This Is Not the Post I'd Planned

 

John Lennon once sang, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." That is indeed what happened here this weekend. Even though I didn't have a three-day holiday weekend to look forward to, I was at least expecting this weekend to be the usual mix of chores and fun. The weather was predicted to be nice, so I figured I'd be able to go for at least one run and one long walk, and I had a book to finish and plenty of knitting and spinning to do. And I'd hoped that by the time I sat down to write this post, I'd at least have finished spinning my purple Rambouillet singles and maybe even have started plying. But none of that happened.

Before I tell you the story of the last few days, let me start out by reassuring you that everyone is okay, so you don't have to get too stressed out. But it was an eventful weekend.

On Friday, the Mister decided to take the day off from work to take advantage of the beautiful weather and take a long bike ride around the city. Rainbow was at school as usual, and after I got back from my run, I settled in for a quiet afternoon, as it was the first time in a long time I'd had the house entirely to myself. Just as I was sitting down after lunch, though, I got a text message from the Mister asking if it was an okay time to call me -- his way of preparing me for a serious phone call. The short of it is that he'd gotten into a bit of a bike accident. As he came to a trail switchback, the gravel making up the trail caused him to lose his balance a bit, and though he stayed upright on the bike, a branch from a nearby bush poked him in the cheek, just below the eye, and had punctured the skin. Luckily someone who lived nearby saw him and gave him a bag of ice, and he was also very close to a riverside restaurant, so he was able to stop the bleeding with some napkins and even get some lunch while he waited for me to come get him (he wasn't that far away, but it would have been a long and painful bike ride back home).

We are very lucky to live pretty much around the corner from an excellent hospital, so I dropped him off at the ER on the way home; he thought he might need a stitch or two. I then picked Rainbow up at school, and when he still wasn't done by dinnertime, we went to parents' as we usually do on Friday nights, figuring when he finished he'd walk home and drive over to meet us.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Not long after we finished, I got a call from him saying that I needed to come get him and take him to another hospital, because they'd done a CT scan and discovered that he had pieces of the branch embedded in his sinus cavity. He ended up spending the night in another ER before finally being moved to a room at the hospital, and when I woke up yesterday morning, he still hadn't been told when the surgery would happen. But he was allowed to have one visitor/support person with him while he waited, so I went over shortly after.

He finally ended up being taken into the OR yesterday afternoon and was discharged yesterday evening. The surgeon, who came out to talk to me after the procedure was complete, described the injury as "one in a million" -- the branch had managed to hit the one section of sinus bone that is eggshell thin. But the removal went perfectly, and the important thing is that the Mister is now home and slept in his own bed (well, on the sofa bed in the den, so that neither of us would disturb the other last night). He's swollen and a bit numb on that side of his face, and he has to take various medications for a week or so, but all things considered, he was pretty lucky, and he'll make a full recovery. I am so very grateful for that.

So I didn't really get the relaxing weekend I'd hoped for, but at least with all the sitting around at the hospital, I was able to finish my 50th book for bingo, completing my second card, and I finished knitting a sock, so it was not a total waste. Plus, I wouldn't have been anywhere else, especially considering that he's been there for me the two times I was in the hospital. COVID certainly made it an unusual experience, but as everything had a good outcome, I am not complaining, and I am so, so grateful for the amazing doctors and nurses who helped to make him whole again.

The photo at the top of the post is all the fiber I have left to spin for this project, and I'll be chipping away at it this week. By next week, I am confident, you will see it in yarn form!

Wrapping Up Summer

While I know that technically fall doesn't start until later this month, I always feel like the beginning of September -- in addition to being the start of meteorological fall -- is the start of a new year in addition to the start of a new season. I guess after so many years as a student, then a teacher, and now working for an educational institution, I tend to think in terms of academic years rather than calendar years. About now is when I start thinking about the colder weather and what I will knit for myself and others to keep warm, and I'm certainly not immune to the siren call of new school/office supplies. When Rainbow and I went shopping last month, I was fairly restrained but did treat myself to some new pens. I also recently bought myself a pair of new running shoes (my old ones are starting to fall apart, but doesn't everyone have fond memories of a new pair of shoes for the new school year?), and yesterday I got another new thing as an anniversary gift from the Mister:

That, my friends, is a box from my shiny new iPhone 11 -- a HUGE upgrade from my previous iPhone 6. I now have the fancy camera(s) and effects, which I think will really help my knitting and pattern photography, and I finally feel like I'm with the tech "in crowd" for the first time ever. 

