Commemorations

It's Friday, but it's a special day. Today we mark 25 years since the events of 9/11. I so clearly remember that day, and it's almost incomprehensible to me that it's been 25 years since it happened. Though I don't know anyone who lost their life that day, it's always a solemn day for me and I suspect for everyone who was of a certain age that day. As I do every year on this date, I'll be pausing for a moment of reflection this morning.

On a happier note, this evening we will welcome Rosh Hashanah with a big family meal at our house. As we share apples and honey, we will share our wishes for a sweet new year. And that, dear friends, is what I wish for you -- a year ahead that is happy, healthy, and sweet.

Unraveled, Week 36/2026

Did anyone else wake up yesterday and think it was Monday? Apparently a lot of my neighbors were also confused about the day because they already had their trash out, forgetting that when there's a holiday on Monday, trash pickup gets pushed back a day, so ours isn't until Thursday this week.

Today, however, is Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers. And it's the first day of the NFL season, which means it's also the first day of the Pigskin Party and I can cast on my new sweater. I had a pretty good feeling about getting stitch gauge on my swatch, but I was astounded when I measured once it was dry and saw that I'd gotten both stitch and row gauge -- for only the second time, I think, in my entire knitting career!

As a reminder, I'm planning to knit a long-sleeved Seashore Stroll (Ravelry link) with this yarn, a blended merino from FatCatKnits that I spun (unbelievably) a decade ago. I think this will be a great fall/spring (and maybe winter in Florida) sweater, so I'm excited to get it on the needles.

I've finished four books since this time last week:

The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds

My rating: 4 stars

In the summer of 1920, Joseph, a young British journalist, arrives in Provence at the remote house of the reclusive French painter Edouard Tartuffe to interview him. But Tartuffe wants nothing to do with him until his niece and housekeeper, Ettie, convinces him that Joseph could serve as a model for his next painting. As Joseph lives with the two for the summer, he and Ettie are drawn to each other and begin to learn about each other's secrets and painful pasts, but there's still something mysterious about Ettie and her painter uncle and why they've hidden away from the rest of society. This book raises questions about the value of art and who is allowed to create it -- and how who creates art determines its value to the wider world. I picked this up at Vera's recommendation and enjoyed it, though it does have its faults (some of which Kym pointed out in her review).

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

My rating: 2.5 stars

I'd had this book on my TBR for a while but was moved to read it when it was mentioned last week on the What Should I Read Next? podcast. The premise sounds promising: A British explorer, following the many stories of the legendary city of El Dorado, determines to find it deep in the Amazon rainforest. After several failed expeditions, he sets off again with his teenaged son and his son's best friend -- only to vanish. Grann, a journalist who not only did the research but attempted to follow in the explorer's footsteps, chronicles the expeditions and the general fascination with finding the fabled City of Z, which may or may not have existed. But I found it hard to stay engaged with the narrative and frequently didn't remember names, and frankly there were many things related to the Amazon expeditions that were really hard to listen to, as they involved a great deal of illness and physical suffering. I kept with it only because I didn't have anything else queued up and also wanted to know if there was any great discovery in the end, but there was no particular resolution, and I wouldn't really recommend it. (Also, what is with audiobook narrators reading dates as cardinal numbers rather than ordinal?)

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian

My rating: 4 stars

I put this new release on hold based on Carole's recommendation. At the end of the summer of 1978, teenage golf phenom Mira is getting ready to head to her freshman year at Yale when one of the practice shots she's taken at her family's golf club somehow goes through the net meant to stop it, hitting a caddy (and her former classmate) in the head and almost instantly killing him. Everyone agrees at first that it was a terrible accident, but then authorities start taking a closer look and Mira comes under suspicion, especially when her earlier instances of recklessness are viewed in light of the fact that she's been carrying on an affair with a much older married man. Mira tells the story, revealing that now, many decades later, she is a successful novelist writing her first memoir. She is brutally honest about her questionable behavior as a teen while also exposing the double standard applied to women versus men at that time. I have to admit that I felt a bit icky at the beginning of the book, namely because a male author was writing a certain way as a teenaged female narrator, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I wouldn't necessarily call it a thriller, but there is a bit of a mystery to be unraveled about what happened and who was responsible, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth Macy

My rating: 4.5 stars

Sometimes you pick a book at random because it's available from the library and you get really lucky. This was one such book. Beth Macy, a journalist and nonfiction writer probably best known for Dopesick, grew up in Urbana, Ohio, where her family struggled with her father's alcoholism and persistent poverty, but thanks to a Pell Grant was able to go to college, eventually moving on to bigger cities for her journalism career. But when she returned to her hometown in 2020 as her mother was dying, she found a drastically different city, both economically and politically. This book is part personal memoir and part exploration of how so many smaller American cities have changed, especially in the last decade. She interviewed family members and former classmates who had turned to far-right politics and conspiracy theories. She spoke with teachers, counselors, and social workers about high rates of truancy and falling graduation rates. And she spoke with scholars about the trends across the country, noting how a decline in the availability of reliable, fact-checked news sources has corresponded to a rise in distrust of the media in general and a growing acceptance of what we might call "alternative facts." There is a lot to unpack here, but I never lost interest or the thread, and in fact I might want to read it again on the page (I listened to Macy read the audio to me). I found it to be well written, well researched, and really fascinating -- and also disheartening. If you like this sort of book, I'd recommend it.

