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!

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!

Unraveled, Week 39/2026

Can you believe today is the last day of September? I feel like it just started! I guess the start of the school year, the High Holidays, and the change in weather make for a fast-moving month. As it's Wednesday, that means it's also a day to link up with Kat and the Unravelers.

On Monday night, I finished up the patterning in my sweater yoke and decided that I might as well take the time to block it. Rather than faff around with waste yarn, I simply grabbed another circular needle and knit about half the stitches onto it, then threw it all in to soak. I knew the needles (both sets were metal) would be fine in the water, but it wasn't the easiest to deal with, given that there were four needles that all seemed to be poking me at once.. I also tried it on before blocking and it was sitting just fine, so this block isn't strictly necessarily for checking the fit. Still, it's nice to see the yoke flat like this!

Now I'll be splitting the sleeve stitches from the body and carrying on with the long stretch of stockinette. I know many sweater knitters like to do the sleeves first, but I find sleeves much faster than the body and prefer to do them after.

After finishing up the socks for my sister-in-law, I needed a new smaller project, so I started another charity hat:

When I was doing my stash organization project, I came across two skeins of Malabrigo Sock in Ivy that I think I won as a prize for something or other. I think Mal Sock is nice to work with but a bit too soft for socks (and I haven't used it in years because of this), so it'll be great for a hat. I'm using one of the skeins, holding it double, to knit a Hollyhocks Hat (Ravelry link). I got the pattern for free and it's from a Pigskin Party sponsor, so extra points. Obviously I haven't even gotten the brim done yet, but I think it'll be a fairly quick knit.

I've only managed to finish two short-ish audiobooks this week, mainly because my library holds kept popping up as I was just starting a book already on my Kindle shelf and then when I tried to get back to it. No worries -- all reading is good, even if it takes me longer to finish a book that I've started because I keep having to set it aside!

I can't remember where I heard about Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, but I do know that it was one of the books I had tagged "to read" on Libby the longest. The book was published back in 2014, well before the more recent reckoning with race in this country, but I'd say it's still quite relevant. Debby Irving was raised in a predominantly white Boston suburb and never really considered herself to have a race until she was an adult. While working for community organizations and trying to make them more inclusive, she couldn't figure out why the efforts weren't working, so she took it upon herself to learn more about race, racism, and the systems that uphold it. Part memoir, part educational resource (each chapter ends with questions for the reader to ponder), this book gives what I felt was a really good perspective on what learning about race and racism should look like for a white ally: not relying on people of color to give the instruction but taking the initiative to challenge one's beliefs and understanding of the concepts. Notably, Irving doesn't shy away from sharing details of all the times when she was well intentioned but got things very wrong. It was an engaging book to listen to and a good reminder that the work of anti-racism is never done and starts with us. I gave it 4 stars.

Based on Carole's recommendation, I listened to Woodrow on the Bench: Life Lessons from a Wise Old Dog over the weekend. This is a relatively short memoir of Jenna Blum's much-beloved and very senior black Lab in the last year of his life. While the focus is on his decline, there are stories about his younger days and the great joy he brought to his owner. But mostly this is about how she cared for him -- and how her friends and family cared for her -- as his health began to fail and she knew his days were numbered. Obviously it's no spoiler to say that the dog does die in the end, but I didn't expect quite so much detail (some of it kind of gross, frankly) about the illness he experienced along the way. It is a sweet story, and anyone who's ever had and loved a dog will understand how hard it is to say good-bye. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm currently in the middle of four books: Our Noble Selves (the most recent library hold interruption) and Olga Dies Dreaming (now set aside twice) on Kindle, Restoration on paper, and When She Woke on audio. I'm hoping that by this time next week, I'll be done with most, if not all, of them.

What are you making and reading this week?

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.

