knows she'll be back for his shoes and notebook. The two of them begin having lunch together in the park and soon form a friendship, and when Bella learns about Eddie's failed romantic history, she decides she has to help him. But as she helps him set up an online dating profile and coaches him, she also learns that he fell in love many years ago with a married woman. Slowly that story is revealed and Eddie and Bella help each other to move on. This is a sweet, heartfelt book about grief, lost love, and found family, and it's lovely on audio with three British narrators.

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

4 stars

I enjoyed Eddie so much that I immediately borrowed Cronin's debut novel. Lenni is 17 years old and Margot is 83 when they meet in an Edinburgh hospital art therapy room, both of them facing terminal illnesses. They realize that together they have lived 100 years and set out to create 100 works of art, each one commemorating their favorite memory from each year of their lives. As they tell their stories to each other, we learn about their early years, their heartbreaks, and their most precious memories. Both of them are fairly alone in the world as they face death and they become each other's family. While it seems like this would be a sad novel, and in many ways it is, it's also inspiring and touching to see how a teenager and octogenarian support each other and provide the love they both need.

I'm still working my way through two long books and am getting caught up on some podcasts. What are you making and reading this week?

Weekending, Late April

Can you believe this is the last week of April? It's been such a strange month of weather; we've had to keep alternating between air conditioning and heat in a way I can't remember doing before. After several glorious days of sun to end last week, it was rainy for most of Saturday and then much cooler on Sunday, making for two days I was happy to be inside curled up next to a snoozing pup.

We truly didn't do much over the weekend, in part because it had been such a busy week. The Mister worked from home Thursday and Friday (his office is right near where the NFL Draft was happening, and he didn't want to deal with all that craziness). I picked Molly and her friend up early on Friday so they could go down to Point State Park and hand out flower seeds to visitors. Her friend's father picked them up and then we all went out to dinner. Molly was so worn out from the week that she fell asleep on top of her bed shortly after taking her shower, with her hair still up in a towel! We all stayed home pretty much all day on Saturday (I went for a walk and took Ruthie out, obviously), and we got takeout and had my in-laws over for dinner. Yesterday Molly worked, I did a Costco run, and we had a lazy afternoon. I may have taken a little snooze as well, as some-puppy decided to wake me up at 5:45 (but I wasn't too upset because I slept until almost 7 on Saturday!).

My big accomplishment of the weekend was finishing the last of the Mother's Day socks:

I essentially used my regular sock recipe for these, though upsized to 80 stitches rather than my usual 68. This sister-in-law has feet that are the same length as mine but at least an inch wider. Usually I make her ankle socks, but as this yarn was more of a light fingering, I though I'd make them a little taller. I'm hoping they fit!

Because those socks were my knitting for while Ruthie naps, I obviously needed to cast on something else right away, so I wound a skein of DK and started a hat for my brother:

This is one of the skeins that came in my recent Fibernymph Dye Works grab bag; the colorway is called Gnome Place Like Home. A gnome-themed color naturally made me think of my brother, so a hat for him it had to be. I'm using the Two by Two pattern (Ravelry link), which I've knit a couple of times before, and at this stage it's pretty mindless -- just 2x2 ribbing. I do that for something like 9 inches and then work decreases, so this should keep me occupied for a while.

This week things should be pretty normal: the Mister is in town, Molly has her last week of school with new content in her classes (next week they'll start reviewing for finals), and the city will resume normal operation now that the draft is over. The weather isn't looking so great -- cooler highs and lots of rain -- but I'll take that over sweating like it's the middle of summer. It's also the final week before commencement, so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that we have no last-minute shenanigans to deal with! I hope it's a calm week for you as well.

Eye Candy Friday

Even though we started off the week with a return to near-freezing temperatures, it wasn't cold enough to stop our lilacs from blooming:

Wish you could smell them through the screen!

I hope April flowers are blooming in your neck of the woods. Happy weekend!