I am currently reading Shy Creatures in print, House on Endless Waters on my iPad, and The Girl Who Wrote in Silk on audio via Hoopla. What are you reading and making this week?

Like Magic

Oh, how I love having a Monday off! Of course, dogs don't understand federal holidays, so I was up more or less at the regular time today, but at least I won't have to attend any work meetings, check my work email, or be glued to my laptop all day.

We had a really nice holiday weekend, starting with our anniversary dinner. We went to one of our favorites, and it was as good as always, although I think they were short-staffed in the kitchen or something because it took at full hour for our entrees to come out and my chicken was still raw inside when I cut into it (they whisked it away immediately to cook it properly, and the host came to check that everything was okay when it was returned to me). We had all had a long week and went to bed early.

On Saturday, in between other things, I felted the two pairs of mittens I'd knit recently. I now felt exclusively in the dryer, getting the items good and wet and then tossing them in with a towel or two for friction. I've found that although I often have to run them for several cycles (usually because the load is small enough that the sensor thinks it's done way before the time runs out), the fabric felts very well this way, with minimal water used and the ability to check on things whenever I want. Here's what they looked like before felting:

and here they are after:

They felted so much, in fact, that the large ones are now my size, even though they were meant to be two sizes larger!

I also spent part of the weekend swatching for my handspun sweater, so now I wait for the swatch to dry so I can see if I got gauge. And it's not yet time to cast on a big project, so in the interim I'm knitting another charity hat holding lightweight leftovers double:

The pinky red is Dream in Color Jilly (a superwash merino single), the gold is a merino/ingeo (corn fiber) blend, and the orange is Fibernymph Dye Works sport weight. I started with the Jilly and the FDW, and when the latter runs out (assuming it does before the hat is done), I'll join in the merino/ingeo. I'm enjoying using up leftovers, but it's also fun to pull out these partial skeins and remember what I used them for previously. The Jilly was used for a sweater, the merino/ingeo for a shawl design, and the orange sport was used along with black for Halloween-ish hat for my oldest nephew.

We are all having a quiet day today. I plan to enjoy the cooler, less-humid weather (and, I assume, no road construction) on my run this morning, and Molly and I may do a little shopping this afternoon. Of course, we're not forgetting that it's Labor Day -- don't forget to thank your friendly neighborhood union member for having things like weekends!

Pre-Weekending

Phew, it's been a long week! Single-parenting is a lot easier now that Molly is self-sufficient (for the most part), but doing all the school runs and cooking and cleaning up all the meals and walking the dog and working full time and donating blood on top of all that, all while dealing with an extreme heat advisory has been a lot, to say the least. It's a good think we have a long weekend coming up without any big plans!

The Mister was due to get back from his trip very early this morning (I'm writing this post on Thursday) and will be working from home today, once he gets up. My office is closing at 2. Molly has school as usual but obviously is done mid-afternoon. I think we're all going to be looking forward to a nice dinner out tonight for our belated anniversary celebration.

I'm still in a weird in-between place in my knitting; I don't want to cast on anything too big because my next imaginary internet points thing starts next Wednesday, but I also don't want to be without knitting, so I'm working on strange things. If the mittens weren't finished by last night, they will be soon, and in the meantime I'm knitting a strange little hat with some fingering-weight singles that I thought were non-superwash but aren't (I was planning to knit up a piece of fabric to felt) and so I pivoted:

This will never be a full Ruthie.

What has become the brim is double-knit using just a single strand. The idea was that I'd knit up a tube, felt it, and then cut it open to make a little holder for scissors, darning needle, etc. But now that I know this won't felt (or at least not easily), it's become a baby/child's hat. I moved to bigger needles and joined the other end of the skein so I'm working double stranded, and I'll try to use up as much of the yarn as I can.

While I can't cast on for my next sweater until next week for it to count, I did wind the other skein and plan to swatch this weekend.

I spun this yarn back in 2016, originally intending to knit a different sweater with it, but it's been hiding in the stash ever since. I've got just a little less than 1,500 yards of it. The size of the sweater I'm planning to make specifies 1,345 yards, so I think I should be fine (especially because I'm pretty sure that's a padded estimate). The yarn is fingering weight, so I think it should make for a good fall/spring sweater.

The heat is finally supposed to break this weekend, and I'm looking forward to being outside without melting. Other than our dinner reservations tonight, our only plans at this point are a haircut for Molly tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps we'll do some grilling for Labor Day or attend the local parade! Or perhaps we'll just hang out, which would be just fine with me. Do you have any plans? Whatever they are, I hope you enjoy them!

Unraveled, Week 35/2026

Wednesday again, but the first of September! This particular Wednesday, the Mister and I are also celebrating our 19th anniversary. We will have to wait to celebrate until Friday, though, as he's still away at a work conference. But I donated blood yesterday in the room where we had our reception, and that felt appropriate! 

I won't postpone linking up with Kat and the Unravelers, however, so here's an update on my making and reading.

I have not done much knitting this week, mainly because I haven't had much free time being the only adult in the house, but I've finished a positively enormous mitten (that I'm hoping will become a normal-sized mitten once it's felted):

I'm making the largest size in this pattern (why not, given I was trying to use up yarn?) and was happy to see that I have more than half left from what I started with, so I won't be playing any yarn chicken this time around. I was able to get the cuff done on Monday evening and moved on to the hand last night, and I think I'll be able to wrap up the pair by the end of the week.

Although I didn't get a chance to take a photo, I did wind up a skein of handspun so I can swatch for my next sweater, which I hope to be able to cast on a week from today.