Unraveled, Week 38/2026

I only took one day off from blogging, but it feels like it's been a long time! It seems that Mother Nature finally got tired of my complaining about the heat and brought in the fall weather. It's been much cooler the past several days -- but also gloomy and rainy. We were all wet and cold walking home from services on Monday, and that wasn't helped by already being cold from fasting. Other than the crummy weathers, the holiday was as good as solemn day of fasting can be. We had my family over to break the fast, including my brother's dog, Leo, and the two pups spent a lot of time racing around the house.

Yesterday it was back to the usual routine during the day, but it was also the Mister's birthday -- his 50th birthday (how am I married to such an old man?!) -- so we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Today it is Wednesday, which means it's time for my weekly link-up with Kat and the Unravelers with an update on my making and my reading.

Knitting has been continuing at regular intervals here, with sock knitting during the day and sweater knitting at night. As you would expect, the socks are moving along much faster; I've finished the first sock and am almost to the heel of the second:

These have come together quickly despite the fact that I actually had to unravel part of the foot of the first sock when I found myself in that weird bit of knitting physics where the fabric keeps measuring the same length over and over again (not long enough) until suddenly it's too long. It was only about a quarter of an inch, but it was annoying. I just put my needles in where they should be to start the toe, pulled them out of where they were, and unraveled the unneeded rounds. It was probably only about 20 minutes of knitting that I didn't need to do, and of course I wanted these socks to fit the recipient, so I dealt with it -- but I was annoyed just a bit all the same.

As for the sweater, it's grown to the point where the circumference is now a bit larger than my needles and I've completed the largest of the stitch patterns:

I've got a couple more eyelet sections and a repeat of the first knit/purl texture section to go and then a bit of stockinette before I split the sleeves from the body. I'm sure it'll move much faster once I get past the texture and don't have to count stitches, but I'm managing a handful of rounds a night. Maybe now that it's getting cool enough to actually wear a light sweater, I'll be more motivated to do more.

It's been a good week for reading, with five books finished, but bear in mind that one was a short audiobook and one was my before-bed book that I'd been reading for a while. In the interest of keeping this post a reasonable length, I'm going to keep my reviews short this week.

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo (audiobook)

4 stars

High school student Emoni has a gift in the kitchen, but she also has a lot of responsibilities, including her 2-year-old daughter and her grandmother, with whom they live. When she gets into her charter school's culinary arts course, which includes a trip to Spain, she begins to dream of perhaps turning her talent into a career. It's beautifully read by the author and enjoyable to an adult reader, even though it's technically a YA book.

The Searcher by Tana French (digital)

3 stars

In the first of a three-book series, Cal Hooper has moved to the tiny Irish town of Arnakelty, where he hopes to leave his life as a Chicago police officer behind and start a new chapter. But soon he gets drawn into the search for a missing man, and it seems that there's something everyone else in the town knows that he doesn't and that maybe they're trying to keep it that way. It's a fairly entertaining mystery that kept me mostly engaged, though it was a bit slower than I expected.

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers (paperback)

4 stars

It's the mid-1960s in London, and Helen is working as an art therapist at a mental hospital and having an affair with one of her coworkers, a psychiatrist who happens to be married to a distant cousin of hers. One day they're both called to an unusual situation: A man whose existence was a surprise to the neighbors has been found in a derelict house with his elderly aunt. When the aunt dies and the man refuses to speak, Helen becomes determined to get through to him, especially after discovering that he's a talented artist. Along the way we get flashbacks to his life, going in reverse, to find out how he came to be living in the house, shut off from the outside world. The writing is beautiful and the story is touching, showcasing the power of human kindness.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson (audiobook)

4 stars

This is the second book in the Jackson Brodie series, and even though Jackson has now given up being a police officer and a private detective, he finds himself in the middle of murder mystery (or rather several of them) and unable to help himself from trying to figure out the case. I really enjoyed Atkinson's writing of the characters such that I had a good sense of who they were and the way she pulled so many threads of the story together in a way I could never have imagined or figured out on my own.