Unraveled, Week 16/2026

We've made it to the midpoint of the week -- it feels like it's been a long one, even though things have been relatively calm. There is no official link-up this week because Kat is taking a break from blogging for a bit, but I like a routine, so here I am with an Unraveled Wednesday post.

While slow and steady progress continues on my sweater, there has been much more made on my sister-in-law's socks:

All that's left between me and another finished pair of socks is a foot and a toe. Even with a larger-than-normal stitch count, shortie socks are pretty darn fast, especially when you have a good book to read and a cute puppy curled up next to you. I'm fairly confident that these will be done by the end of the week, well ahead of my self-imposed deadline to have them done by Mother's Day. 

Speaking of reading, it's been another good week of it.

I got lucky on the draw when my library (via Libby) notified me that it now had Kate Bowler's newest book, Joyful Anyway, available and was the first person to borrow the audio version. I'd enjoyed listening to her read her memoir the previous week and was looking forward to spending more time with her in my ears. This new work is a bit different; though parts of it do draw on her own experiences, it's a bit more academic in looking at joy and how it can exist at the same time as sadness or grief or other negative emotions. Given the author's experience with Stage 4 cancer (she's now in remission), it makes sense as a topic she'd be interested in exploring. I loved listening to her but found the narrative to be a bit harder to follow than the previous book. I gave it 3 stars.

I think I'm probably one of the last people in the world to read The Personal Librarian; it was everywhere a few years ago. I heard about it enough times on podcasts that I decided it was time to finally read. This is a fictionalized account of a very real person's story. Belle da Costa Green, who was for many years the personal librarian to financier J.P. Morgan and later directed the Pierpont Morgan Library, was famous in the art world in her time and was well known for her intellect and her boldness in matters of business. But what few people knew was that she was actually a Black woman, the daughter of the first Black man to graduate from Harvard, who was passing for white in order to avoid the rampant racism and discrimination in the country. She was a fascinating woman and I really enjoyed learning about her, but what I didn't much care for was the focus on her romantic relationships. I think I might have preferred a straight-up biography more than this fictionalized account, though I'll admit there was some value to me in getting what might have been her thoughts about passing and her precarious situation. I gave it 3 stars.

Rounding out the week's reading was the highlight: Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel. Pepper Mills (all too aware of her unfortunate name) is a 77-year-old grandmother in Texas who finds herself newly unable to make her own decisions about her life and its course. After a minor fender bender, her children decide it's best if she moves into a retirement community, sans her driver's license. She doesn't like this much but tries to make the most of it, making new friends and even forming a new romantic relationship. But then things get even stranger and more out of control when improbably, impossibly, irrationally she finds herself pregnant. And because she's in Texas, she finds herself forced to carry the baby to term, even though no one knows if she'll be able to do so or what consequences it will have for her. Yes, you need to suspend your disbelief a bit to accept this state of affairs, and yes, the novel does take a pretty strong stance on the issue of abortion and choice, but it's about much more than that. What Pepper realizes throughout this journey is that there are so many ways in which our choices are taken away from us throughout our lives and that, in a sense, it's ridiculous to have any sort of standard for anything because everyone's circumstances are different and unique to them. What really shines in this novel is the characters. They are so incredibly well written, not to mention funny, that you can't help but love them. Pepper is especially wonderful. She's a sassy Jewish grandmother originally from Brooklyn. She's a retired English teacher who frequently corrects others' grammar. She's fiercely loyal to her kids and grandkids and works out her frustrations by washing cars. How could I not love her? The book is humorous and poignant and touching, and it's one that will make you think hard in a good way (and it's also excellent on audio!). I gave it 5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for providing me with an advanced audio copy of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published May 5, 2026.

What are you making and reading this week?

