The Slowdown

It feels like the weekend was just starting, but here we are back at Monday again. It was a quieter weekend for a number of reasons. Molly ended up staying home from school with a cold on Friday. Thankfully she was feeling well enough Saturday morning to attend the birthday brunch, but she was kind of grumpy all weekend because she didn't feel well and had lots of homework to do. I'm glad she rallied because the birthday party was fun. It was just immediate family, but there was plenty of good food and plenty of amusement in the form of my nephew, who wanted to open all the presents for his little sister. The sweater was a hit, and we finally took a photo of the photo of Molly wearing it so I could share it here:

Can you see the spot of drool?

Once we got home from the party, it was time for Ruthie's midday walk and then "snoozie time," during which I read the newest Louise Penny, having just gotten my hold from the library, and knit. On Sunday morning, I was on a two-hour Zoom with the dog trainer (super useful!) and then another one-hour Zoom before, again, the midday walk and puppy nap time. So I didn't get in any walks on my own, but sometimes it's nice to take a little break from a lot of physical activity. I figure I had a really good run on Friday and was still getting in a few miles in walks each day with Ruthie, so I embraced the slower pace. It also allowed me to finish up two projects.

First up was a charity hat using some leftovers -- most of the remaining Fibernymph Dye Works Confetti Tweed DK that I had remaining from the last hat held together with fingering scraps (two other FDW yarns and about half of the leftover Felici from the first sister-in-law socks). I used the Sagamore Flyover pattern (Ravelry link), with a slight modification to the crown decreases, and US 7/4.5 mm and US 8/5 mm needles. I've knit a bunch of these hats this year, though all the previously completed ones have now been donated, so this is the first in my rebuilding of the charity hat stash.

I also finished the Ryoko wrap for my mother-in-law -- and as you can see, it needs very badly to be blocked to be a triangle rather than a diamond!

I don't have any idea how busy this week is going to be at work, but even if it gets chaotic, I know I only have to get through the next five days and then I'm off for a week -- nine days in a row, if you include the weekends on either end! I think I can manage whatever gets thrown at me if I keep that in mind. Here's hoping I didn't just jinx myself!

I hope the week is off to an okay start for you -- and if you have a minute, be sure to go wish Mary a happy birthday today!

Unraveled, Week 46/2025

How is it Wednesday again already? Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I am still working on the same two projects but at least am getting closer to finishing them. I got a bunch of work yesterday and so only managed a handful of rounds on the socks, but the evenings have been dedicated wrap/shawl knitting time, and the rows are getting shorter:

I managed to leave Ruthie for about two minutes to snap a photo of this upstairs while the sun was actually out (not that it did much to warm things up) so you could get a better sense of the actual color of the yarns. I'm hoping I'm able to stretch this out and get a bit more length when I block it, because as written it's not a very big wrap, but I think the mohair/silk will make it very cozy. I might have to find a pretty shawl stick or other closure for it.

I've once again had a good week of reading with four finishes, though two of them were ARCs.

In Life: A Love Story, 92-year-old Flo has received a terminal diagnosis and knows she doesn't have much time left in her life, so she resolves to write a letter explaining some things to Ruthie, the now-grown little girl who used to live next door and was like a daughter to her. Flo has decided to leave her house and all her possessions to Ruthie, but she also wants to leave behind some life lessons she's learned. In giving the history of some of the objects in her house, some of which might seem worthless or mundane, she shows that what matters isn't always things but the memories and the people they recall. This is a quiet book, and while it's not without difficulties that arise in people's lives and marriages, it's a peaceful and welcome departure from the news. That said, I also found it to be rather schmaltzy and, at times, a little over-the-top with religion. Your mileage may vary. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published March 17, 2026.

After enjoying her forthcoming novel so much, I decided to listen to Anna Quindlen's most recent release. After Annie follows a family in the year following the sudden death of its mother. There's the husband who is overwhelmed at being the sole parent and the one who rarely did much of the heavy lifting of parenting before. There are her four children, the oldest of whom, her only daughter, finds herself feeling responsible for her three younger siblings. And there's her best friend, who finds herself slipping back into drug addiction without Annie to keep her on the straight and narrow. It's a sad story, as you would expect, and it certainly highlights how much work mothers do to keep their families running, but it paints a picture of how families can come together after a tragedy. I gave it 4 stars.

Some time back, I bought a used copy of The Language of Goldfish because I couldn't find it any of the library apps (probably because I think it's been out of print for a while). This is a book I can remember reading multiple times as a young teenager, and I wanted to revisit it as an adult because my memories of it were vague and I was curious about what it was about it that spoke so loudly to me. This book follows 13-year-old Carrie as she struggles to adjust to living in a new place and growing up. She begins to have episodes of visual hallucinations and even has an instance of losing awareness of time and where she is before she attempts suicide. Following that, she is hospitalized and then goes to see a therapist every day to address what was causing her such distress. I can't say that I loved this book as much on a reread (at least as an adult) as I did as a young teen, but it at least held up relatively well in the time that's passed. It was probably pretty advanced for when it was published, in fact, in that it addressed mental illness frankly and as something that should be talked about and addressed. Adult me, however -- particularly the adult me who has a degree in psychology -- felt a little frustrated that Carrie's illness was never really defined and that her therapist didn't seem to do much other than listen to her talk. But all the same it was nice to read something from my childhood that didn't surprise me with something like overt racism for a change. I gave it 4 stars.