I finished four books this past week. Two were okay, one was really good, and one I loved.

I listened to 10 Marchfield Square on a whim because it was available on Hoopla and sounded like it would keep my interest. It's a murder mystery set in an apartment building owned by an older widow. When one of the tenants is murdered, followed shortly by the possible murder of his wife, and the owner is unsatisfied with how the police are investigating, she enlists two other tenants -- a writer struggling to find inspiration for his next book and a cleaner -- to try to solve the case on their own. I thought it got a little convoluted at times and I did figure out the killer before the end, but I thought the narrator did a pretty good job (aside from her unfortunate habit of pronouncing dogs as "dogses"). It was a two-day listen and kept me mostly engaged, so it was fine. I gave it 3 stars.

Both my father and mother read Heft and passed their copy along to me after I had recommended God of the Woods by the same author to them. This book focuses on two individuals: Arthur Opp, a 550-pound man who hasn't left his house in years because of his size, and Kel Keller, a teenager struggling to take care of his alcoholic single mother who longs to play professional baseball. They are connected through Kel's mother, Charlene, who was once Arthur's student when he taught college and with whom he continued corresponding for many years after. Both are struggling to connect with others and to be fully vulnerable with others. I thought the characters were interesting but the story was sad. I didn't love it but didn't hate it. I gave it 3 stars.

I have loved the two other Laurie Frankel books I've read this year, so I thought I'd try another. One Two Three is about three sisters -- triplets -- who live in a small town that was once poisoned by the local chemical company. Their father died before they were born, and their mother has been fighting for their entire lives to try to get justice. Mab is the firstborn who can't wait to get out of town but also can't imagine losing her sisters. Monday is on the autism spectrum, prefers to wear and eat only yellow things, and has appointed herself town librarian since the library closed. Mirabel, brilliant and observant, is confined to a wheelchair and can only speak by using an assistive device. Their family's life is challenging, but they're getting by. And then the family behind the chemical company returns to town with a plan to reopen the plant, prompting the three sisters to join forces to try to find evidence to support their mother's lawsuit or at least convince the townspeople not to take the risk. These three young women are such wonderful characters, and their interactions with one another -- their support of each other, how well they understand each other -- are funny and sad and heartfelt. I really enjoyed my time with them. I gave this book 4 stars.

A story of mothers and daughters, of the challenges of being a parent and also a person, Mothersick focuses primarily on Mara and Nell, sisters who made a pact never to get married or have children after their father had an affair and their mother, Andy, seemed to abandon them. But then Mara broke the pact when she met her partner and has just given birth to her son, Gabriel. She finds motherhood and her child unlike anything she could have imagined, almost every moment a gift, but also realizes that in becoming a mother, she's had to give up part of herself, the part that was creative and imaginative and that previously provided her for family. Nell, meanwhile, has entered a whirlwind romance with Lenny, a wealthy American who wants a traditional family to make up for the broken family in which he grew up in, and though she can accept that she's willing to break the marriage part of the pact, she's not sure she'll ever come around to the idea of children. While their mother is traveling all over the world and making art, the sisters are supported by their aunt, Jean, who provides them with the love, advice, and acceptance they always wanted but never got from their mother, and Jean finds in her nieces some of the joy in being a parent that she always wanted but wasn't able to have. Over the course of a year, these three women deal with all the usual challenges of being a woman in the world as they grapple with trying to understand why Andy seemed to be so afraid to be a mother and trying to forgive her for leaving. The prose in this book is lush, the kind of writing that you have to read slowly to fully understand and appreciate. The characters are flawed but lovable because they are so real. They have old traumas they have kept secret and new challenges to their sense of self, both of which threaten their relationships with one another. What resonated most for me was the very relatable sense that women, especially women who are mothers, are expected both to be everything -- partners, caretakers, parents, homemakers, career women, etc. -- and to give up the things that matter to them as people (careers, time, hobbies, friends) in the service of caring for others. The unspoken message in this book is that we are at our lowest, we almost always want our mother to care for us -- but what if that mother has not been cared for herself and doesn't know how to provide the love her children need? I gave this one 5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published April 27, 2027.

I'm currently reading The Artist and the Feast (digital) and Shy Creatures (on paper). I'm getting caught up on podcasts at the moment but will likely be ready for a new audiobook later this week.

Finally, I just wanted to let you all know that my new sock pattern, Kesbie, has been published. You'll find it on Ravelry and Payhip.

Ending and Beginning

Well, that was quite a weekend. As predicted, it was a lot of eating and not very much else. I managed to get a walk in on Saturday morning, but my only exercise yesterday was done while walking Ruthie. Your parents only celebrate their 50th anniversary once, though, so it was all worth it! And it was lovely to spend time with my aunts and uncles as well. The only photo of all the food I took was of my dessert -- a chocolate hazelnut tart -- on Saturday night that I fear does not do it justice because of the poor lighting. I can tell you that as gorgeous as this was, it tasted even better.

I didn't say on Friday that I hoped I'd be able to sleep in, and wouldn't you know it? I slept in both days! Well, technically I was up at the usual time on Saturday because the Mister got up to go to the bathroom at 5-something and then was looking at his phone, but I rolled over and went back to bed until Ruthie told me she was up at around 6:30. She was silent yesterday, which was good because we didn't get home from dinner until after 10 and I got to bed very late for me (for the record, I have reached that age where I like to be in bed, reading, before 10).