Sprinter Continues

It was another weird weather weekend here in Southwestern Pennsylvania. We've had regular rain showers throughout the past week, which is pretty typical for this time of year and has been great for the flowers and the grass we're trying to grow on the front lawn (we had a bunch die last summer due to drought). But we also went from a high of about 83ºF on Saturday to the low 40s on Sunday morning, and the meteorologists were predicting we might get some snow moving through early this morning (as I got this post ready on Sunday afternoon, I can't tell you yet whether or not that actually happened). So I guess we're not quite done with weather that can't decide if it's winter or spring. At least we got some sunshine both days, and both days I encountered some neighbors I don't often see while out walking:

I saw these two while I was out walking Ruthie after breakfast on Saturday; she was much more interested in the Golden Retriever ahead of us on the sidewalk to even notice them.

On Sunday, when I was out by myself, this one seemed to be enjoying the quiet of the yard where the kids from the nearby church preschool usually play:

I know seeing deer is no big deal for many of you, but you have to understand that I live in the middle of the city where there is a lot of traffic, so this is pretty unusual for me! I guess they've all gotten used to being around people because they barely seemed to register my presence, and I hope they all made it back home safely.

The cooler weather is certainly more conducive to sweater knitting, and I'm happy to say that I'm in the home stretch on the body of my Speculoos Sweater. I tried it on yesterday to make sure the fit was still good -- please excuse the poor mirror photo.

The bottom is obviously rolling up, so it's a bit longer than it looks -- probably around 8 inches below the underarms. I've got a good amount of positive ease so that I can comfortably wear a long-sleeved tee underneath, so I'm glad I decided to go for a slightly larger size. I hope that I can finish the body this week; that seems reasonable given how much I've knit in the past week.

We've got an interesting week ahead of us. The Mister has a quick work trip, Molly has her spring Glee Club concert on Tuesday evening, and the city is going to be a mess because the NFL Draft is happening here starting on Thursday. I'll note that while we do live in the city, we don't live in the downtown, so thankfully most of the mess won't be too close, but I expect traffic to be snarled most places. I only have to go into the office on Tuesday (everyone has been encouraged to work from home Thursday and Friday), so that's at least one good thing to come out of it. I'm hoping all the people coming for the draft spend lots of money while they're here to make it worth it!

It's Friday!

Here's hoping the day goes quickly and we can all fly into the weekend like this silly pup!

(I have no idea what was going on here. I was making dinner in the kitchen, and when I turned around, she was like this.)

Have a good weekend, all!

Unraveled, Week 15/2026

What a week it has been already! I'm glad we've reached the midpoint of it, which means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers and to give you an update on my crafting and my reading.

Though it's felt like slow going at times, I have been making steady progress on my sweater, and you can really see how much I've done when you compare this photo to last week's:

The last time I measured the body under the arm, I had about 5 inches knit. The pattern tells me to knit until I have 12.2 inches (yes, that's a weird measurement; I presume the designer started with metric and converted to imperial) before the ribbing at the bottom, so I'm nearly halfway done.

And I am getting close to the toe of the first Home Movie sock, which -- as predicted -- did some fun pooling throughout the gusset decreases:

I've done a ton of reading this past week and finished six(!) books, but because it's been a busy week, I'm going to stick with brief reviews today.

Good People by Patmeena Sabit

5 stars

This the next Read With Us selection, and I predict we'll have an amazing discussion about it! This debut novel tells the story of a tragedy in an immigrant family in a truly inventive way: in a series of short statements given by friends, neighbors, reporters, police officers, and others who all have an opinion of what happened. And what happened isn't clear; I'm convinced the author made this deliberately ambiguous. I don't want to give any more than that away. Suffice it to say that it's a nearly 400-page book and I flew through it in just a few days. Highly recommend!

