Drying Out

I hope you all had a restful weekend. We had the remnants of Hurricane Isaias move through yesterday, bringing us a lot of rain (it was already close to an inch and a half by the time I was drinking my morning coffee at around 7 a.m.). Ruthie and I made good use of our raincoats! While Molly had a busy social schedule, the Mister and I enjoyed a date night out on Friday and took my in-laws out for dinner on Saturday. Yesterday we met up with some neighbors for lunch, and then I spent the afternoon making soup using a rotisserie chicken I'd picked up at Costco -- chicken tortilla for dinner using the meat and chicken stock using the carcass to put in the freezer for cold and flu season.

Before the start of the weekend, I finished up the charity hat I was knitting last week. It still needs to be blocked, of course, but the knitting is done.

The pattern is Chit Chat Hat (Ravelry link), and I followed it exactly except that I used a larger needle for the body of the hat than called for. The pattern only has one size, and although the stitch pattern is pretty stretchy, I wanted it to have a bit more room -- plus I already had the larger needles in the bag! I used up most of the skein of yarn, too.

My sweater continues to move along. Although a fingering weight sweater isn't a fast knit, stockinette in the round is certainly faster that the patterned yoke. I decided a try-on was in order, just to be sure:

I have to knit at least a couple more inches of stockinette before I do some more of the textured pattern above the ribbing at the bottom. Finishing the body this week might be a bit ambitious, but stranger things have happened.

It's going to be a pretty normal week for me, other than the fact that Molly is off from school today. I hope that translates to some serious sweater progress. Come back for an update on Wednesday!

Unraveled, Week 40/2026

It's Wednesday -- time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

On Monday evening, I finished up the dark charity hat and wove in the ends. And when I went to take a photo of it yesterday morning, I discovered an error in the ribbing. Oh well! I didn't see it at first, and I'm betting whoever ends up with the hat won't, either.

Obviously this hat still needs to be blocked (which should help with the wrinkly top), but it's done and used all but a couple of grams of yarn -- yarn that turned my fingers black while I knit with it, so the hat will be soaked by itself and rinsed.

It was so satisfying to use up a skein of sock yarn so quickly that I've decided to do it again. I'm using another skein of Socks That Rock, in the colorway Pepe Le Plume, to knit a Chit Chat Hat (Ravelry link). At the moment it's only a very partial Ruthie big, but it's knitting up quickly:

I noted last week when I had a low (for me) number of book finishes that I was close to finishing several that were in progress, so you're probably not going to be surprised when I tell you that since last Wednesday I've finished six books. As there are so many, I'm going to try to keep my reviews brief.

Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson (digital)

My rating: 4 stars

Harry Flynn, a former journalist turned war correspondent turned POW, has been enlisted in the massive effort to put on the Festival of Britain, designed to raise people's spirits and patriotism after the end of WWII. He works with an eclectic group and enjoys meeting and drinking with the many attractive women employed by the festival. But when one of them goes missing after a date with him, he becomes a prime suspect in her disappearance and must try to figure out why it appears he's being framed. There are many threads that rather brilliantly come together in the end, with many amusing characters met along the way.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan (audio)

My rating: 2.5 stars

I'd never heard of this book until it was one of the choices for Molly summer reading assignment this year, and I was intrigued on curriculum night when her English teacher described it as a modern retelling of The Scarlet Letter. I'd say it's a mash-up of that and The Handmaid's Tale, with a little science fiction mixed in. In this dystopian society, those convicted of crimes are genetically changed to become a color associated with their crime. When Hannah Payne wakes up, she is the red of a murderer -- because the abortion she had is now considered a murder. She refuses to identify the father (the married preacher of their evangelical church), and has to reckon with the tenets of the religion she was taught her entire life. It was an interesting premise, but I think it failed in the execution a bit, with things working out just a little too well for Hannah given the harsh society the author created for her.