Because so much of the weekend was spent with family, there wasn't a lot of knitting time, but I managed to finish up this charity hat on Saturday. It still needs to be blocked, but it's another 450+ yards out of my stash.

Today is (obviously) the last day of August, and apparently summer is going to make a comeback this week with highs around 90. Yuck! I was hoping that by the time we got to this point, we'd be able to say goodbye to that kind of weather; perhaps this is just summer's last hurrah. As we close out August, however, it's also the start of Molly's junior year of high school. She has her first day (well, half-day) today, and she finally got her schedule over the weekend and is relieved that her courses seem to be well spaced out so she won't have a repeat of last year's stress. That's not to say I'm expecting it to be easy -- she's taking English, French 4, precalculus, U.S. history, biology, and AP chemistry as well as glee club (chorus) and clay -- but at least she won't be getting homework from all her classes every other day like last year. I'll be dropping her off and picking her up today, but the plan is for her to register with the high school secretary so she can drive and park in the school lot and free me from having to rush out of the house every day at 3. I also realized that in addition to not having to do that, I can also send her to pick up something at the market for dinner if we forgot it or to run other quick errands for me. There are plenty of times that I'm sad that she's growing up so quickly, but there are definitely some plus sides to having another driver in the house!

Let the Eating Begin

Things have been a little weird this week and I've had a hard time keeping track of what days it is, but I am completely sure that today is Friday, and thank goodness for that. We had dinner at some friends' on Tuesday and were home late, and then last night Molly went to a friend's house for dinner so the Mister and I went out. All of that is outside our normal schedule, so I'm not surprised I've been thrown off.

The construction in our neighborhood is still ongoing and blocked our street again yesterday (fortunately I didn't need to get the car out), and when I called the gas company, all they could tell me was that the work was happening now. The customer service rep also told me that they always notify residents when work is going to be happening, but somehow not a single neighbor I've talked to has heard a thing, so it's not just a case of us missing a piece of mail! I've gotten mostly used to the inconvenience, but it makes my running route and Ruthie's usual walk route a bit like an obstacle course. I guess it's good to keep things interesting!

We have a bit of a big weekend coming up, though the primary activity will be eating. Tomorrow is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. They didn't really want to do anything to commemorate it, but my brother and I convinced them that it was a big milestone and we needed to mark it in some way. So their siblings from out of town are all coming in for the weekend (one uncle is local and just has to drive across town). We're doing a casual dinner Friday night, a fancier dinner on Saturday night, and brunch on Sunday before the out-of-towners go home. In between I'm sure we'll just be hanging out at my parents', where I'm sure my mother will be pushing snacks on us.

This isn't much of an update outside of life stuff, and that's mainly because the knitting is much the same. Will you settle for a cute photo of Ruthie?

This is what she looked like the other morning when I got up to refill my coffee and maybe had just realized that I was coming back and not leaving her. Her expression seems to be saying that she doesn't understand why I would think it odd that she was hiding under the couch.

Have a good weekend and see you back here on Monday with 100% more knitting content!

Unraveled, Week 34/2026

Good morning and happy Wednesday! Today, as usual, I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers for an update on my making and my reading.

I'm happy to report that the first pair of to-be-felted mittens has been completed and the second pair has been cast on, this time starting with the cuff:

I am knitting the largest size this time around, so even though I still had some of the burnt orange yarn remaining, I thought I'd use a partial skein with a bit more yardage in it just to be sure I wouldn't run short. That purple crocheted square next to the knitting is a swatch. Ruthie has a habit of pulling apart the padded bedding in her crate and removing the stuffing, so I thought I'd use up some yarn by crocheting and then felting a piece of fabric. I've got a bunch of 50% alpaca/50% wool yarn that used to be sweater (surprise, surprise -- it stretched out, so I frogged it) and that I know felts very well, so I'm going to felt up this swatch to determine how big I need to make the real thing to get it the size I want.

My current hat in progress also has surpassed a half Ruthie:

It's been a slower reading week for me, but I've finished two audiobooks (both fairly deep backlist) and one ARC.

I had an infant when Unbroken was published, so it's not surprising that it didn't cross my radar at the time. I think it took the movie coming out (which I haven't seen) for me to become aware of it. This is a hard story to read, as it tells in excruciating detail of the atrocities that prisoners of war in Japan were subjected to in the second World War, but knowing about the cruelty and privations makes it all the more remarkable that anyone survived it. The story of Louis Zamperini is especially notable given that he lived the rest of his life without the modern-day psychological treatments we now have to deal with trauma and PTSD. The book was well written and clearly very thoroughly researched, and while I hesitate to call it a delight to listen to because of the heavy subject matter, having the late Edward Hermann read it to me made it much easier to digest. I gave it 4 stars.

I was likewise late to the Jackson Brodie series but have enjoyed the other Kate Atkinson books I've read, and I finally got around to reading Case Histories. I think what Atkinson really excels at is character -- you get to know so much about her characters and they come so alive even though she doesn't tell you all that much. I know how much skill that takes. I thoroughly enjoyed this first book and plan to work my way through the series. There were some loose ends and I had some trouble keeping some characters straight, but I never lost interest. One pet peeve: The narrator kept mispronouncing the name of Jackson's sister. Otherwise, the narration was quite good. I gave this one 4 stars.