Go as a River by Shelley Read

2 stars

I'd seen the cover of this one a lot of places and it had decent reviews, so I listened. I should have listened to my gut when it was telling me to DNF it during the first quarter of the book. I found the plot and characters to be a bit far fetched and I wasn't impressed with the writing. I only kept listening because so many people seemed to love it and I thought it would get better. Sorry to say it didn't for me. (It might be better read with the eyes; the narrator was not to my taste and I'm sure that colored my opinion quite a bit.)

The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson

4 stars

I found a hardcover of this book in the nearest Little Free Library (aka the good one!) and recognized the title as one a couple of friends had read. It's a quiet novel in which the narrator, sick with a fever, pulls a book off her shelf that leads her to remember four people from her past and the role they'd played in her life. I thought the last one was particularly affecting. 

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler

4 stars

I've enjoyed listening to Kate Bowler on one of my regular podcasts but had never read any of her books until Carole's review of her new one convinced me to give one a try. This memoir that deals with her diagnosis and treatment for Stage IV colon cancer was available, so that's what I started with. I was surprised by how funny and uplifting a book on such a serious subject could be, but that's the kind of person Kate Bowler is. 

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

4 stars

Another quiet book, this is a memoir about the comfort the author found in observing the life and behaviors of a snail brought to her bedside by a friend while she was recovering from a serious illness that prevented her from doing much other than lying in bed. It reminded me quite a bit of Raising Hare in its focus on a singular animal that led the author to learn more about it. I know several of you have read and enjoyed it, so thanks for the recommendation.

Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan

4 stars

This is sort of a romance but also pokes fun at the world of romance novels and their common tropes. It's set in the world of audiobooks and their narrators, clearly informed by the experience of the author -- a well-known and well-respected narrator herself! I was looking for something entertaining and more lighthearted, and this certainly fit the bill.

Currently reading: The Hakawati and The Personal Librarian, plus I've got Kate Bowler's newest book on audio from the library!

Gotcha

One year ago today, Ruthie joined our family. Can you believe it? It's been quite a year. There were the early weeks of sleeping in the family room with her and taking her out at all hours, when her most comfortable place was curled up in my lap and when she was so scared of everything that sometimes when we'd go on a walk I'd have to pick up her and carry her home. Then she made friends with other dogs in the neighborhood and learned the pleasures of picking up sticks on walks. We've been through vet visits, puppy kindergarten, several days when she was left home alone with the Mister, and the two weeks she spent boarding in December.

I still remember the day we brought her home and how surprised we were by how tiny she was:

Our lives have changed a lot, especially mine, but for all the lack of sleep and accidents to clean up and vet bills to play, I wouldn't change anything. She's my velcro dog, my best buddy, and my napping companion. Happy Gotcha Day, Ruthie!

Never Dull

Well, friends, life was certainly ... life-ing this week. The Mister was away for work, so that meant two school runs a day and cooking and cleaning up in the evening (plus dragging the garbage and recycling to the curb). All of it doable, just more. When I took Ruthie in for her rabies booster, they told me to bring a stool sample. And wouldn't you know it? It tested positive for parasites. So I had to go back to the vet to pick up some meds. Then, yesterday, she decided she was no longer interested in eating her food at breakfast and it sat in her bowl most of the day while she occasionally ate a piece or two. (She was her normal self at dinner and gobbled it all up. Seems she just wanted me to worry more all day.) And all week my brain kept waking me up way too early, like before-5-a.m.-early in some cases.

All of this is to say that it's been a long week and I'm ready for the weekend. And there are good things, too. The Mister is back and working from home today. Passover ended last night, which we marked with pasta for dinner and freshly baked brownies for dessert. Molly has PSAT's today (this is just for practice; they don't really count for anything until next year) and is done at school at 10. And it looks like we're going to have a full weekend of spring.

You know what else is good? How these colors are pooling in my current sock WIP:

It's been a good number of years since I knit a multicolor variegated sock, so this is entertaining me more than it probably should. I'm sure it'll get even more wild as I get through the gusset.