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel (digital)

4 stars

I got extremely lucky and happened to click fast enough when I saw the Libby notification that my library had the book that I got a copy right away last Friday and immediately started reading. Like pretty much all Emily St. John Mandel books I've read (this was my fourth), it's weird and hard to describe. It's partly her usual post-apocalyptic fare, set in the near future when the United States has collapsed and become individual republics and city-states, with waring militias patrolling their territories. As the book opens, the narrator is attending a party with her roommate at which doubles of two others in attendance appear and then the host completely disappears. One of these doubles will later pop up in the narrator's life. Later, we learn that there's an alternate universe from which these doubles came and where, it seems, there are doubles of everyone living in a surveillance state. Amid all of this, there's a painting that keeps getting referenced (and the man who painted it is, apparently, a character in a previous book and mentioned in another). I was very confused for much of this book, but I find that's often the case with this author and I trust her to get me to a resolution in the end. I'm still not sure I understood it all having finished it, and I expect I'll need to read it again to appreciate it fully.

What are you making and reading this week?

Ready for Weekending

It's been a long week here, I guess because it's been the first full week of school since the new year started, and as classes are really ramping up, so is the stress. I'm happy to have a weekend ahead. Last weekend was filled with all the holiday observances and celebrations, so it didn't feel like a real rest, particularly as we didn't have our usual schedule. Here's hoping this weekend can be more typical.

Last night was Curriculum Night at Molly's school, where parents get to follow their child's schedule and visit all their teachers to hear a bit about what they'll be studying in the year ahead. Last year we both had conflicts and couldn't attend, and this year felt a little bittersweet because we'll only do this once more. It's a big year for her for sure, not just because of the course load but because looking ahead to college is getting much more real and serious. And as much as I love the fact that she can now drive herself to and from school, it means I no longer have the time in the car with her every day to listen to her unload on the day's events. I know this is all part of the process and that it's good for her to start pulling away to become a self-sufficient young adult -- but I'm allowed to be a little sad about it, right?

Progress has continued on my WIPs, with some noticeable growth. For one thing, the sock now has a heel and an almost-completed foot:

Yes, that is a cameo by Ruthie's tush.

In order to maintain the stripes on the instep (and because these stripes are narrower than I'm used to), I used the strand from the inside of the yarn cake for the heel turn. It means a couple of extra ends to weave in, but that's not such a big deal. This yarn base is finer than what I'm used to, so I had to do a bit of math to figure out when to start the toe based on my row gauge. Fortunately, my sister-in-law has the smallest feet of all the people I knit socks for, so I'm not too far off from that point now and expect to have the first sock down by the end of the weekend.

Then there's the sweater, which has just gotten enough increases to fit comfortably around my needle so I no longer need to knit magic loop:

I have added the second eyelet section and next will move on to the larger textured area that should be easier to see than the first one. I'm alternating strands every round, and you can see that one strand is still all ramen-y from ripping out my swatch. I'll be happy when I get through all that kinked-up yarn, as I don't think it's helping much with the patterning being hard to see.

We have a pretty quiet weekend planned, but Yom Kippur begins Sunday evening, which means we'll be having a large meal early on before the fast. We'll be hosting break fast at our place for my side of the family on Monday, and I very well may take the day off blogging that day (I'd be getting my post ready on Sunday regardless, but sometimes it's nice to take a break). I hope you enjoy this last summer weekend and will see you back here for sure next Wednesday.

Unraveled, Week 37/2026

Here we are at Wednesday again, and again it's time to join in on the fun with Kat and the Unravelers!

I've been working steadily on my sweater in the evenings (it's not really at a place where I can work on it with Ruthie in the same room) and have started the knit/purl texture sections, though I think my yarn might be a tad too busy for the patterning to be as visible as it could be.

I am hopeful that once the sweater is done and blocked, the patterning will be a bit clearer, but I'm not too concerned at this point. I'm enjoying working with the yarn and I think the sweater will be very comfy, and that's really what matters the most to me right now.