Restoration by Ave Barrera, translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers (paperback)

My rating: 3 stars

This was the final book I read for this round of my postal paperback club, selected by Katie. A woman in her 20s who is studying architectural restoration is hired by her sometimes-boyfriend to restore the long-neglected house of his recently deceased great-uncle, a famous photographer who taught him. As she moves through the house, the reader gets snippets of the life of the woman who used to live there, and both stories are interspersed with scenes of the modern couple recreating old photographs. It's creepy and weird and mysterious -- pretty appropriate for October. I enjoyed it but was still confused when I finished.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (digital)

My rating: 4 stars

This is the book that kept getting put aside for library borrows, so I was happy to finally finish it. Olga has a successful business as a wedding planner and has a busy life with her big Puerto Rican family, including her congressman brother. But she still bears the scars of her abandonment by her mother, who left the family to join a group of revolutionaries. When she meets Matteo, a man with some issues of his own, can she let down her guard and let him in? And when she realizes, amid a family crisis and a devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico, that she's no longer happy with her life, does she have the courage to make a major change?

Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan (audio)

My rating: 4 stars

I started listening to the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders very near the beginning, in the midst of the pandemic. She's a great interviewer who talks with people doing really interesting things, and she brings a lot of her own life in. This fairly short book of essays wasn't entirely new to me, as many of her family stories were familiar. But there is comfort in that, and as a middle-aged woman with aging parents and a teenage daughter, her point of view and reflections are very welcome.

Wool by Hugh Howey (audio)

My rating: 4 stars

Despite this book's name, it's not a novel about yarn crafts (though there is a brief passage about knitting!). This dystopian tale is set in a world where the outside is toxic people are living in siloes built into the earth. When someone does something that violates the silo's laws, they are sent outside, with a wool cleaning cloth, to clean off the sensors that show the outside world and then, shortly after, they die. When the sheriff asks to be allowed out, following in the footsteps of his wife a few years ago, he is replaced by Juliet, a woman who had been working deep in the silo's mechanical floors near the bottom. She soon realizes that there is something that those in charge are hiding from the silo's inhabitants and that the just society she thought she was raised in may not be so just. It was a compelling, propulsive read, as evidenced by the fact that I got through a 15-hour audiobook in just three days. I very well may read the rest of the triology, too.

What are you making and reading this week?

Recharging

As much as I love the ability to go out and do things on the weekend, it's also nice to have one without much to do. I kept this past weekend that way on purpose because I was getting my COVID vaccine on Saturday and was counting on feeling lousy for a while afterward. And I did feel tired and a little achy Saturday afternoon and evening, though whether that was from the shot or from doing a lot of running (the race last Sunday plus at least 10K on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) in addition to not sleeping well last week, I can't really say. I did take a couple of doses of Tylenol to be safe and snoozed a little bit with Ruthie, but overall I felt better than I ever have after getting one of these vaccines. I don't know if that means my immune system is getting weaker or this year's shot had milder side effects, but you will hear no complaints from me. Other than a series of walks (on my own and with Ruthie), I spent my weekend mostly resting, and it was just what I needed.

I kicked off the weekend by finishing up my hat on Friday afternoon:

The color is a little darker in real life, but my phone didn't want to capture that no matter what I tried. I used up 65 g of the 100 g skein of Malabrigo Sock, so I still have a fair amount left plus a full skein. I made the large size, although as hats go, it looks to be on the smaller side to me, but I'm sure it'll fit someone's head and that's the goal.

Progress also was made on my sweater:

Several inches of the body have been knit, but because it's in stockinette, it's rolling up quite a bit. Some time this week I plan to try it on to be sure everything is fitting as it should.

It's going to be a mostly typical week for me, the exception being an in-person-only staff meeting on Tuesday that will require me to walk into the office twice to attend both that meeting and my regular team meeting and take Ruthie out for her midday walk; on the upside, they're giving us lunch during the staff meeting. The weather forecast for the week ahead is looking dry and cool, so I think I may even get to break out some handknits!