If there's one historical era I've read more about than any other, it's the Holocaust and WWII, so it's always a pleasant surprise to learn something about the history of that time period that is new to me. Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World introduced me to the documents known as yizkor books, volumes created as memorial records of the towns and shtetls essentially erased by the Nazis. They describe what life was like in these places and what sort of people inhabited them in addition to containing lists of the names of those killed. While the book addresses this topic generally, there's also a focus on the town where the author's relatives came from, making this a memoir of sorts, too, as her study of the yizkor book for their shtetl was able to tell her things about the family left behind that her grandmother and great uncles could not and would not discuss. I found it to be a fascinating read. My only disappointment in the book is that the ARC I received did not contain the photos that are referenced in the back of the book -- I would have loved to see those family photos! But that just gives me an excuse to pick up a physical copy of the book when it's published. I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 20, 2026.

What are you making and reading this week?

Tesselation

It's been a while since I had a real FO (a pair of socks doesn't seem all that impressive to me), so it feels good to finish up the week with one!

Pattern: Tessella by Alina Appasova (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Solemate (55% Merino/30% rayon/15% nylon) in Reno, 103 g used, and lolodidit Everyday Sock (75% Merino/25% nylon) in Tea on the Green, 83 g used
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm
Started/Completed: September 7/October 14

As you'll see from the completion date, I did actually finish this before my Unraveled Wednesday post went live, but I'd set it to publish at 6 a.m. and only finished binding off right before bed, so I figured I'd just leave it. 

This was a lot of fun to knit. It'd been a while since I'd worked mosaic knitting, so it took me a little bit of time to reacquaint myself with how to read the charts plus account for the increases. As far as the shaping of the shawl, it's very similar to a Hitchhiker, though the increases are placed a bit differently. But once I grew used to the construction and could intuit how the color patterning worked, I didn't really need to refer to the charts other than to count my repeats of each one.

The only modification I made, if you could even call it that, was to add most of an additional repeat. A pattern repeat in this pattern is three repetitions of each chart; I managed 2.5 more of Chart B. The pattern does explain how to enlarge it, and the way it's written, you can do half of a chart without it looking strange. I knew I would not have enough of the darker color to work those final six rows, so it worked out just fine. And this shawl is plenty big. To give you an idea (because why would I actually measure it and make it easy?), here it is laying out to dry -- on two drying racks:

The yarns I used for this shawl both came home with me from Nashville. The lighter color, from lolodidit, is really a light fingering, at 463 yards/100 g, so I'm not surprised that I have more of it leftover. The variegated Lorna's Laces was, fortunately, overweight to begin with, so I have a few grams remaining even after using 103 g in the shawl. It was generously sized at 425 yards/100 g, but it was noticeably thicker than the light tonal green.

This shawl was a lot of fun to knit, and it only took as long as it did because my knitting time on it was limited. I would definitely knit it again, and I think it'd be great for handspun because you can end it pretty much anywhere when your yarn starts to run out. I very well may knit another; next time, I'll try two yarns with greater contrast.

We've got a pretty boring weekend ahead, with the only plans on the calendar at the moment a brunch on Sunday for my dad's birthday (his birthday was this past Wednesday). I feel a bit like I've got a long weekend because Molly has a noon dismissal today and the day off on Monday for parent/advisor conferences, so I won't have to do the mid-afternoon school run. I'm hoping she'll get her homework done early in the weekend so she can relax; it's been a rough week for her. It's been a long week for me, too, so I'm hoping I can get in some extra rest as well. Ruthie has not been barking early in the morning much this week -- dare I hope she'll let me sleep in on the weekend? Fingers crossed!

Unraveled, Week 42/2025

Good morning! It's Wednesday again, and although Kat is away this week and there's no formal link-up, I like sticking to a schedule.

Here is where my WIPs stand:

As of Tuesday afternoon, when I took this photo, I had one repeat of Chart B left on my shawl (each pattern repeat is three repeats of the chart). By the time you're reading this, I'm hoping to be further along and may well have finished, but the rows are so long by now that I'm counting on needing another day to get through those last dozen of them. And then, of course, I'll have to weave in ends and block. I'm fairly certain that I will have an FO to share by the end of the week, however, and that will mean I can also turn my attention back to the socks for my sister-in-law. I've been ignoring them for the past several days while I focused my attention on the shawl, but I'm nearly ready to start the heel flap on the second sock and don't expect to need much more time to finish up the pair.