Sock knitting is still happening in the afternoon, but I needed something else to work on when we were at my parents' for lunch on Sunday (because the recipient of the socks was there), so I grabbed some dishcloth cotton and a crochet hook and started a quick dishcloth:

If the yarn looks familiar, it's because I was using it earlier in the summer to learn the crochet thermal stitch. Because I was just learning it, the resulting dishcloth was wonky and misshapen, and I decided to frog it once I got the hang of the stitch. I'm just using the basic corner to corner method here, with some single crochet around the outside edge to finish it of. I had about 3/4 of a skein of Knit Picks Dishie to start; I haven't weighed the finished cloth yet, but I'm hoping I can get at least one more of the same size out of the yarn that's left. It's a good instant gratification project when I need a break from the sweater.

I've finished three books this past week, two of which I really enjoyed.

I purchased House on Endless Waters when it was Kindle deal on a bit of a whim, having read only the description but not having heard of it or the author before, and I was very pleasantly surprised. In this novel in translation, the main character, a famous Israeli author named Yoel Blum, discovers a long-buried secret when he visits Amsterdam, the city of his birth and the city his late mother made him promise never to return to. His publisher finally persuades him to visit, and while he is there, he and his wife visit the local Jewish history museum, where he is shocked to see his mother in a film reel -- holding a baby that couldn't possibly be him. Confronting his older sister upon his return home, he learns the truth that has been hidden all these years and returns to Amsterdam to trace his family's experiences in WWII and write the novel he realizes his life has been leading him toward his entire career. As readers, we see Yoel explore the city and simultaneously see his family adapt to their changing circumstances as their lives as Dutch Jews become more and more difficult and desperate. As the Germans close in, arresting and deporting more and more Jews and prompting more of them to go into hiding, Yoel get closer and closer to the answer of his true identity and to understanding why his mother was so reluctant to talk about the war or connect with other Dutch Jews once they'd moved to Israel. This book was compelling and fascinating; though it is a fictional story, it reads in some respects like a memoir, and I think the author intended to highlight the struggles that many Dutch Jews who were hidden as children encountered once they uncovered the truth (some of them, for instance, had no surviving family after the war and were raised believing the families who hid them were their biological families, only learning the truth as adults). Though the stories aren't really similar, the setting and tone reminded me a lot of The Safekeep. I really enjoyed this one and gave it 4 stars.

I found The Girl Who Wrote in Silk on Hoopla and thought it sounded interesting, not least because it claimed to be based on true events. I would say very loosely based on true events. It's a dual-timeline novel, following Inara in present day and Mei Lein in the late 1800s, both of them in Washington State. Inara, having inherited a property on Orcas Island from her late aunt, sets out to renovate it into a boutique hotel and in the process discovers the heavily embroidered sleeve of a garment hidden under a stair tread. The embroidery shows a fairly gruesome scene of a ship and people (or demons?) in the water. Trying to figure out the origin of the sleeve and what the embroidery could mean leads her to a Chinese American professor at the University of Washington, to whom she finds herself very conveniently attracted (cue predictable romance interest here). Mei Lein, who lives with her father and grandfather and whose mother died when she was an infant, finds her family the target of anti-Chinese violence, as they are forced from their home and onto a ship they believe is bound for China. She overhears something that leads her to believe otherwise, however, and her father convinces her to jump ship in the hope of saving herself. She (again, very conveniently) is rescued by a white farmer who becomes her protector and eventually more than that. As the two timelines progress, the connection between all these individuals is revealed. While there is some basis of truth to the 1800s story (the anti-Chinese violence and expulsions from certain cities and towns), the defining tragedy was completely fabricated, and overall I found a lot of the two storylines to be a little too far-fetched, especially for historical fiction. I didn't find the characters and some of their actions to be particularly believable. I would have DNFed this if I wasn't curious enough to find out how it would all come together, and I wouldn't recommend it. I gave it 2 stars.