An Okay Weekend

This past weekend went by quickly, as they always do. We had lovely autumn weather -- crisp mornings, warm sunshine, a gentle breeze. Things were a bit busier than usual, or at least it seemed like it because Iw as in and out a lot. We ended up going out to dinner with my parents Friday night; on Saturday morning I took Molly to get her flu shot; and then we had the anniversary dinner out on Saturday, which ended up being a bit of a fiasco because the restaurant seemed to be overbooked and so we didn't even get our food until around 8 and by the time we'd dropped off my in-laws and I'd taken Ruthie out before bed, it was basically time for me to go to sleep. Fortunately yesterday was calmer, even if I did have to wake up early for the race.

The Mister did end up running, though I think he was in pain for all of it and he was certainly slower. He was just a little ahead of me for most of the race and then ran with me for the last mile or so. I put on a bit of speed at the end so that I finished just ahead of him. As I predicted, I didn't come near last year's PR, but I wasn't that much slower. According to the official results, I finished in 24:50, placing sixth in my division (women 45-49), 98th among all women, and 363rd overall (of 2,345). It felt like a pretty easy race for me, though there's a hill in the middle right after mile 1 that's always a bit of a challenge (it's not steep, but it's long -- probably a good half mile). I got a good adrenaline boost so I was able to run at a slightly faster pace overall. And of course lately when I run I'm doing a longer distance, so 3.1 miles is a light day for me. Next year will be the 50th Great Race, so I expect some fancy swag. This year's shirt, as you can see, was very "America 250" themed, as was the medal. Anyway, another year is in the books.

I didn't get as much time with my sweater this weekend as I hoped (in large part due to that long dinner Saturday night), but I am quickly approaching the end of the yoke patterning:

I have just one more eyelet section, I believe, and then it's just straight stockinette until I reach the target yoke length. I'm still debating whether or not to block the yoke after this point and before carrying on, as suggested in the pattern; it'd be nice to see the texture get a bit crisper, but I also know that I'm good on gauge and likely don't need to make any adjustments to the yoke depth. I'll make a decision once I get to that point.

One accomplishment for the weekend was finishing up my sister-in-law's rainbow-striped socks (well, finishing the knitting, anyway; they'll still need to be blocked):

They did end up very well matched, as advertised, and I've got some leftovers that I think would make some adorable preemie hats.

I'm not sure what the week ahead will bring at work, as we've just finished a big weekend (homecoming, a celebration of 100 years of the Cathedral of Learning, and the launch of a $3B capital campaign). I'm hoping for a bit of a breather before the next big thing starts up. Molly is going to a concert on Tuesday night, so the Mister and I will get a date night, and I'll be on call should my parents -- who are babysitting my niblings all week while my brother and sister-in-law are on a trip -- need extra help. I hope those of you who are on the East Coast have survived the nor'easter without too much damage or trouble, and I hope you all can enjoy these last few days of September.

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!

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!

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.

Wet Weekending

If there was one word to describe this past weekend, it would be soggy. We had some pretty epic rains on Friday, including a thunderstorm that hit just after Ruthie and I came in from our morning walk (so no run for me that day) and another that came through as we had dinner that left what I called "temporary water features" in our backyard. There were flash flood warnings in the area, but because our street sits above a deep ravine, they thankfully weren't an issue for us. There was more rain on Saturday and overnight into Sunday, and with all that moisture and some hot weather, it was generally very steamy. Let's just say there were extra showers taken every day. The week ahead is supposed to be warm (though not beastly hot) and there's a chance for rain most days, so I think I'll just have to get used to it!

When I wasn't melting outside, I got a fair amount of crafting done inside. For one thing, I finished my handspun scarf -- and didn't run out of yarn!