I have picked up for and started the second sleeve of my Torbellino, so I'll also soon have a new sweater to add to my wardrobe:

If I'm honest, this is what I'm most excited about related to the end of summer:

I know it's a little hard to see (it's a very gloomy, rainy day here), but I have just one square left to fill to complete my second SAH Book Bingo cover-all! I finished two very long books this week, Little Dorrit and Stamped from the Beginning, and I truly enjoyed both. Yesterday I started my final book. I'm rereading The Resilience Factor, which I originally read as part of a seminar in college -- I was lucky enough to have both authors as instructors, and Andrew Shatté was actually my very favorite college professor, so it's fun to revisit it now. I'll admit that I am not giving it a very deep reading, as my goal is to complete it rather than study it at this point, but I still think it's a useful text to read for our current situation. And frankly I'm really excited about the fact that when I finish it, I will have finished 50 books since April. Many thanks to Mary for hosting us again for what has become a beloved summer tradition for me!

We have absolutely nothing planned for this weekend, but I'm looking forward to what's predicted to be really nice weather. It's technically a holiday weekend, but my employer has decided that we now have to work on Monday, which is Labor Day (a federal holiday here in the United States) -- but it's okay because they're going to give us the Monday after Thanksgiving off. Grrr. I keep thinking what my labor-lawyer grandfather would have to say about that! I suppose at least this year I don't actually have to go into the office, and it's A-OK if I spend Labor Day in my pajamas!

Hope you all have a good end to your week and a pleasant weekend to look forward to!

Bring On Fall

Happy September! I can't believe that August is already over and the unofficial start of fall is already here. I'm just back from dropping Rainbow off at school for her first day of middle school(!), and things are starting to feel decidedly autumnal. And I am here for it, let me tell you. I love the longer days of summer but long for the cooler temperatures of fall.

Once I used to get excited about the start of the new school year because it meant all those new school supplies. I still get excited about the supplies, but this year I'm hoping to start off the new year with a new sweater. I'm almost there -- last night I finished the first sleeve (except for weaving in ends) on my Torbellino:

Once I do a little weaving in of ends, I will pick up for sleeve number two. I was able to knit the first sleeve while reading, so I'm hopeful I can do the same with the second and have it finished up at about the same time I'm finishing my bingo card.

There is good news on that front -- I finished Little Dorrit last night! I really enjoyed it, except for perhaps how long it took to read, but that's really my own fault for picking such a tome. Now my focus moves to finishing up Stamped from the Beginnning; I have 188 pages left, so I'll need to read about 26 pages a day to finish it by the end of Labor Day and meet my deadline. And of course I have to read another book in the next week as well if I want to achieve my second cover-all. Please keep your fingers crossed that it's a slow work week so I can focus on reading!

I have started another project this past week, but unfortunately it's a design piece for a publication that I can't share, so instead let me share a little yarn pr0n with you:

I think we all know that I don't need any more yarn, but Lisa had a big shop update a couple of weeks ago and I had a coupon code, so I took advantage. The two skeins on the left are from her new Rain Clouds and Tie-Dye collection. On the far left is is the cool tie-dye variegated (there's a warm variegated version as well) on Lisa's newest base, a 90% superwash merino/10% nylon slub fingering weight. I plan to hold it together with the mohair/silk laceweight next to it. The other two skeins are both Lisa's Traveler sport weight base that came from her "dyer's secret stash." She occasionally offers up skeins that aren't quite up to her high standards for some reason -- they're a little short in yardage, they have a knot, they have a dye mistake, etc. These two were colorway prototypes that didn't quite make the cut, but I like them just fine. I think the more colorful of the two is going to become socks for my sister-in-law, whose foot measurements I finally got recently. The other skein I think I might need to keep for me.

That's all I've got for today -- I have to get back to my reading! Hope you're all having a great start to the month!

Big Reads and Big Knits

It's Wednesday again (how is it that this keeps happening so quickly?), so I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers again to chat about my reading and my knitting.

Since this time last week, I've finished two more books:

For the "Originally published within 5 years of the year you were born" square on my second bingo card, I picked Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, primarily because it was on a New York Times "best books" list for the year I was born (it was actually published the year before, but that still works) and it was immediately available in audio from the library. Bonus: It was only about 6 hours long. I listened over the course of several days, while exercising and doing things around the house. I appreciated the writing, but after the first chapter or two, I was very confused and had trouble following it. I thought perhaps that it was a case of me not paying full attention (a common problem with listening to books for me), but the summaries I found online confirmed that I'd heard everything correctly. I just didn't get it. I gave it 2 stars, mainly because the writing was good but the story bizarre.