Thankfully, my most recent finish was much better. In The Astral Library, Kate Quinn takes a break from her usual historical fiction to dip into fantasy and sing the praises of libraries and stories. When times are tough, wouldn't we all love to disappear into a book? That's just what Alix does when she's fired from her main job, evicted from her shared apartment, and discovers that she's locked out of her bank account due to fraud. Opening a random door off the reading room of the Boston Public Library leads her to the Astral Library and its somewhat cantankerous librarian. Here, patrons can escape the world and their troubles and enter the world of any book in the public domain. They aren't main characters and can't change the story in any way, but they can be in the background of, say, Jane Austen's England or Jay Gatsby's New York. Alix is all set on disappearing for a while when the librarian begins receiving warnings indicating that the library is under attack, all while notices keep coming that the library board is ready to make changes to modernize (and monetize) the library, and she is swept into the action. There's no need for this caper to be realistic, and it's pure fun for readers and book lovers. I really loved the little details, like the snacks that are always available in the library (though while you're there, you're never hungry) or the fact that the library is haunted by ghosts of people who feel they can't cross over because their TBRs are too long. It was an easy listen and a great pick-me-up after the previous disappointment. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Weekending, 5787*

I have mixed feelings about the Jewish holidays falling on the weekend. On the one hand, it's nice not to have to burn any vacation time. On the other, it does tend to eat up all the free time. But even if the weekend wasn't as restful as it could be, it was still enjoyable. We had a great meal (in spite of the chaotic environment) on Friday night. Ruthie was clearly a little more anxious than usual with so many people in the house, but she handled it very well, all things considered. I was hoping she'd sleep in on Saturday, but she was up and letting me know it at 6 a.m. as usual! We attended services on Saturday, which didn't start until 11 and didn't end until about 1:45; I left an hour earlier to take Ruthie out and then go get my hair cut (which I would have scheduled later in the afternoon if I thought services were going to go so long!). We ate more of the same meal at my parents' on Saturday evening and then went back there for lunch with some family friends on Sunday. I feel like all I did over the weekend was eat! Today I'm ready to get back to the usual routine.

Friday was such a busy day and I was so tired after running, cleaning, serving, and cleaning up that I didn't have any energy to knit once everyone was gone. But Saturday evening we were done much earlier, so I was able to proceed with my sweater. I had completed all of the short rows at the neck by Thursday night, so that meant I was able to join my second skein (I'm alternating to be safe) and begin the textured portion of the yoke. I've only done the first eyelet section so far, but at least it's starting to look like something:

As this isn't a project I can easily work on during the day, I cast on a new pair of socks for my sister-in-law using yarn from a dyer who recently shared some pretty ugly beliefs and so I won't be naming or recommending the yarn. It was already in my stash and it's pretty, so I thought I would use it for one of the most knitworthy people I know because she will love the colors.

Today Molly has an early dentist appointment and then will drop me off on her way to school (yes, she's driving herself now!), but otherwise we're back to the usual schedule this week, for the most part. We've got curriculum night at Molly's school on Thursday evening, and that basically gives me a night off from cooking because we have to be there at 6:30. Today I'm going to fully enjoy the fact that the high is only supposed to be in the low 70s and I probably will need only one shower!

(*In case you were wondering, the new year on the Jewish calendar is 5787. Yes, it's a big number -- we've been at this for a while! And it's a lunar calendar, which is why the holidays seem to be on a different date every year.)

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!

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?

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.

Unraveled, Week 31/2026

It's Wednesday, so that means it's time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers! This Wednesday finds me with just one knitting WIP (because I did end up finishing the purple hat), and it's the handspun scarf, on which I've now started decreasing:

Apologies for the washed-out photo

I was intending to increase until I'd used just slightly less than half of the yarn, but I realized if I did that, my scarf would be very long, which kind of defeats the purpose of making a little scarf. So I decided to increase until I had 45 stitches in garter stitch (yes, to match my age) and then started decreasing. I'm a bit worried now, though, that maybe I flew past that halfway point. Keep your fingers crossed I don't have to play yarn chicken! I figure the worst-case scenario is that I have to back and reknit, and honestly that wouldn't be so bad -- it's quite lovely to knit with merino/silk handspun!