It turns out that it was not as close a game of yarn chicken as I thought; when I finished, I still had 7 g of yarn left (from 110 g total to start). I had weighed my yarn as I approached the halfway point, but it was when we were in the car last Sunday and the numbers kept changing because we were moving, so I didn't entirely trust them. Still, it's a win that I'll take. I still need to block it, which I think will help with some wonkiness here and there, but I'm quite happy with it.

I also started plying my current skein of handspun, which may actually be complete by the time you read this (I'm writing on Sunday afternoon and have plans to do more plying on Sunday evening):

In order to have something fairly mindless on the needles for Ruthie Nap Time Knitting, I pulled out some very old mini skeins (like as old as Molly old!) from a long-ago yarn club that was associated with a lot of drama. They'd been stashed away because I was a bit busy with a newborn at the time, and I didn't even remember I had them until Molly and I did the stash reorganization recently. There's no information at all about the yarns, but they all appeared to be fingering weight, so I put them in a gradient of sorts and am making a charity hat.

Finally, I spent time this weekend getting everything ready to publish my new hat pattern this morning. It's the first one using my new tech editor, who has been fabulous to work with, and she's already got my next pattern to work on. This is the hat you've seen twice before, now called Mandlen. It's up on Payhip already and will be published on Ravelry not long after this post goes up (look for it in my store).

I'm hoping for a regular week ahead, including my usual Wednesday update. Here's hoping it's a good one for all of us.

A Friday Finish

What a week it has been! Even though it was a shorter week for me, there's been a lot going on, including a lot of weather. I got caught in an unexpected downpour during my run on Wednesday (I took cover during the worst of it, but I did finish because I was already mostly done and soaked in any case) and have been taking a second shower in the evening almost every day because it's been so hot and humid that I get back from walking Ruthie and have found myself turned into a puddle. The forecast and my weather app have been no help; I've looked at the radar when it's raining heavily and it shows absolutely nothing. It's a good thing I don't melt!

While I continue to work on both my handspun shawl and the last ply of my current spinning project, I have a finished object to share with you today:

This is the hat that was mostly knit last weekend in the car and that will be put away as a gift for my sister-in-law, likely for Christmas (her birthday is in early September, when giving someone socks doesn't seem so ridiculous but a hat is totally out of season). The yarn had been in my stash for many years, purchased from the Steel City Fiber Collective, which closed quite a while ago -- I don't remember the exact date, but I do know it was pre-pandemic. I may actually have bought the skein when they announced they were closing and were trying to liquidate their inventory. It's a superwash merino/nylon/sparkle fingering and it didn't have a color; Molly was solidly in her purple phase then, so I guess I thought I'd use it for something for her and never did. And now it is out of the stash! Nothing fancy about this hat -- my pattern (Ravelry link), US 2.5/3 mm needles, knit to use up most of the yarn. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I cast on another because they make for great mindless knitting and an easy way to use up a skein of yarn.

Tomorrow morning I will be up bright and early (as I always am, let's face it) to go get my annual mammogram. So here's your regular reminder to get your girls squished if you are lady of an age when you need to do so! Have a lovely weekend and see you back here on Monday -- perhaps with another FO.

The Beginning of the End

The end of July, that is. This month seems to gone by faster than any month yet this year, but I suppose when the weather is nice, we get busy doing a lot of things and that makes the time seem to go by more quickly. I'm not necessarily looking forward to August, but it does bring us closer to fall, my favorite time of year.

Thank you for all your good thoughts on Friday. If you didn't happen to see my midday update, I'm happy to share that Molly passed her driving test and is now a licensed driver! Amazingly she has not yet asked to take the car out ("the car" being my car), but one of her good friends has been on an overseas vacation with her parents for the past week and a half or so and will be getting home tomorrow, so Molly's already planning to drive over to see her on Wednesday. I'll admit I'm a little freaked out by the idea of her driving alone, but I know she is cautious and responsible, and frankly I'm very much looking forward to her driving herself to and from school everyday!