 

A much more enjoyable read for me was The Secrets We Kept, which I selected for the "Set in a place you'd like to know more about" square on my card. This book takes place during the early days of the CIA and in the USSR and follows several story lines by focusing on several women: a Russian-American woman new to espionage, a American veteran of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA), and the mistress of author Boris Pasternak who was said to the be inspiration for the character of Lara in Doctor Zhivago. I don't know how much of the story was embellished and how much was fact, but I found it to be a really entertaining read and plowed through it in just two days. I gave it 4 stars.

I now have three squares left to fill on my second bingo card. I am reading two of those books right now, and I think I've certainly made filling this card a challenge for myself, because both of these books are more than 500 pages! For the "More than 500 pages" square, I'm reading Stamped from the Beginning, which is an excellent read but not a quick one! It's essentially a history text, so it's dense and requires attention. For the "Classic" square, I am reading Little Dorrit, which I've had in my Kindle library and wanted to read for a while, since I watched the 2008 miniseries. It's good, but it's also Dickens, which means that it's not a quick read. My last square to be filled is "With more than one author listed on the cover," and I've already selected my book to fill it. I'm going to be rereading The Resilience Factor, which I first read in a college seminar (one of the authors was my favorite college professor). In addition to filling that final square, I think it will also be a helpful read for these times. I don't know if I can get through all three of these books in the next 13 days, but I'm sure as heck going to try!

I can't seem to read without doing something else, with the exception of the reading I do in bed right before I go to sleep, and over the past few days I've been working almost exclusively on my Torbellino. As of yesterday afternoon, the body is done!

It obviously will need a good blocking to get that hem to stop flipping, but I think it looks worse than it actually is here because the back part of the hem is lower than the front. I wove in most of my ends after I finished binding off the body, so now it's time to pick up for the sleeves. I am hopeful that they will knit up quickly -- we're still experiencing very hot, humid weather here, but I know fall will be here before we know it, and I'd love to have a new sweater ready to wear!

Slow and Steady: Unraveled Wednesday

As I have been for the past several weeks, today I'm joining Kat and friends to share what I've been reading. My pace has slowed a bit since last week (mainly because I've been reading some longer books), but I'm still on track to fill my second bingo card!

The quickest recent read for me was Ordinary Grace, which I borrowed from the library and plowed through in just a few days. I really enjoyed the story and the "back when times were simpler" setting. In many ways it reminded me of books like To Kill a Mockingbird, in which stories are told from the point of view of a child who is just becoming aware of the fact that adulthood is messy and complicated. I also was quite tickled by the fact that the fiber I was spinning as I was reading seemed to match the cover artwork perfectly! My one complaint about the book was that it seemed to have a shocking lack of (to my mind, anyway) necessary commas; the copy editor in me could have easily taken a red pen to the book if I'd been reading a physical copy! I have no idea if that was intentional or just the author's style, but it did bother me more than it might bother the average person whose day job doesn't involve the correct placement of commas. I put it in the "Protagonist with a different gender/sexual orientation from your own" square on my bingo card and gave it 4 stars.

Yesterday I finished The Warmth of Other Suns, and my goodness, was it a great read! I put it in the "About politics" square on my card, because it's about the Great Migration of Black Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South for the North and West and all the barriers they faced -- and systemic racism is politics, as far as I'm concerned. If you just heard a summary of what this book was about, you might think it would be a dry, academic-type book, but it's really not. Wilkerson tells the story of the Great Migration by focusing on three individuals who left different parts of the South at different times and for different destinations, and she follows their paths for the rest of their lives. It's really masterfully done and engaging -- I really had trouble putting it down! And in addition to enjoying it, I learned a lot, which is really a great combination in a book. I gave it 5 stars and highly recommend it!

I have about half an hour left in the audiobook of Housekeeping, which will fill my "Originally published within five years of the year you were born" square, and I'm still reading Stamped from the Beginning for my "More than 500 pages" square. I just borrowed The Secrets We Kept for my "Set in a place you'd like to know more about" square (it's set in the USSR), so I have just two squares left on my card to pick books for: "Classic" (for which I have several options already in my Kindle library) and "With more than one author listed on the cover." I think I'll be reading quite a lot to get this whole card filled, but I'm feeling good about doing it!