Speaking of handspun, I'm working on my third bobbin of singles for the merino/silk/angora. I'm hoping to wrap up that spin this week to correspond to the Tour de France Femmes.

Reading! I've got three finished since this time last week.

I really enjoyed The Help, so I was interested in Kathryn Stockett's new novel The Calamity Club -- but I needed some persuading when I saw how long the audio was (28 hours!). I won't bury the lede: It was absolutely worth it, and it also didn't really take that long to listen to because the readers were slow, so I was able to increase the speed to 1.75x. Set in 1933 in Oxford, Mississippi, this novel is told from the point of view of Birdie, an unmarried 20-something woman who is the sole support to her mother and grandmother following the death of her father, and Meg, an 11-year-old living in an orphanage after her mother seemingly abandoned her. Birdie travels to Oxford from her small town to ask her married sister, Frances, for a loan to help pay back taxes when the family home is at risk. But when Frances's husband disappears, along with much of his family's possessions, Birdie has to step up to help Frances and her mother-in-law. Meg, meanwhile, is poorly treated at the orphanage, particularly by the woman in charge of running it, and still doesn't fully believe that her mother left her on purpose. Birdie's volunteer work helping out with the accounting books at the orphanage brings her together with Meg and gives her a personal interest in the girl's future. And when things start to get particularly dire, a woman named Charlie comes into Birdie's life and proposes a solution that seems dangerous and preposterous -- but just might be what will save them all. There are some ugly words used in this book and some ugly ideas, but they're very reflective of the time and aren't used gratuitously. The heart and soul of the novel is its strong female characters -- Meg, Birdie, and Charlie -- who aren't afraid to work hard and make sacrifices to help those they love. They are smart, funny, and fierce, and I really enjoyed spending time with all of them. I gave the book 4 stars.

I'd heard a lot of buzz around The Great Wherever and put it on notify in Libby ahead of its publication. I got really lucky because I happened to be looking at my phone when I got the notification it was available and ended up being the first person in line to get it, and my hold came up just before we left on our trip, so I was able to read it in its entirety over the course of the weekend. It follows Aubrey, a woman in her early 30s who is struggling. She thought her boyfriend was about to propose, but instead he broke up with her. She has multiple jobs that she doesn't like in order to pay her rent but still comes up short. Her mother died when she was just a child and her father only recently passed away. When nothing seems to be going right, she gets an email from family she doesn't know and discovers that she is part owner of a homestead in Tennessee and that she and the others have to contemplate an offer to purchase the property. She flies to meet them and soon learns the full history of the place: how her great-grandfather was one of the first Black homeowners in the area, building the house with his own hands; how the family's history was tied up with that of the wealthy white family who started the town; and how the family had held on to the land all these years in the face of many attempts by others to buy it. Throughout it all, ghosts of members of the family watch over their descendants, occasionally seen by one relative or another and sometimes even managing to avert an action that might prove disastrous. Though Aubrey is the focus, the story is much bigger than her and is a beautifully written illustration of a family that has its struggles and its triumphs. I could not put it down and gave it 5 stars.