Our brief stretch of unseasonably cool weather ended this weekend, so it was a bit more uncomfortable outside. On Saturday morning Molly and I walked to a nearby farmers market to pick up some things for dinner that night. We came home with some focaccia, a gorgeous loaf of farm bread, fresh blueberries, and a couple of heirloom tomatoes. I had to go Trader Joe's anyway because we were completely out of coffee, so I picked up some fresh mozzarella. I picked some basil from our herb pot, and voila, caprese salad for dinner!

Your eyes do not deceive you -- that is purple basil!

After dinner, the Mister and I walked over to get ice cream and took Ruthie along for the first time. She was excited but I think a little disappointed that she didn't get any!

I did manage to get that charity hat finished up on Saturday, using up all but about 2 g of yarn (which means I used 101 g or about 495 yards!).

I almost immediately cast on for another one using the other skein I'd wound and taken with me on our family trip, when I was apparently a little delusional about just how much knitting I'd be doing. It's a one-of-a-kind skein from the now-defunct Steel City Fiber Collective. This is a sparkly base and should be faster to knit because it's only (hehe) 438 yards.

I've got a three-day work week this week, which feels like a great way to finish out the month. Molly and I are taking a short weekend trip up to Michigan with my parents and my brother and his family to visit my aunt and uncle. We'll be leaving Friday and coming back Sunday, but I'm taking Thursday and Monday off as well so I can drop Ruthie off at/pick her up from the dog sitter's (I prefer to have her in the car in the morning, before she eats, so there's less for her to throw up on the way!). Molly and I have tickets to go see The Odyssey on Thursday afternoon -- I'm excited! And I finished up a big work project at the end of the day on Friday, so I'm hoping this can be a calm and short week.

Feel-Good Friday, Late July Edition

This has been a challenging week for a number of reasons, most having to do with not getting enough sleep. I'll spare you the boring details; suffice it to say that I'm happy it's Friday. And instead of wallowing in the less-than-happy things, let's instead focus on the good in this week that was.

I mentioned at the beginning of the week that the Mister was going to be out of town for work for a few days this week. I took advantage of his absence to completely empty the stash closet and put everything on his side of the bedroom. Molly took a stab at organizing things on Tuesday while I was working, and then Wednesday night, after I put Ruthie to bed, the two of us went through all the bins and bags to put things together logically. Molly claimed some leftovers, some mini skeins, and some full skeins for herself (she's been doing a lot of crocheted motifs to make blankets). I consolidated handspun and unspun fiber into fewer containers. And we organized the yarn into bins containing full skeins/sweater quantities and collected all the fingering weight bits that could be used in charity projects. Some things were just plain thrown out because they were of no use to me or anyone else. And now the closet looks like this:

Spinning fiber is all on the left, handspun is in the center, and yarn is to the right. The Cascade bag on top of the fiber is all the bits of fingering, so I can just pull that out and pull out scraps as needed, and the soft plastic cases on top of the yarn bins is projects that have been packed away. I also want to point out that right at the top of the handspun pile is a smaller plastic bag that I deliberately left out -- it's the handspun I couldn't find that triggered this reorganization process in the first place!

Other good things: I finally blocked and photographed my most recent pair of socks (I'm writing up the pattern and will need photos, so that was good motivation):

And I've been continuing to spin almost every evening and finished the first 2 oz. (of 6 oz. total) of this lovely merino/silk/angora fiber that my friend Margene sent me:

I'm hoping we can finish up this week with some really good news: Molly is scheduled to take her driving test later this morning. She's been getting good feedback from the driving instructor (all the credit goes to the Mister for getting her out on busy and difficult roads), so I am feeling good about her chances. I know she's very much like me and won't be reckless, but nerves are always something to contend with. If you have some good thoughts to send her way at 11:30 this morning, I'm sure she'd appreciate it! Update: She passed!