I'd love to hear what you've been reading or what you have queued up to read next!

Only Raveling*

It's Wednesday, so today I'm joining with Kat and friends to share my WIPs and my reading.

Here is the current WIP situation:

When I said last week that I was back to three WIPs after finishing Rainbow's blanket, what I should have said was that I was back to three active WIPs. Technically I have four projects in progress, but my Breathe and Hope shawl is still in hibernation for the time being. I've been thinking about getting it out to finish it for Stash Dash, but I haven't acted on that just yet. Left to right here are my Torbellino sweater, which now has about four inches of body knit under the arms; the hat I'm knitting to match my Slipdash cowl; and the corner-to-corner crochet blanket out of the giant skein of acrylic I inherited from Rainbow. I've been alternating the first two for the past several days, and both are good projects to work on while reading.

Which leads me to my reading update! My pace has hardly slowed, and I'm hoping to keep it up to complete a cover-all on my second bingo card:

Since my last reading update, I've finished four more books:

The Last of the Moon Girls was an Amazon First Reads selection from this summer, and I picked it mainly because it seemed like a good summer read -- not too deep, not too heavy. It was a fairly pleasant read, a combination of magical realism and murder mystery, but it also felt pretty derivative of other books I've read and was rather predictable. I saw where the story line was going early on and also more or less figured out the mystery by about halfway through the book. The writing was okay, though the author has a tendency to use certain words over and over again (one I can remember is "pong," as in odor), which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine -- ever heard of a thesaurus? I ended up giving it 2 stars. It was a quick read but not necessarily one I'd recommend. I put it in the "Magical Realism" square on my second bingo card.

The Power is a book that was on my radar a few years ago when it came out, but I never got around to reading it. I was happy to see it had no wait from the library when I was looking for something to fill my "Speculative Fiction" square. I found it to be an interesting read in that Alderman completely flips the script and creates a world in which women not only have the power in society but typical gender characteristics are also reversed -- in this world, men are considered the gentler, more nurturing sex. While I appreciated this unusual perspective, I found it very unsettling. I also felt like I was missing something, like there was part of the story I wasn't getting but that I was meant to have understood implicitly. I gave it 2 stars.

I received St. Ivo as a hand-me-down from my mother. It went in my "Originally Published This Year" square. I'm a bit conflicted about it, because it was well written and fairly enjoyable to read, but at the same time it didn't feel like a complete book to me. The author's note at the end reveals that it was developed from a short story, and to be honest, I think it still is one. The story feels unresolved, even though the secrets at the heart of it are revealed by the end. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally, I read The First Mrs. Rothschild, a fictionalized first-person narrative (in the form of a diary) of the wife of Meir Rothschild, the founder of the famous banking family. This was another First Reads selection and went into the "Title That's a Character's Name" square on my card. The first 100 or so pages were okay, but after that it became a slog. The real Mrs. Rothschild lived a long life, and so her "diary" went on for a long time and became very repetitive. It didn't feel realistic to me, in part because of the language used, though I don't know if the author or the translator is to blame for that. I was determined to finish so I could fill that square on my card, though. I gave it two stars.

At the moment, I'm reading two books: The Things We Cannnot Say, which I should be able to finish up today (I have less than 100 pages to go and it's a fast read), and Grit, which I started listening to yesterday on my run. After these two, I'll only have 10 more squares to fill on my second bingo card to get another cover-all!

*The opposite of unraveling is raveling, right?

Plodding Along

I had hoped to have more done by today, but it's been an odd week -- not in a bad way, just slightly out of the ordinary. Rainbow has been attending a virtual sewing camp this week that meets for two hours each morning, and I've been sitting in the room with her to help out when she needs it (while keeping an eye on my work email at the same time). Work has been pretty light this week, but because I'm helping her out with pinning and such periodically, I haven't been able to sustain my attention on much during those two hours. It's been great to watch her sew, though, and she's doing a fantastic job. We ordered fabric and notions ahead of time (there's a fabric store next door to the sewing studio, and they're doing online ordering and curbside pickup right now) and the sewing studio supplied the pattern pieces they'd need for the class. Yesterday she completed her first project, a pillow cover. I think you can see from her smile just how excited she was:

The back of the pillow is two panels of the two fabrics that overlap so it can easily be removed from the pillow form for washing. Today the class will focus on finishing up the second project, a drawstring backpack, and begin the third, a zippered pouch. I'm learning alongside her, and I'm excited to work on some other projects with her when the week is over (I may have ordered some extra fabric from the store for just this purpose!).