And now for something completely different! Glorious Exploits is set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War. After a recent battle, a group of Athenian prisoners is being held in a quarry, and two friends, Lampo and Gelon, decide to pass the time by staging a performance of Medea in which the prisoners are the actors -- because while they may hate Athenians, they still love their drama. As they work with the prisoners, they start to see their humanity, and they realize that by getting others to come see the play, perhaps they can do the same. It's a bit wacky, a bit funny, and a bit sad, and it's made a bit weirder by the fact that the author is Irish and the dialogue sounds more at home in modern-day Dublin than ancient Syracuse. Ultimately it's a creative way to show that art is a way to bring people together and help them recognize their similarities in spite of their differences. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

And Away We Go

In just a few hours, Molly and I will be headed to Michigan with my side of the family for a visit with my aunt and uncle. Ruthie's at boarding, where there are supposed to be some more dog friends to play with, and the Mister will be holding down the fort at home. It's likely to be a weekend of sitting around and talking, so at least I will get a lot of knitting time in. One project that is coming with me is the new handspun scarf:

So far, my winging it is working out. I'm taking my travel scale so that I can increase until I've used about half my yarn, then I'll start decreasing.

Molly and I went to see The Odyssey yesterday. Visually, it was impressive. As for the script, I'm afraid I have to agree with my Greek professor. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it was only loosely based on the original poem because so much was changed. But it beat spending the afternoon at work, and if you're wondering how much charity hat can get knit during a epic movie, it's about 4 inches.

We will be back sometime on Sunday and I'm taking Monday off (partly because I'll have to go pick Ruthie up), so I imagine I'll have some significant progress to show on these projects. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this final day of July and the first weekend of August!

Unraveled, Week 30/2026

Happy Fri -- er, Wednesday! It's the end of my workweek but only the middle of the week in general, and today as per usual I'm joining in with Kat and the Unravelers.

I'm still working on that sparkly purple charity hat and on my current spin, but today I'm planning on casting on a new project, a Sophie-ish scarf using this recent skein of handspun:

I figure I have knit enough shawls in my day that I can wing it without needing a pattern, though we'll see if I'm actually successful. I have a work meeting (online) right after lunch today that I have to attend but not really pay close attention to, so I'll be casting on then.

Because of a big project that got dropped in my lap late last week, my reading slowed a bit and I only have three finished reads to share this week (two of which were started at the beginning of the month). But they are all nonfiction, which is rather unusual for me!

In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that some of the policy decisions that were made decades ago and that may have been well intentioned at the time have led to major problems today: a shortage of affordable housing, worker shortages in certain industries, climate change, a problematic environment in which to conduct research. There's a lot of interesting content here, but a lot of it went in one ear and out the other (so maybe this wasn't the best book to read on audio and I would have retained more had I read with my eyes). It was a relatively short listen, despite having to slow down my usual speed (Ezra Klein can be a fast talker!), and I did feel I learned a few things, but when I finished I didn't feel like I had a solid grip on the content. I gave it 3 stars.

I have been wanting to read more of Toni Morrison's work (I have read only two of her novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, as well as her short story Recitatif and a collection of her essays and speeches), and some other readers I respect recommended that I read On Morrison before I do. Written by Harvard professor and novelist Namwali Serpell, this book is like taking a graduate seminar on Toni Morrison and her writing. It covers all of her novels and some of the other writings, examining their content, context, and creation. It's a comprehensive work and clearly written by someone who admires Morrison very much, but a lot of it was way over my head, especially when it got into the weeds about the mechanics of writing and literary devices. I think I got the most out of the chapters about the books I have read, and I can see myself going back to reread chapters as I read other novels and can make more sense of the discussion. I gave it 3 stars.

I previously read and enjoyed Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing and his podcast, and I had been wanting to read his new book, so I was delighted when my parents passed along a hard copy. London Falling investigates the death of a London teenager, Zac Brettler, under mysterious circumstances made even more mysterious when Zac's parents discovered that he'd been posing as the son of a Russian oligarch and possibly gotten involved with some very shady characters. Like everything PRK does, this book is meticulously researched well beyond the inciting incident of Zac's death, even to the point of taking you down rabbit holes you didn't even know about to expect (did you know, for instance, that there was once a very large and prosperous Indian community in Uganda?). There are no clear answers and no real resolution, but it's a fascinating read nonetheless. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm now officially past the halfway mark on a very long new release on audio and have just started a digital ARC on another nonfiction work.

What are you making and reading this week?