I hope this past week has brought you clearer air if, like me, you were recently dealing with smoke from the forest fires. Our air has been so much better and our weather has been absolutely stunning the past couple of days -- it was in the 50s when I took Ruthie out first thing yesterday! I also hope you've been able to find some things to feel good about, and please feel free to share them in the comments, as I think we can all use a good lift! Have a lovely weekend.

That's a Wrap -- Almost

A full week back at work after vacation is not for the faint of heart, so I am very relieved to have made it to Friday. It's not that work was all that difficult, but when you add in another heatwave, wildfire smoke, Internet service that keeps going down, and broken ovens, it makes for a lot.

Yes, I said broken ovens. Some of you might remember that just a little over a year ago, not long after Ruthie came home, our ovens died right before we were supposed to host Passover and we had to get replacements. We ended up with a slightly newer model from the same company because they gave us a deal. Well, that'll be the last time we buy that company's appliances because over the weekend, when the ovens were off and hadn't been used in a while, the control panel started beeping incessantly about an error. It was telling us something about a button being stuck, which made no sense because it was a touchscreen, and the only way to get the beeping to stop was to turn off the breaker. After getting nowhere with the company when he called, the Mister decided we were just going to replace them with something the local appliance place had in stock. I had to pivot a bit on some of the dinner plans for the week, but that was fine, and yesterday some very nice guys came to install our new double oven. And here's hoping it's functional for a good long time!

I'm also happy to report that Comcast did end up fixing whatever the issue was on Tuesday, and we've had no major Internet issues since then.

Though I can't share the finished skein just yet (because it's still drying), I did indeed wrap up the plying on my spinning project on Wednesday evening and skeined and washed it last night. For now, I'll just share this bobbin shot, and I'll share details once the skein is fully dry and I can measure it:

I also finished a pair of socks yesterday! I really had just a bit more than the toe to do on the second sock, and once the ovens were in and Ruthie was able to settle down, I wrapped that up in short order.

The weekend ahead is looking pretty relaxing from my perspective. Molly's got another driving lesson tomorrow afternoon, which might be interesting because there's a high chance of showers and potential thunderstorms (I keep saying it's because the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix is happening this weekend, and it seems like there's always a massive thunderstorm in the middle of it). I am certainly hoping for some rain and a break to the oppressive weather we've been having. And I am looking forward to a family dinner to celebrate my brother's birthday on Sunday. I've said I'd make an ice cream grasshopper pie, for which I'm planning to use Thin Mints for the crust.

I'll leave you with one last photo -- the first harvest from my garden! I went to water and check on the zucchini and this one totally surprised me because I hadn't spotted it growing. There are lots more tomatoes to come (they'll probably ripen all at once) but these four were the only ones ready.

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend. Remember to hydrate and wear your sunblock!

Time for a Mini Break

Greetings from the top of a mountain! We've escaped the city for a few days with my parents and my brother and his family (and his dog) in a rental house at a ski resort in the Laurel Highlands. Ruthie bounced back completely from her illness of last week and is boarding with the dog sitter while we're away. There will be other dogs for her to play with and a big yard for her to run around in. We're not going to have great weather (lots of rain is in the forecast), but frankly we brought so much food with us, we're going to need to just sit around and eat all day unless we want to schlep it home again!

We had a quiet 4th of July. I went for a short run in the morning, as I didn't get a chance to get out on Friday when I was at the vet with Ruthie, and then had a quiet afternoon of reading, knitting, and snuggling my puppy. We had my in-laws over for dinner as a thunderstorm moved through. Before I went to bed, I finished up the Baby Surprise Jacket. Once we get home, it will be blocked and two buttons will be sewn on.

I used a US 6/4.0 mm needle for this one, given that STR Mediumweight is more of a sport than fingering. After I sewed the shoulder seams, I did applied I-cord all around the neck, openings, and bottom edge and made a couple of loops on the front in lieu of buttonholes. According to the projects I've logged on Ravelry, this is the 11th BSJ I've knit! It continues to be a fun and engaging project, and I'm sure there will be more in the future.