So it's been an interesting week. Molly joked that Ruthie has taken her place as the family member I worry about constantly, and she's not wrong. I suppose that's a common feature of parenting, whether we're talking about humans or pets!

We've got nothing on the calendar this weekend, and that's just fine by me. I plan to have as normal a weekend as possible, and even if Ruthie wakes me up at 6 both days, it'll still feel a bit like sleeping in.

Have a good one, friends!

Unraveled, Week 14/2026

I'm thankful that Monday whooshed by and we've arrived at the middle of the week. Time to join with Kat and the Unravelers with an update on my making and my reading!

I promised an update on my sweater and here it is, in all its glory on Matilda:

I'm now at the point that should be going pretty fast but hasn't really in the past several days because this is my evening knitting project and my evenings have been full of late (we were out to dinner over the weekend and then I had multiple loads of laundry to fold several evenings). But it's all stockinette for quite a while now, and all I have to pay attention to is changing strands when I get to the end of round. I expect I will have made much more progress by this time next week. Or at least I hope so.

I also cast on the socks for my sister-in-law, and as I expected, I'm getting some really fun pooling with this yarn:

Please forgive the less-than-optimal lighting; I didn't want to wake the sleeping dog.

I'll be making these with a relatively short leg, both because this sister-in-law has rather shapely calves and because her feet are so much bigger around compared to the other recipients that I don't want to risk running out of yarn.

It's been another good week of reading! I finished four books this week.

I would classify I Cheerfully Refuse as dystopian fiction, as it's set in the United States at some unspecified time in the future when the divide between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else has broadened drastically and even the president is illiterate. Most people are just trying to get by, and some of them are still willing to do kind things for others. Rainy is one of those, offering a room for rent to a fearful man who has clearly run from a punishing work contract. Offering him shelter is the kind thing to do but leads to tragedy for Rainy, who is eventually forced to flee from his home and take up residence on a boat on Lake Superior. It's a difficult plot to explain, but it's a well written story that praises the values of human kindness, finding joy in the moment, and the power of music and the written word. I gave it 4 stars.

After having it on my shelf for at least a year and following way behind Katie in our buddy read, I finally finished Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey. I'd first read the epic poem way back at the beginning of high school, and the translation we'd read for class was old even then. I thought this newer one was so fresh and modern and certainly much more engaging. Though the setting is ancient, the characters feel like people you might encounter today (well, maybe not Polyphemus the cyclops or Athena walking around in disguise, but you know what I mean). I think it took me just as long to read the introduction and the translator's note as it did to read the actual poem, but I wouldn't have skipped those parts and wouldn't recommend that anyone skip them -- they're full of great information. I really enjoyed this experience and gave it 4 stars as well.

My next finish was an ARC, so if this one interests you, I'm sorry that you'll have to wait about a month to read it. I have now read all of Douglas Stuart's novels, and I have to say that his newest, John of John, is my favorite of the three. Cal is in his early 20s, and after finishing his degree on the mainland but not succeeding in finding work, he is headed back to the small Scottish island where he was raised by his stern Presbyterian father, a sheep farmer and home weaver, and his maternal grandmother, Ella, after his mother left them when he was young. Cal has always had a difficult relationship with his father and feels a bit of a failure in heading home to this insular community where everyone knows everything. But everyone in his family is also keeping a secret, and these secrets, if revealed, would have the potential to devastate the entire family. Both Cal and his father wrestle with their inner demons and their relationships as they try to figure out how to live a life in this place where it's becoming increasingly apparent that their way of life won't be an option much longer. There is some poverty, some family discord, and even some physical violence, but it's nothing like what was depicted in Shuggie Bain or Young Mungo, which I know a lot of readers struggled with. It's clear that Stuart is drawing on some of his own life story again (the knitters will likely enjoy the bits about weaving and yarn and sheep!), but this iteration feels more hopeful. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to Grove Press and Edelweiss for providing me with a digital ARC in return for an honest review. This book will be published May 5, 2026.