Finally, the ARC: I was invited to review Elif Shafak's forthcoming novel In One Brief Moment All Eternity. This is an unusual novel, as in some respects it reads like a creative biography of Gustave Flaubert, the 19th-century writer best known for Madame Bovary. But Shafak makes it clear in her author's note that although many of the details were based in fact, this is, rather, a fictionalized account of Flaubert's life and his dedication to literature above all else. The most creative aspect of this book, though, isn't that bending of genre but that different moments in his life are narrated by women, from his mother and sister to lovers, friends, passing acquaintances, and even a city, a camel, and his most famous character. The novel reads like a work from Flaubert's time, with a richness of language and a slower pace that are so often lacking in more modern works (and happen to be two things I love). While Flaubert faced adversity and dark times throughout his life -- failure to live up to his father's expectations, the deaths of his father and sister, war, illness, etc. -- he remained dedicated to the power of literature to uplift and give life meaning. And that is very much what was behind Shafak's thinking in writing this book, at a time when we are facing war and conflict, climate change, and uncertainty, as she notes: "Literature cannot stop wars or heal hurts, but without it, without stories, we each would be so much lonelier." I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 12, 2027.

Finally, I want to say that I was saddened to hear of Dolly Parton's passing yesterday. I'm not a country music fan, but I've long admired Dolly for philanthropic work, especially what she did to get books into the hands of kids. Molly and I both thought that a great way to remember her would be to make a donation to her Imagination Library. Maybe you think so, too?

Oh Bother

I really should learn to stop saying that I'm planning to have a relaxing weekend and that I hope I might be able to sleep in; it really almost never happens. Well, that's not to say that the weekend wasn't relaxing in some ways, but it wasn't the carefree, restful weekend I always hope for. I overdid it a bit on Friday and had both an iced coffee in the afternoon and an alcoholic beverage at dinner, and the combination of the two summoned my old foe acid reflux for a visit, keeping me up for about three hours past my usual bedtime Friday night and then making me feel rotten most of the day Saturday. As if that wasn't convenient enough, I had to contend with this Saturday morning:

This work has been going on in the neighborhood for several weeks and we think they've been replacing gas lines, but we still don't know for sure because the gas company hasn't told us a thing -- not even that we'd be unable to leave our dead-end street for about half the day on Saturday. (I will say that the workers have been lovely and have been stopping traffic for me and Ruthie regularly when we need to cross the street, and they did move that dump truck so I could get to my house when I came back from a Costco run Saturday morning. Calling the gas company is on today's to-do list so I can find out what the heck is going on and when it'll be done as well as whether or not we need to plan for another street closure.) Ruthie and I both napped in the afternoon, and we had a quiet evening in following yet another thunderstorm.

Although I was up at my usual time yesterday, I woke up feeling back to normal and well rested, which was a relief. And it felt a little like fall! The high was only in the mid-70s yesterday, with a nice breeze and intermittent clouds. The Mister and I did the grocery shopping together, Ruthie and I enjoyed our walks, and it was a calm day overall.

I'm still working on that crazy-pooling hat (I'll share an update later in the week), but real progress has been made on the mittens. Here is what they looked like yesterday morning, though by the time you're reading this, I expect they'll be done and ready to be felted:

I'm planning to knit another pair of these when I'm done, and I think this time around I will modify the pattern to knit the cuffs first so I can do a tubular cast-on.

Among the usual stuff to be done this week, I'm hoping to start pulling some yarn and planning out some fall projects, including my next sweater. I've already selected and printed out the pattern, so up next is winding the yarn and swatching. I won't be casting on until at least September 9, but I like getting all my ducks in a row well ahead of time so I can dive right in.

Have a good start to your week and see you back here for an update on Wednesday!

Still Drying Out

It has been another wet week here in Western Pennsylvania -- yesterday was especially wet, with heavy rain all morning (exactly when I need to be out to walk Ruthie and then walk to and from work). Needless to say, I got pretty soaked. We were predicted to get as much as 2 inches yesterday alone, and I'm pretty sure we got close to that. I wish we could share all this rain with folks who are experiencing drought! The sun did come out for a little while yesterday afternoon, and the temperatures were only in the low 70s, so it was pretty comfortable and a nice change from the higher temps and high humidity. Looks like there's more rain in the forecast, though, so things aren't drying out completely anytime soon.

We've officially begun the countdown to the first day of school year. Molly goes back (for a half day, sheesh) on the 31st, so next week is her last week of summer break. All this month she's been working on her summer reading assignment and a whole bunch of chemistry assignments (to prepare for AP Chem this year). I'm also preparing for my next big knitalong, which starts September 9, so although I'd like to start a sweater, I'm waiting until it counts for imaginary internet points and biding my time until then with some smaller charity projects. You've already seen the current hat, which is growing a couple of inches or so each day and is now maybe a third of a Ruthie:

I also started some Snowball Throwin' Mittens (Ravelry link), though this time around I'm picking up and knitting the cuffs in superwash yarn before felting.

The part that will be felted is knit in Cascade Eco Wool (bulky), and I'm using some leftover Fibernymph Dye Works Bona Fide (DK) for the cuff. I knit a different pattern a couple of years ago using superwash for the cuff and non-superwash for the hand and it worked well, so I'm hoping that's the case here

It should be a less-dramatic weekend here, particularly as the Mister is recovering well but not yet up for running or biking yet. Molly is slated to work Saturday and Sunday, and there's an arts festival in our neighborhood's business district both days, so she should be busy and not interested in doing much when she gets home. We're planning to take my in-laws out for dinner tonight, and that's all that's on the social calendar. All of that is just fine with me!