Meanwhile, Tour de Fleece kicked off yesterday, and I've decided this is as good an excuse as any to get back into spinning. I brought a spindle project with me to work on while we're away, but yesterday I pulled out some precious fiber and split it up to go on the wheel when we get home.

This is some Southern Cross Fibre club from November 2015. I can't remember if I spun my shipment, but this one was acquired via a destash after David announced his retirement. This is a particularly luscious fiber blend: 50% South African superfine merino and 50% mulberry silk. I've split it for a two-ply fractal. I imagine it will want to be spun quite finely.

The plan for this week is to relax. I haven't slept well in the past several days because I've been worried about Ruthie and she's been barking early to wake me up, so I'm hoping I can sleep in a little (and not wake up completely at 4:30 a.m. for no apparent reason like I did the past two mornings). I've got knitting, spinning, a physical book, and my iPad and computer, plus we brought a jigsaw puzzle and my mahjongg set. And there is the aforementioned eating. I'm sure we'll all find plenty of ways to pass the time.

Unraveled, Week 26/2026

Thank you all for your support and sympathy on Monday's post. I'm still feeling a little anxious about the amount of yarn and fiber that's contained in the closet in that room, but at least it can be contained in the closet, and I'm feeling better now that I have a plan for it. Stay tuned for more on that in the months ahead.

Today, however, it's time for a crafting and reading update, so I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers.

Finished (but not yet blocked) are these socks for my sister-in-law:

I came up with the pattern for these, though I'm not sure whether it's different enough from existing designs to merit writing it up. The idea was an offset chevron that's mirrored in the socks, so they're symmetrical rather than identical. I used sportweight for these and thankfully had enough for both socks thanks to keeping the legs to only 5 inches and the fact that this sister-in-law has the shortest feet of anyone in the family I knit socks for (at least of the adults). Because the yarn was on the heavier side for socks, I went up to a US 1/2.25 mm needle and knit at a gauge of 8 stitches per inch. I'm now knitting another pair -- I still haven't decided if they'll be for me or for someone else -- using a rather light fingering weight and a US 0/2.0 mm needle, so they'll look similar but have a smaller gauge and a higher stitch count.

The Baby Surprise Jacket, after not getting much attention for a while, is now much closer to bind-off than cast-on, though it's still very much in the "what the heck is this thing?" stage:

I've now reached the point where you knit only on the 90 stitches at the center for a while (if you've knit one of these, you know what I'm talking about). Once that's done, I pick up on the sides of that panel and resume knitting across the whole thing for about 12 more rows, I think. Rather than buttonholes, I think I'm going to make some I-cord loops, kind of like what I did when I made Molly's BSJ.

In spite of work getting pretty busy in the past week, I've also managed to do a lot of reading (thank you, audiobooks and a day off!).

One really nice perk of being a member of NetGalley is that sometimes instead of requesting a book to read and review, the publishers come to you and ask you to read and review a book for them. That was the case for me with The Light Years, the first book in Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles. These books were published back in the '90s but are being reissued starting this December, and I was delighted to be introduced to them now. The Cazalets are a well-to-do British family whose three generations gather every summer at their country estate. In The Light Years, we spend the summers of 1937 and 1938 with them. The matriarch and patriarch of the clan are getting on in years and are being looked after by their unmarried daughter, Rachel. Two of their three sons, Hugh and Edward, are working in the family business after serving in WWI. Their youngest son, Rupert, is struggling to make a living as a painter and has recently remarried after his first wife died, and his new wife is struggling to fit in with the rest of the clan. The various grandchildren have their own quibbles and concerns. And supporting all of them is a slew of servants. While all the usual conflicts and arguments of families are taking place, so is the rise of Hitler in Germany and the specter of another war. If you're the sort of person who enjoyed Downtown Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs, and other similar period pieces, you will love this book. Be forewarned that there are some people who behave badly (adultery, child molestation) and very real concerns beyond the prospect of war (poverty, young children who have lost a parent, children who are fearful of bullying and abuse at boarding school), but overall it's a delightful insider's view of a complicated and complex family. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Modern Library for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published December 1, 2026.