I'm still working on my Torbellino and although it doesn't look very different from the last time you saw it, I have added to the yoke. I've completed the final increase round and am now working through the last handful of rounds to add the necessary remaining length and final colorwork. I expect that I'll be ready to split for sleeves and body by the weekend.

While no new knitting projects have been cast on -- yet -- I am preparing to start a new crochet project. My nephew is turning 1 in about two weeks, so I thought I'd try my hand at making some crochet amigurumi figures. I did a Ravelry search and kept coming back to this sweet little alpaca. I also pulled out some yarn from the giant bag of Knit Picks Dishie:

I'm planning to start with one and, if it goes well, make a second. The bright colors will be used for the body and the cream for the face, legs, and ears.

Perhaps the real reason I haven't made a ton of knitting progress is because I'm still doing a lot of spinning. It's the last week of the Tour de Fleece, and I'm also back to my usual method of spinning, which I can do without looking. That means I can spin while I read ebooks again. I'm trying to finish up this skein of Southern Cross Fibre mystery wool this week:

Thanks to this spinning-while-reading practice, I finished up Wild Fire yesterday afternoon, and thanks to an after-dinner walk and listening while folding laundry, I also finished Song Yet Sung. Both books earned 4 stars from me, though I still need to write formal reviews on Goodreads. I'm now reading Between the World and Me, which I expect should be a very quick read as it's only about 150 pages and I'm already 15% through it just from about 20 minutes of reading time last night. I'm getting very close to a cover-all on my first bingo card!

I'm off to help Rainbow with sewing. I hope that whatever you're doing as you plod along during these strange times is bringing you some joy and fulfillment. See you here on Sunday!

Unraveled Wednesday: A Reading Update

Yes, I know it's Wednesday and not one of my usual blogging days. But it's been a while since I did a reading update, so today I'm joining up with Kat and friends to do just that.

First, let's look at recent finishes:

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me

This is the current selection for the Read With Us book discussion group (are we calling it a book club?) that Bonny, Carole, and Kym have been hosting. I was able to get it from my local library after only a short wait, and I enjoyed it. It was hard to read at times because although my relationship with my mother was nothing like the author's, I really empathized with her. Ultimately I found this memoir to be a contemplation of relationships and what happens when someone is forced into an inappropriate one. I gave it 4 stars.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

I'd started listening to this via the Craftlit podcast and then borrowed the audiobook from the library so I could finish it sooner (getting one or two chapters at a time means it will take months to finish via the podcast!). I'm still planning to listen to it (again) on the podcast because the readers are excellent and I value Heather's insights, but I'm also glad I listened on my own. The readers for this version were Jenny Agutter and Alex Jennings, both familiar voices due to the many PBS shows I've watched. I enjoyed the book but got a little bored in the middle. I gave it 3 stars.

The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

It had been a while since I'd read any of Toni Morrison's fiction, but reading this collection made me want to do just that. Her writing is really exquisite. I feel like I probably could have gotten more out of this book had I read it in a class setting, where there was an opportunity to study and discuss it, but even so it was a good read. My one criticism is that only one or two selections gave any context for the speech or essay. I would have liked to have known when each piece was written and, for the speeches, where it was delivered. I gave it 4 stars.

Cold Earth (Shetland series #7)

I'll admit I was very impatient waiting for this one. I can plow through these books in a couple of days, so it was annoying to see that I was next in line to get it from the library but whoever had it was taking so long to read it. But I devoured it as soon as I got it and really enjoyed it. Though the murder is getting to be less important to me than the characters, I was still pleased that I was surprised by the identity of the killer (murder mysteries are less exciting to me when I figure it out on my own). I gave it 4 stars.

Now let's talk about what I'm currently reading:

How to Be an Antiracist

I would have liked to have liked to have been done with this book by now, but because it's a hard copy that I own, it often gets pushed aside when a library book hold comes up. I think I have less than 100 pages left to read, so really if I sit down one day and focus on it, I should be able to finish. But as I've said before, I am taking my time because I am reading this to learn, not to entertain, and I expect that it's a book I'll revisit in the future. I do want to finish soon, though, because later in the month I'm attending a virtual conference that my employer is hosting and Kendi is one of the keynote speakers!