Have the best weekend available to you, friends, and see you back here on Monday.

Unraveled, Week 33/2026

Thank you to all of you who left good wishes for the Mister's recovery on Monday. I'm happy to report that he does seem to be improving: He's been getting around the house much easier and even went into the office yesterday. I imagine it will be a while before he's able to run or bike again, which is bound to be frustrating for him, but the upside is that he can't get even more injured than he already is.

It's Wednesday, and as usual, I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers. And I'm starting things off with a stealth FO, one I don't think I even mentioned I was knitting because it came together so quickly.

I had a fair amount of yarn leftover from the baby pants and wanted to whip up a little hat to go with them and the BSJ, so I turned to a pattern I haven't knit in well more than a decade. It's a sweet little cap that looks great in self-striping yarn, and even though I seem to have messed up somewhere along the way because the stitch count didn't quite work out at the end of the decreases, I'm quite happy with how it turned out and don't think you can tell that anything went wrong. Now I just need to block it, sew the buttons on the BSJ, and package it all up to send off to Sweden once I talk to the recipient and figure out the best way to get it to her.

I also started the next stash-busting charity hat and am mildly entertained by how the variegated yarn is pooling now that I'm in the "knit until there's only enough yarn left to decrease" phase:

While the knitting has been small this week, the reading has been rather prolific (helped quite a bit by things being very quiet at work last week). I've finished five books, and I'll start off with the one I liked least and move on with the better reads.

The Angel of Warsaw by Rebecca Scott (audiobook)

2 stars

I found myself in need of something to listen to over the weekend, just before I was about to take the dog for a walk, so I was a bit rushed to make a choice and ended up with this fictionalized account of Irena Sendler and her efforts to save Jewish Polish children during WWII. I knew a little bit about Sendler (mostly from having watched a movie about her a number of years ago), and I knew that this was fiction inspired by her life, but even so I was pretty disappointed. I don't think it's expecting too much for a work of historical fiction based on a real person to have some grounding in the facts, but apparently the author didn't think so and was more interested in making this book just as much about the romance between Irena and a collaborator as it was about her saving children. Also, as some reviewers have pointed out, there are some pretty big mistakes, such as having Irena go into the Warsaw ghetto on a date that was months after it was liquidated. If that wasn't enough, the writing was overwrought and used way too many similes and metaphors that often sounded impressive but didn't actually mean anything (and in the case of the audiobook, this issue was compounded by the narrator's tendency to read just about every line in the most dramatic tone of voice possible). The only reason I gave this book 2 stars rather than 1 is because I think it at least does some justice to Sendler and what she and her collaborators accomplished. But if you're interested in the story, do yourself a favor and skip this book -- see if you can watch the movie instead.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (paperback)

4 stars

This book came out four years ago, and I remember hearing about it everywhere, but the wait at the library was always really long and I sort of forgot about it -- until I happened upon a copy in a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. Alice works in admissions at the NYC private school she attended, she has no children, and she's single once again. And her father is in the hospital, slowly dying. On the eve of her 40th birthday, she gets drunk and ends up back at the house where she grew up with her father after her parents split and her mother left town. When she wakes up the next morning, she's still there, only she's 16 again and her father is alive and well. Alice has to figure out how to get back to her life in the future but also has to figure out what, if anything, she can do to change the outcome. Yes, you have to accept that time travel is possible in this novel, but that's really only the tool used to get Alice to reflect on her choices, then and now, and evaluate whether any change she effects in the past is really worth the unconsidered consequences in the future. I really enjoyed the relationship between Alice and her father, and it wasn't surprising to read the author's note at the end indicating that much of it was grounded in her own father/daughter relationship. Though it deals with death quite a bit, what shines through the most is how important our enduring relationships are throughout our lives, whether or not we get to go back in time to try to adjust them.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (audio)

4 stars

There was a lot of buzz about this book when it came out last year, notably from Facebook/Meta, which tried to keep it from being published, and that alone leads me to believe in the veracity of its content. Sarah Wynn-Williams worked as director of global policy at Facebook for almost a decade, initially joining the company because she believed it would be revolutionary for creating connections and improving lives around the globe. But what she discovered was that the public faces of the company behaved differently in private, that the company didn't care about following other country's laws or putting people in physical danger, and that no matter how hard she worked -- even while in the middle of giving birth to her first child! -- she could not escape from the misogyny and sexual harassment that pervaded the office. I deleted my Facebook account years ago, but this book made me wish I'd never had one. It was eye-opening and shocking, but, like a car wreck, I couldn't look away. I have so much respect for the author for staying as long as she did to try to fix things (and I really enjoyed listening to her read the book, with her lovely New Zealand accent). 

Is It too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench with Brendan O'Hea (digital ARC)

4 stars

I really enjoyed the first collaboration by Dench and O'Hea focused on Shakespeare, so I was delighted to spend more time with the two of them in conversation about Judi Dench's life and long career. She reflects on her childhood, her schooling, her early days in the theater, her marriage and collaboration with her husband, and her relationships with many actors and directors over the years. Even in her early 90s, she is sharp and witty and has an amazing memory of roles she's played. She talks a lot about laughing and playing pranks, but there's also a wistfulness to her stories, such as when she talks about the trees she's planted in her garden for loved ones and friends who have passed away. It was a delight to spend more time with her, and I certainly hope there's going to be an audiobook of this one, too! 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.