I really enjoyed Laurie Frankel's most recent book, so I thought I'd try out something from her backlist. This Is How It Always Is (2017) tells the story of an extraordinary family. Rosie and Penn already have four sons when their fifth, Claude, comes along, but when Claude is still a small child, he tells his parents that he wants to be a girl when he grows up. How this family accepts their youngest child, even in a world where society has such strong gender stereotypes and expectations, is truly beautiful. I couldn't identify with this specific situation, but I certainly did feel a kinship with parents who want nothing more than for their child to be happy and true to themself. I loved that traditional gender roles were reversed in this family (the mother is a doctor and the father works from home as a writer) and that all of the children had their own quirks and distinctive characteristics. And I loved that while this family was dealing with something that most families don't, they realized that all parenting is this way -- every day is different and can bring some new challenge, but you get through them as best you can and make the best decisions you can with the knowledge you have at the time. I gave it 5 stars.

When two friends whose opinions you respect recommend a book to you, you listen. That's how I came to read Pandora's Jar, the audio version of which was read by the author. This work of nonfiction looks critically at how women are portrayed in Greek myth by looking at famous works of drama, literature, and art. She focuses on specific women whose names you will know -- Pandora, Medea, Medusa, etc. -- but whose stories, even in our times, are often misunderstood and whose reputations are thus tarnished. I've read works of fiction by Haynes before, but this book makes it clear that she's a scholar and that her knowledge of ancient Greece is vast. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to get a hard copy of it because so much of it went by so quickly in audio. If you are a fan of Greek myths, I'd recommend reading this one. I gave it 5 stars.

Daniel Mason's North Woods was my favorite book of 2023, so I couldn't wait to read his new book when I heard it was coming out and was lucky enough to get an ARC. Country People follows a family of four as they travel from California to Vermont for a year. Kate, the mother, is a renowned scholar of Milton who has been invited to hold a visiting professorship at a college there. Her husband, Miles, has been working on his dissertation for more than a decade and can't seem to settle on the right topic, though lately he is interested in the stories of Russian peasants in Tolstoy and thinks that maybe he'll be able to do some research by meeting some real-life "country" people in Vermont. They bring along their son Wesley, who's obsessed with an online game with elaborate world-building, and daughter Olive, along with their pandemic dog Guiseppe, of a breed known for truffle hunting (read: he likes to dig). What they encounter in this small town are characters who seem utterly ridiculous and yet are so fully developed that you can't dismiss them, almost as if the family has wandered into one of the folktales Miles knows so well from his dissertation research. And then things get really whackadoodle when he stumbles into a society devoted to a man who claimed he wandered into a cave one day and discovered an entirely separate world inside the earth. The description of this book calls it "joyous, absurd, and life-affirming," and I'd wholeheartedly agree with it. I found it funny and touching and, yes, absurd, but the absurdity is part of what made it so enjoyable to me. I gave it 4.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published July 7, 2026.

Finally, I completed my tour of books by J. Ryan Stradal with Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. Like the earlier two, this is a family story set in the Midwest, this time in a small town in Minnesota at the center of which is (you guessed it!) a supper club. It's not something I was familiar with, but I could understand how a family business could be a boon or a burden to successive generations of a family. I'd say this was my least favorite of Stradal's books, though that's not to say I didn't like it; I just found this one harder to follow with the jumps back and forth in time and between characters, and I also didn't care for how some of the characters treated each other. But it kept me entertained for the two or so days it took me to listen to it, and I gave it 3.5 stars.

Now that I've cleared the queue of ARCs and audiobooks (I had two checked out at once!), I am reading the fourth installment of the Thursday Murder Club series and still slowly making my way through Land.

What are you making and reading this week?