Song Yet Sung

This is turning out to be the it book of the summer that everyone seems to be reading! After Eileen raved about it in one of the Sunday Zoom calls that Mary hosts, I borrowed the audiobook from the library to listen to while I run and walk. I've got about two hours left to listen, so about two more days of exercise. I'm really enjoying it and am looking forward to seeing how the many characters and many story lines come together in the end.

Wild Fire (Shetland series #8)

I added the final Shetland book to my library holds as soon as I returned the previous one and was delighted to discover it was ready for me yesterday morning. As much as I'd like to savor this final installment, I'm really rushing through it instead. I'm already more than 50% through it and am likely to finish it before the day is out.

Here's a look at the state of my bingo cards (yes, there are two!):

I am very close to a cover-all on my first card. I have only two empty spaces -- Title That's a Character's Name (for which I've already picked a book) and With an Unreliable Narrator. Anyone have a good recommendation for the latter? Or a good recommendation in general? I have a handful of books on hold at the library, but I'm always looking to add to my TBR pile!

Three Components of Sanity

It's Thursday again and time for another list of three things. As we wrap up our 14th week of staying home, I've come to realize that there are three big areas of my life that are helping me to keep calm and keep it together. These are probably no-brainers, but when you need a list of three things for a blog post, they work!

The first thing is obviously crafting. I've become a crafter who has a lot of projects going at once -- something that previously would have given me a lot of anxiety -- because I've found that my attention span has noticeably shortened, so I like having variety and the ability to jump from one project to another. This week the focus has largely been on two projects: my TTL mystery shawl and my handspun Tegna. I'm going to talk about the latter so that the picture of the former doesn't show up right away, just in case you're worried about spoilers.

This project has been the perfect thing for knitting while reading (something I'll discuss in a bit). I've been working on it most evenings and have only a couple more inches of body to knit before I reach the specified body length and can split for the front and the back. I am not stretching out the lace border much when I measure, and I'm pretty sure I can block it fairly aggressively to get some additional length should I want it.

Most of my knitting time this week, though, has been spent working on my mystery shawl. Remember how when I last posted, I was just going to secure that dropped stitch and carry on as if nothing had happened? Let's just say that plan went out the window shortly after I posted it publicly. I sat down to work on the shawl and decided that something else had gone awry with the lace at the beginning of Clue 3, so I ripped back a bit. When I got to the section just above the dropped stitch, I thought I might as well try to drop down a handful of stitches there and try to fix it. It looked like crap, so I tried again. In short, I ended up ripping way back into the last third or so of the second chart for Clue 2, reknitting it, and then starting fresh with Clue 3. It took me until yesterday afternoon to get caught up, but now I'm much happier.

Of course you can't see the lace at all in this photo, but I trust it will be more apparent after blocking. I should note that what I thought was an error on my part in the lace at the beginning of Clue 3 is still there, so I've concluded that it's the pattern and not a mistake. It's something I hope will also resolve with blocking.

My second sanity saver is exercise. I've been continuing to run several times a week, and I've actually surprised myself by increasing my total miles per run. As I did for the past two months, I'm tracking the distance I cover in each run and the cumulative distance for the month.

I know this analog method of tracking is very primitive, and I do use an app when I run that tracks distance and pace and all that jazz, but it also assumes I'm running the whole time. Though I have increased my endurance significantly (yesterday, for instance, I ran 4 miles straight), I do generally walk somewhere in the middle to catch my breath, so my total distance covered isn't the same as my total running distance.

All the running is making me feel pretty great, but my knees also need recovery time, so I alternate running days with long walk days. I generally walk (at a brisk pace) for about an hour; I recently downloaded a walking app to see how far I go, and it's usually in the neighborhood of 3.5-4 miles or so. All this exercise is of course good for my physical health (and it's helped me start a pretty cool streak of 29 days of 10K+ steps to date!), but I've found it's also essential to my mental health. Getting time out of the house, away from the computer, breathing fresh air is so good for reducing stress and anxiety. I am so thankful for the time and ability to get outside every day.

Finally, my third item is (no surprise, I'm sure) all the reading I've been doing. Later this morning I should be able to finish Such a Fun Age -- I have less than 50 pages to go -- and get another bingo on my card. I'm next in line at the library for my next Gamache book, and I'm still reading How to Be an Antiracist. I have three squares on my first bingo card left without a book associated with them (though I have one of my library holds in mind for one of the three), so it looks like it won't be long until I achieve a cover-all!