Under Story by Chloe Benjamin (digital ARC)

5 stars

I have such clear memories of reading Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists back in 2018, and I've found myself thinking about it almost a decade later, so when I heard about her forthcoming novel, I immediately requested an ARC -- and it did not disappoint. Laurel Salter is a mycologist in Wisconsin, but after suffering an unimaginable loss, she no longer finds any joy in her work and decides to get as far away from Wisconsin as she can: the McMurdo Station research base in Antarctica. There she works not as a scientist but on the galley crew, doing all sorts of menial tasks to keep her body busy so she won't retreat into her mind and her grief. And it seems to be working -- until her ex-husband, Eli, a physicist, shows up. He's there to study what has been called the Arc, a strange phenomenon of light that Laurel has felt drawn to and that no one can understand. When Laurel has a dream about the Arc, she becomes convinced that it holds the key to healing her pain, and Eli's theory about a sort of mirror universe might be the answer to undoing the tragedy that tore them apart. There is a lot of science in this book, but it's never overly technical or boring (in fact, I don't know how accurate any of it is, but it's specific enough to convince me that it is). Instead, it's engaging and fascinating; even when the physics was well over my head, I never felt that I wasn't smart enough to understand but rather that the workings of the universe might be too big for any one brain to hold. Benjamin creates an idea for an alternate world that is so compelling and unusual, not least because she's thought of even small details that make it seem almost believable. But you don't have to understand the science or believe any of it to appreciate what's really at the heart of this novel: the characters and their relationships. Laurel and Eli are at the center, but there are also friendship and professional mentor/mentee relationships, and what's especially wonderful is seeing how the same relationships are the same but also different in the alternate universe. This is a big book (500+ pages), but when I finished, I still wanted more time with these characters, and I think this may very well end up being one of my favorite books of the year. Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 1, 2026.

(P.S. Chloe Benjamin is a knitter and there's even a little bit of knitting in the book! She's collaborated with Ritual Dyes and designer Sari Nordlund on a small collection inspired by the book that will be out the same day.)

What are you making and reading this week?

I'd Prefer Boring

When last we talked (and by "talked," I mean I wrote something and you read it), I was getting ready for an uneventful weekend. We didn't have plans other than dinner with my side of the family on Friday night, and I was excited that Saturday we were going to get a break in the rain. And then, of course, things got more interesting than I'd like.

Do you remember when the Mister had a run-in with a tree branch while bicycling back in 2020? Well he had a bike outing planned with a friend on Saturday and I didn't hear anything from him while he was gone, so I was surprised that when he got home in the early afternoon, he was having a hard time walking. It seems that he had slowed down a bit to wait for the friend to catch up while on an incline on a bridge, his bike wheel got caught in the paving seam, and he didn't have enough momentum to carry him over it, so he keeled over sideways. He had only a little bit of road rash on his arm, but his main complaint was that he had terrible pain in his upper thigh/hip area. He put ice on it and took some Tylenol and hung out in bed for the afternoon. We'd talked about going out for dinner, but as he could barely walk, that wasn't happening, so I managed to cobble together a meal of leftover salad and some pizza from the freezer. He said that if it didn't get better, he'd get it checked out, but it was clear to me that he shouldn't wait, so I told him to make an appointment at the urgent care center on Sunday morning. The good news is that they took x-rays and nothing appears broken, but of course he's still in pain and can't walk. They told him if it didn't start to improve to go see an orthopedist. He's working from home today, and as he can't do much of anything physical (we still had my crutches from when I broke my foot, so he's been hobbling around on them when he needs to move), that means I'm doing everything -- I did the grocery shopping yesterday, I'm on cooking and cleanup duty, I changed the bedsheets, etc. Life is always exciting, isn't it?

But hey, this is a knitting blog. Here's some knitting -- a finished but still badly in need of blocking hat:

And I've got yarn all wound for the next one, because having mindless knitting on hand at all times is useful when your husband seems to be trying to injury himself all the time.

I'll leave you with a bit of lightness -- a photo of Ruthie playing with her friend Finnegan, whose owners and I refer to as Ruthie's "Kentucky cousin." Finn is also a rescue who came from Kentucky, and we think the two dogs look alike. They certain play the same way!

Here's hoping this week is a lot less eventful! I will be back on Wednesdays with some more knitting and some book reviews.

A Familiar Refrain

Happy Friday, friends. Sometimes I feel like this is getting to be a weather blog instead of a knitting blog! It's continued to be a damp week, though thankfully not as wet as it started out. As of yesterday, we've gotten 4.16 inches of rain so far this month; our average is about 3.5 inches total for all of August. So the grass is looking great and I haven't had to worry about watering the plants, but some of our neighbors also look like they're running mushroom farms.

Don't worry; Ruthie hasn't tried to eat any.

 With all of that moisture, I'm not surprised that it took two days for my latest skein of handspun to dry (and it's not like it was dripping after it was washed -- I squeezed a lot out and rolled it in a dry towel and snapped it vigorously). But yesterday it was finally dry enough to measure and photograph.

The colorway is called Solstice, and I think this blurple (that's blue/purple) is a great representation of a winter sky, especially with snow on the way. I know my photos probably don't do it justice.