Finally, a quick audiobook (I listened to all of it in a day). I'd heard about Abigail Thomas from Honoré and had her short memoir What Comes Next and How to Like It bookmarked for several months. When I needed a short audiobook, it fit the bill perfectly. This isn't a typical memoir as it's not really a sequential story but rather a collection of short vignettes. Thomas tells stories about her relationships, her friendships, her children, her alcoholism, her dogs. She is blunt and to the point, and I really enjoyed her voice -- both literary and literal, as she reads the audio. I don't think her life has been extraordinary, but then I tend to like hearing about the lives of ordinary people. She kept me good company on a run, two dog walks, and while folding a load of laundry. I gave the book 3 stars.

I am currently reading a short novel in translation before bed, and I just started Good People, the next Read With Us selection, yesterday.

What are you making and reading this week?

Two Days, Two Seasons

Well, that was a super weird weekend! On Saturday, it was a little damp from the rain overnight, but the sun soon came out and it warmed up -- a lot. We reached a high of 83ºF, and I got a bit sweaty walking Ruthie even though I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. We actually had to turn the air conditioning on because it was so much warmer in the house and we'd had trouble sleeping because of it. Yesterday, I woke up to rain again, but it was about 40 degrees cooler -- I needed a jacket, a hat, and gloves to walk the dog! I felt really bad for the little girls out in their Easter dresses and the kids out hunting for eggs in the wet grass, but I guess this isn't all that unusual for early April in Western Pennsylvania.

Fortunately, it was comfortable inside the house, and while I didn't sleep as much as I would have liked, I at least got a fair amount of downtime. It was enough to finish the first pair of sister-in-law socks:

They aren't quite a perfect match, but they are good enough. I did wind off a little yarn to start the second sock in the same place in the stripe sequence, and you can really only tell that they're not exactly the same if you look at the toes. And they're done, which is the best part.

I spent a little bit of time going through my sock yarn bin and came out with this skein for my other sister-in-law:

This is Knit Picks Stroll Hand Painted, a 75/25 superwash Merino/nylon blend, in the colorway Home Movie. I expect this will pool and flash rather than stripe, especially at the 80-stitch circumference I'll need for this recipient's feet. But I am rather enjoying the patterning that happened when I wound it into a center-pull ball!

This week Molly is back at school (so her bad mood will likely be back as well) and the Mister has a work trip, so I will be doing a lot of chauffeuring. Ruthie also has an appointment at the vet this morning to get her rabies booster. She'll be mad at me for withholding breakfast this morning (which I always do before she has to go in the car), but I'm sure they'll give her treats there and I'll make it up to her later in the day. And the cold will be sticking around for a few days yet, so I guess my hand-knit socks will get a few more wears before they go into hibernation.

I hope you have an easy start to your week, and I'll see you back here on Wednesday with a big sweater update!

Good Friday, Indeed

It's been a busy week, so I am feeling happier than usual about the fact that we've reached the end of it -- though perhaps the fact that I am done with work at 2 p.m. this afternoon has something to do with it! 

It's been a wet start to the month. We woke up on Wednesday having gotten an inch of rain overnight, and on a walk, Ruthie and I discovered that a neighbor had a pond in their backyard.

Fortunately when it's rainy outside, I feel less guilty about staying inside to read and knit! And progress has been made on both projects since you last saw them.

I've finished the colorwork on the yoke of my sweater, though that wasn't until last night after dinner and I had to take the photo earlier in the day, so what you're seeing here is about a round and a half short of completion.

It's been quite interesting to see how both yarns have striped, though the main color is obviously more subtle than the contrast. I've been working with the smallest skein of the three I have for this section, but now I'll be alternating to blend the skeins and avoid very obviously lines. I've also noticed that the purple yarn is a bit more robust than the other yarn, so there's an added textural element to the colorwork. I'm hoping that blocking will help to even it out a bit.