I'm off to see what Carole and friends are up to, and I'd love to hear what's keeping you sane these days in the comments!

A Near Miss

Yesterday was Monday, which meant a new clue of the Through the Loops Mystery Shawl. I've been trying to stay on top of the clues as much as possible and have managed to do the first two clues within a day or so of them being released. Yesterday was a bit busy, though, so I didn't get to pick up my shawl until the evening. I was happily knitting away when I saw it: a dropped stitch in the previous clue's knitting.

Friends, let me tell you just how lucky I was with this dropped stitch. First of all, despite the fact that I'm using a wool/silk singles yarn, it had somehow not gone anywhere. Second, I seem to not have gotten off on the pattern despite being a stitch short. Third, it happened in a spot just below are area of several decreases, so I was able to ladder it up a couple of rows and then pull it to the wrong side, where I've secured it with a locking stitch marker. I briefly thought about ripping back but decided that since everything was on track, I'd just carry on. Eventually I will take a scrap of yarn, run it through that stitch, and weave in the ends to secure it.

I hope to be able to finish up Clue 3 today, provided work cooperates and doesn't keep me too busy.

My other projects are progressing but don't look too much different from the last time you saw them, so I'll wait to share photos. But I am happy to report that I finally have my first bingo -- two, actually!

Over the weekend I finished Picnic at Hanging Rock to fill in my "Historical fiction" box and achieve both a vertical and a diagonal bingo. It was just an okay read; I didn't really love it, but I didn't hate it either. I tend to not particularly like stories that don't really wrap up in the end, and that's precisely what happens in this book. It was a pretty quick read, though, at less than 200 pages, so I don't feel like I spent too much time to get that square filled.

I now have three books in progress: How to Be an Antiracist, which I'm just a little less than halfway through; Such a Fun Age, which I started over the weekend; and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall via Craftlit. Yesterday evening I got to join a Zoom session to discuss How to Be an Antiracist as part of my synagogue's newly started social justice book club. I'm delighted that it drew a pretty good sized group of people and look forward to seeing where the club takes us. I'm a quarter of the way through Such a Fun Age and it seems like I'll be able to finish it up this week. Tenant might actually take a while, as Heather typically only includes a chapter or two per podcast episode, so I may borrow the audiobook from the library (I checked and it's available with no wait!) in order to finish it in time to put it on my bingo card. I'd really like to get a cover-all on this card!

Three Check-ins

First, I want to thank everyone for leaving such nice comments on my last post about the new shawl design. It feels very good to have gotten it out after working on it (mentally and physically) for more than half a year.

Second, it's Thursday (and my sort-of Friday, because I'm taking tomorrow off from work), so I'm joining up with Carole and friends with three check-ins on my leisure activities.

1. Knitting projects

Over the past week, I've been rotating through three main knitting projects. First, there are the socks I started for my sister-in-law in the long-term planning category. They have been worked on while reading and while attending (virtual) meetings. The first sock is now finished and the second begun.

I did wind off yarn when I started the second sock so that the socks would start in the same point in the striping sequence, and I made some notes for myself so I could (fingers crossed) get them to match. My sister-in-law's feet are a bit shorter than mine, so I know I'll have plenty of yarn.

I also have been working on the Through the Loops Mystery Shawl and spent most of the day Monday (in between work meetings and whatnot) knitting up Clue 2. I hope no one is concerned about spoilers, because I'm going to show you what the shawl looks like through this clue. You've been forewarned! (Side note: When I posted a photo of Clue 1 a full week after it came out on my Instagram feed, someone commented that they'd been spoiled and probably shouldn't follow the hashtag for the shawl. If you don't want spoilers, why are you following the hashtag in the first place?)

I'm a bit surprised how much I'm enjoying this, because honestly, if I saw this much of a pattern before buying, I probably wouldn't be interested, but I'm having such fun! The second repeat of the lace in Clue 1 was a bit of a slog for me, but the second clue was completely engaging because of the variety of techniques used. I'm excited to see where Clue 3 takes us!

Finally, there's my Tegna, which I've been working on almost every evening. I finished up the lace over the weekend, so now it's just miles of stockinette in the round, and the only thing I have to pay attention to is switching which strand of yarn I'm working with when I get to the beginning of the round.

I absolutely adore how the yarn is working up and am feeling rather proud for working out the plan when I spun it.