The fiber was a mix of 60% Merino, 30% silk, and 10% angora. The silk was a bit slubby, and I had to pause and pull it apart in places to get it to actually draft, but the result is that there are some nubby bits where it didn't want to be drafted (you can see some of them in this photo). I think it gives the yarn some character, though a younger version of me would have been more annoyed that my yarn wasn't uniform. After plying and washing, the yarn is in the fingering to sport range, and I've got approximately 433 yards of it in the skein. One weird thing about it is that it gave off a strange smell when I washed it that wasn't the wet wool or wet silk smells I've experienced in the past. Maybe it was the angora? Fortunately it went away when the yarn dried. Don't ask me what I'm going to do with the skein, because I have no plans for it -- all I wanted to do was get it from fiber to yarn!

I similarly have no real plans this weekend, other than hoping to meet up with a knitting friend who will be in town this weekend to move her daughter into college. Tomorrow is supposed to be the one dry day for a while, so I'm sure I'll be outside a lot! I hope you also have some good weather to allow you to enjoy the middle of August.

Unraveled, Week 32/2026

It's Wednesday, so that means it's once again time to join the fun with Kat and the Unravelers.

It's continued to be a wet week, with occasional heavy downpours and thunderstorms. Yesterday I was running behind when I went into the office and left without an umbrella (I didn't want to make myself even later by digging through the closet for one) only for it to start raining pretty hard. Luckily, I was able to get the newly licensed driver to come pick me up! As much as it saddens me to know how quickly Molly is growing up, it is very helpful to have another driver in the house.

On Monday night, I finished plying my current spin, dealing with some tangles at the end in an effort to use every last bit of singles; I anticipate that some of that messy yarn at the end will be removed.

While I didn't weigh the fiber beforehand, there was supposed to be 2 oz. in each bundle, so that's ostensibly 6 oz. of finished yarn. The next step is to skein and wash and then likely wait several days for it to dry, as it's incredibly humid here because of all the rain, but I hope to be able to show you some finished yarn by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, I'm on the third mini skein on my hat, and it's currently measuring a partial Ruthie:

I'm not particularly enjoying working with this yarn, as it's on the coarser side. If I had to guess, I'd say the 3-ply minis are a Corriedale base, whereas the 2-ply skeins might be superwash Merino. I am hopeful that the hand of the yarn will improve once the finished hat is washed, as it's very possible that the person who dyed the yarn wasn't particularly skilled at it and may not have rinsed the yarn as much as they should. At the very least, a bath in warm water with some wool wash will add a bit of lanolin.

Reading this week has been all nonfiction and heavily dominated by ARCs. I finished three books.

An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America by Keri Leigh Merritt

4 stars

For most people who have learned about the history of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, the term "white Southerners" will conjure images of violence and hatred. But not all Southerners supported segregation, and some brave ones spoke out against it and worked with the more well-known leaders in the movement to fight it. That said, throughout history, the role of women in political movements has always been minimized and, in some cases, even forgotten, so I was not surprised that despite her record of prolific work in support of racial equality and her friendships with such famous names and Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., I had never heard of Lillian Smith. This biography proved to be an excellent way to rectify that. Lillian Smith spent the entirety of her adult life writing essays, works of social criticism, and novels to advocate for racial equality and to attempt to show that racial discrimination harms whites as well as Blacks. As a queer liberal woman unafraid to share her opinions, she faced backlash and very real physical threats, yet she didn't let anything stop her, and she used what power she had as a white woman to uplift and promote people of color who often faced much worse. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know her and her work a bit, and I am glad that this biography is doing its part to ensure that Smith's story isn't lost to time. 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. It will be published on September 29, 2026.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

3.5 stars

I loved Stanley Tucci's memoir Taste, especially its gorgeous descriptions of food, so I thought this second work would be as enjoyable. And partially it was. There are still some elements of memoir and personal life, and I loved the parts when he talked about cooking for himself and his family, but this newer book also contains a lot of complaining about how bad food is as well as what seemed to me to be an awful lot of name dropping. I know, he's a famous actor and he knows a lot of other famous people, but sometimes the mention of celebrities seemed rather irrelevant to the discussion of food. That said, I love listening to Stanley Tucci talk, so to have him in my ears for about six hours talking about food was overall a good experience. It also made me want to eat a lot of pasta.

The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice by Natalie Livingstone

4 stars

The Nuremberg trials are famous for bringing a sense of closure to the horrors of World War II and some sense of justice to the atrocities committed by the Nazis. They've been written about extensively and dramatized on screen. But, as far as I know, little has been documented about the small but significant group of women who were present at the trials. In The Nuremberg Women, Natalie Livingstone focuses on eight women from varied backgrounds, nationalities, professions, and political beliefs to show the importance of their involvement. We get to know a brief biography of each woman, her role in the trials, and a bit about her life afterward. As a collection, these profiles show that these women all played a crucial role, but those roles often were behind the scenes or downplayed as less important than those of the (male) lawyers and judges. What was particularly fascinating was learning about how their views of the trials changed over the years and colored their experiences of the Cold War in the decades to come. War is so often characterized as a masculine arena, but these women -- a lawyer, three journalists, an artist, a survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, and an interpreter -- all recognized that wars inflict suffering on women just as much as men and that they should have a voice in the processes of reckoning that follow a war. 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. It will be published November 3, 2026. (Side note: There's currently a Goodreads giveaway for this book, if you're interested.)

Currently, I'm in the last third or so of This Time Tomorrow (reading on paper before bed), I'm more than halfway through a historical fiction/magical realism/mystery audiobook called The Sirens, and I'm reading yet another ARC that I already think might end up being one of my favorites of the year.

What are you making and reading this week?