I've also gotten to the gusset of the second sock in the current pair, which means I'm about 75% of the way done with them.

On my to-do list for this weekend will be to pull out my bin of sock yarn and pick something for my other sister-in-law. She has the biggest feet of the four recipients, so perhaps I shouldn't have left her for last, but at least there's still more than a month left before Mother's Day and that should be plenty of time.

We had some interesting Passover Seders this week (four kids under 6 the first night made for a rushed and noisy time of it!). My mother, as per usual, made about twice as much food as was needed, so I expect we'll be eating leftovers for a while. Meal planning will be a little difficult for next week without our go-to of pasta, but we have more options than we used to since the Reform movement ruled that a lot of things that Eastern European Jews used to avoid during Passover (like corn, rice, and legumes) are, in fact, permitted -- but those aren't necessarily things Molly will eat, so it's still complicated.

We've got another quiet weekend ahead, and that's just fine with me. Molly may be working tomorrow (I expect they'll be busy because it's supposed to be close to 80!), and I have a couple of errands to run, but we have no fixed plans. And Monday she goes back to school, so it's the last weekend of spring break.

I wish you a very happy Easter if you're celebrating this weekend!

Unraveled, Week 13/2026

It's Wednesday and the first day of April, so no fooling around -- time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I've worked some more on both my sweater and the socks for my sister-in-law, and while I've made some progress since Monday, it's not enough to make it worth sharing an update so soon, so today I thought I'd share my most recent yarny acquisition. Now, we all know I don't need more yarn and have actively been trying to use up stash for a while. But I'm all about moderation, and that means that occasionally I feel it's acceptable to acquire some new yarn. In this case, it was done for a good reason. I think you all know that I am friends (in real life!) with Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works. Earlier in March (on my birthday, actually), she had hip replacement surgery. I knew she was worried about it and wasn't sure how long she'd be out of commission as far as dyeing yarn is concerned, so I wanted to help her out a bit by making a purchase -- nothing huge, just a little business thrown her way to help while she's unable to work. So here's what I ordered:

On the far left is Bounce (fingering weight) in her 2024 anniversary colorway called A Legacy. It was inspired by a zig-zag crocheted blanket that Lisa's grandmother made, one she still has. I remember my grandparents had one in their den, though theirs was in peak 1970s colors (browns and oranges), and I like the colors of Lisa's much better. The other two skeins came in a mystery grab bag; I knew the bases but not the colorways when I ordered. The center skein is Beguiled, a DK superwash merino/nylon/sparkle, in the colorway Mountain House Autumn, and the one on the right is Strong DK (superwash merino/nylon) in the colorway Gnome Place Like Home. That last one obviously needs to be made into something for my brother, but what I will do with the other two skeins is still up for discussion.

It's been another productive week of reading, largely thanks to audiobooks (I used to listen almost exclusively to podcasts while running/walking, but a number I subscribed to have stopped production, so I find myself downloading more audiobooks than ever).

Private Rites is set in a version of England where climate change has caused the rain to be unceasing and the water levels to constantly be on the rise. Three sisters whose relationships with one another have always been fraught come together in the wake of the death of their father, a rigid and demanding man who was celebrated as an innovative architect. The moment causes all of them to reflect on their childhood days, the mystery of what happened to the mother of the two oldest girls, and the strange memories they could never make sense of. This is billed as a retelling of King Lear, but honestly I didn't see much of a connection other than three sisters and a father who is cruel to them. I thought the writing was great but the story was just so-so, and frankly I'm still not sure what happened in the climax at the end. I gave it 3 stars.