2. Crochet/100 Day Project

It's been a fairly busy week at work, so I think I may have forgotten to work on this one day by accident, but the blanket is continuing to grow. I'm into the first of the last two original skeins of yarn we picked for it, and in the meantime Rainbow and I found six more skeins of Felici in my stash, so those have been designated for the blanket as well.

For a sense of scale, those are 50 g skeins of yarn, and if I lay it out flat(ish), it's measuring about 37 inches across.

3. Reading

Work has gotten in the way of my reading time a bit this week, but I've finished two more books since last Thursday -- but still no bingo!

I listened to A Wrinkle in Time while exercising and doing household chores last week. It's a book I read several times as a child but didn't remember very much about, so I'd been meaning to reread it. I actually bought a paperback of it a while back to give to Rainbow (who, it turns out, is not at all interested, grr), but when I saw it was available from the library on audio, I jumped at it. This particular version is narrated by Hope Davis and has additional "bonus" features in the form of an appreciation by Ava DuVernay (who directed the recent film version), an introduction by the author, and an afterward by the author's granddaughter that gives some background about the author and how the novel came to be. While I enjoyed it, I found that it had lost some of the luster that it had for me as a child. But that's okay. I gave it 3 stars and put it in the "Children's classic" box on my second bingo card.

Last night I stayed up a teensy bit late to finish reading Thin Air, the sixth book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series. These books are consistently good and I'm a little sad that I have only two more left to read (though I hear the Vera series is good as well). I gave the book 4 stars and put it in the "Set in a different country" box on my original card. It's also the third Shetland book to fill a square on this card!

It's a good thing I finished that book last night, because when I went into the library app to return it, I discovered I'd gotten two books off my holds: Picnic at Hanging Rock (which has been talked about recently on the Craftlit podcast) and Such a Fun Age. I'm pretty sure I can put the former into the "Historical fiction" box on my card, but I'll have to figure out where to put the latter. In any case, I have quite a lot of reading ahead of me!

I'm looking forward to a long weekend of reading and crafting, and I hope yours is full of the same!

Three Blocks Filled

I'm joining in with Carole and friends for Three on Thursday, today with three blocks I've filled on my Stay at Home Bingo card this week. Somehow the powers that be all aligned and I was in a spot to read a lot this week, so don't think this is a regular occurrence!

First, my library hold came up on the fourth book in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series, Blue Lightening. These books are good, and they're also a very fast read. I managed to get through this one in two days. I enjoyed it -- 4 stars. It got put in the "Thriller" box on my bingo card.

Next up was Nine Elms, which I'd gotten as an Amazon First Reads freebie a while back. I started reading it to fill the "Number in the Title" box on my bingo card. It started off promising and was a page turner, but in the end I found it a little too graphic for my taste (I much prefer my murder mysteries to spend more time describing the food the detectives eat, as in the Gamache books, than the state of the bodies). I gave it 2 stars.

Finally, the winner of the three books finished this week was Ask Again, Yes, which I loved. It was the book I've been listening to while I run, and I finished it up after yesterday's run because I had only about 10 minutes yet. I enjoyed this much more than the last Mary Beth Keane book I read, and I especially liked how parts of the story were told from the point of view of different characters, so it really felt like I was getting a complete picture of the whole story. I gave it 5 stars.

I now have nine squares filled on my bingo card, though no bingos yet, and have started thinking strategically about how to fill the rest. I went browsing in my library app last night for my next read and next listen, so I've started Alias Grace and have The Rules of Magic queued up on audio for my next run. I'll have to think about where to put them, because both could go in two or more squares on my card.

I'm still crafting quite a bit while I read. The shawl is still on the needles but is closer to completion now that I've moved on to the border, but the rows are quite long (they take about 15-20 minutes each now). I have absolutely no idea how big the shawl will be and will need to wait until it's bound off and blocked to find out.

I've also continued to work on Rainbow's crochet blanket for a bit each day, though it doesn't look much different from the last time you saw it. Yesterday I got a bit distracted by some other crochet.

This is the Churchmouse Yarn and Teas Half a Granny Square Shawl pattern that I adapted to kerchief size, which I've seen several people do lately. I used some leftover handspun and managed to whip this up in a couple of hours yesterday. Of course Rainbow is now demanding one of her own, so I expect you'll see another one of these soon!

Have a good one, all! I'll be back on Sunday with, I expect, a lot of spinning -- the weather forecast is not looking very good.