After my experience with Lincoln in the Bardo, I knew I wanted to listen to George Saunders's newest, Vigil, and I'll tell you up front that that was a great choice -- it's excellent on audio with its full cast. The vigil of the title refers to the role Jill is playing and has played several hundred times. After dying at a young age, her new job is to comfort those who are close to death. This time, her charge is a former oil company executive, a man so sure of how he has lived his life that he sees no need for comfort. But other spirits are visiting, too, trying to get the man to atone for her contributions to climate change, and in such a charged atmosphere, Jill finds her thoughts straying back to her own life and death. It's sad, it's funny, and it's completely original. There's no question that George Saunders has a fascinating mind, and he is perhaps the only writer who could take the idea of a dying man being visited by a spirit in such a creative and unusual direction. I gave it 4 stars.

I heard about The Art Spy on one of the few podcasts I still listen to and immediately put it on hold because it sounded right up my alley: narrative nonfiction about the Germans entering Paris in WWII, determined to plunder the art held by France's museums and private (predominantly Jewish) collectors and the efforts by the French museum staff and resistance to prevent it -- yes, please! The book focuses largely on Rose Valland, a highly educated French woman well qualified to work as a curator who was repeatedly blocked from advancing in her career by men in positions of power. But in the war, her unassuming figure and the fact that she had a near-photographic memory enabled her to work right under the Germans' noses to keep track of where plundered artwork was going. The book also follows the Rosenberg family: Paul Rosenberg was a prominent Paris art dealer who represented Picasso and Matisse. His family fled the Nazis and escaped to New York, while his son Alexandre went to England to join Charles de Gaulle and the Free French forces and would be in the military group that eventually liberated Paris. And of course the book focuses on the Germans who took any and all artwork they desired, whether it was for German museums, Hitler's own collection, or themselves. I certainly knew that the Nazis stole a great deal of valuable art from European Jews, but I wasn't aware of the scale of their operation or the efforts of those in the occupied zone to attempt to counteract it. In addition to covering the entirety of the war, the book provides a comprehensive accounting of efforts to recover the stolen art and Rose's large role in it. I highly recommend this one. I gave it 4 stars (frankly, it would have been 5 stars except that I kept getting annoyed with what looked like sloppy copyediting to me).

I bought A Well-Trained Wife on a whim when it was a Kindle deal; I've always found memoirs to be a great way to learn about lives that are very different from mine, and certainly the "Christian patriarchy" of the subtitle is about as different from my life as I can get. When Molly was a newborn and I'd lie down in the afternoon while she napped, I'd often turn on TLC. At the time, the Duggars were very popular, and I was strangely fascinated by them. In this book, the author gives her perspective on the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, showing that there is a very dark side to the wholesome public appearance. In short, she was expected to be obedient, submissive, and silent. Her exposure to the outside world was limited, and she was physically "punished" if her husband felt she was not respecting him, not doing her duty, or generally not following all the rules of their restrictive religious teachings. I admire her for her honesty, but I found the book itself to be hard to read and follow at some times and frequently got overwhelmed by all the theology. Plus, now I think I have yet something else to worry about with respect to the future of this country (the fundamentalist view of how it should be run). I gave it 2.5 stars.

Finally, another memoir, this one a little more lighthearted: In Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton writes primarily about her teens and 20s and her evolving understanding about relationships and what matters. As you would expect, she gets wiser as she gets older, but through it all she maintains a sense of humor. I think many of the references were lost on me because I'm not British and because I'm older than the author, but I could still identify with feelings about friendships and getting older. I also really enjoy it when an author reads their own work, particularly memoir, so it was enjoyable to listen to. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm still reading The Odyssey -- but I've passed 400 pages, so I'm in the home stretch -- and have just started John of John, Douglas Stuart's forthcoming third novel. April is National Poetry Month, so I'm going to prioritize reading some of the collections I've acquired in recent years this month, too!

Passover starts this evening, so tonight we'll be at my parents' with all the family, and then tomorrow it'll be just my side at my brother's for the leftovers. Today Molly and I will be making charoset and roasting potatoes. I will likely be complaining about the food in a couple of days, but this is my favorite Jewish holiday, so I'm looking forward to it!