Reading this week has a study in extremes -- two very short audiobooks and one long digital book.

Coming from the Booker Prize longlist was Universality, a very short novel (I listened to all of it in less than 24 hours) that packs a punch. Like the author's first novel, I suspect this is one I'm going to need to reread with my eyes because so much went by so fast in the audio. This starts out with article written about an event at a farm owned by a banker during COVID lockdown in which a member of an anarchist group is seriously injured with a gold bar. But is that really what happened? The story is reexamined through the point of view of various people involved directly or indirectly in the incident, and these alternate points of view show just how much power can be held in the written word. There's also a lot here that probably went over my head because it's focused on the UK and British views on race, class, money, etc. As with the earlier book, I was impressed by how much heavy stuff could be crammed into such a brief novel without having the feeling of being overwhelmed. I gave it 4 stars.

My next finish was one I'd been waiting for from the library for a while, and it was worth the wait (and the time it took to read when work kept getting in the way). Katabasis is the third R.F. Kuang novel I've read and my favorite so far. As was the case in Babel, there's a strong element of magic in this one, principally that it's a field of serious study ("Magick") and the scholarly focus of the main character, Alice Law, who determines that, following the death of her Cambridge advisor, she must go to Hell to find him and find some way of bringing him back to life, if only so that she can achieve her goal of having a career in academia. She is horrified to discover that her fellow advisee, Peter Murdoch, has done the same thing, and now both of them have to navigate the courts of Hell to find their advisor. In the process, they discover much more about themselves. I love that Kuang, in her typical genius way of skewering a particular segment of society, make Hell resemble a college campus, turning this into a truly funny work of satire of academia. But it's also clear how smart she is in how much actual knowledge of math, philosophy, physics, religion, language, and classics she weaves throughout the narrative; frankly, sometimes I didn't feel smart enough to understand the book! It's funny at times, sad at times, and at times goes on a little too long, but I really enjoyed it and felt it had an especially satisfying ending. I gave it 4.5 stars.

I really enjoyed Sarah Moss's memoir earlier this year but had only previously read one of her novels, so this past weekend I listened to another. Ghost Wall follows 16-year-old Silvie, who is on holiday with parents in the north of England joining an experiential archaeology course. Silvie's father, a bus driver, is obsessed with England's ancient history and insists that she and her mother be as authentic as possible in this experience, which means eating only what they can hunt or gather and wearing clothing that people then would have worn. He is also harsh and demanding and physically punishes both women when he feels they've disobeyed him or embarrassed him. Silvie longs to escape her stifling home and gets a taste of what life might be like as a university student from her interactions with the students on the course, but it's made clear to her again and again that she is still under her father's control. It all comes to a head when her father and the course professor decide to reenact a human sacrifice. Will Silvie be a willing participant, and how far will her father go? It's a very well-written book that captures some very strong emotions in few pages (or, in my case, few hours of listening time). I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading three books: on paper, Celestial Bodies, for our Women in Translation study; digitally, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny; and on audio, Is a River Alive? (which just mentioned the term "katabasis" -- don't you just love it when there are connections like that in your reading?!).

October Weekending

Don't weekends always go by too quickly? This one certainly did. I have to work today, but somehow it feels like partly a vacation day because Molly is off from school (in-service day), so I don't have to do the school pickup run, and it isn't a day I have to go into the office, so I'll take it.

Molly had a great time at her dance on Saturday, though she complained about her feet killing her yesterday. She gave me permission to share this photo, which we took when we dropped her off at the park across the street from her school (it's rather picturesque, as you can see, so her group of friends was meeting up there first to take photos).

The photo doesn't really show how pretty her dress was -- it had sequins and purple fabric flowers on it. She and one of her friends got ready beforehand and made their own bouquets.

We also had a nice visit with my aunt and uncle last night, though the scene was quite chaotic with two dogs, two little kids, and two "new" adults. Ruthie was a bit overcome and pooped in the house again (I think she was just overly worked up), so she had to be put on her leash and kept close to me while we ate. Next time, we'll leave her at home. The important thing was that we were able to be together, and my aunt was touched by our cards and presents. And there was cake!

I made a point to focus on my shawl this weekend because I'd really like to get it done, and I'm just about through the last repeat specified in the pattern. It's gotten bigger -- too big, in fact, to fit on my 40 inch circular needle without being bunched up.

I'm going to do at least one more repeat, but the ball of the darker color is dwindling, so I may not be able to do more than that. We'll see!

This week I'm hoping for a typical week without too much undue stress -- and I'm hoping my new reading glasses will arrive this week! Hope your Monday isn't too harsh. Be sure to treat yourself to a little something special if you need it.

Unraveled, Week 41/2025

I can tell that it's going to be another long week because I woke up yesterday thinking it was Wednesday and it was only Tuesday. But I've checked and today is actually Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers.

I haven't made much progress on my knitting projects this week, mostly because I've been busy with work, but I also opted to spin and read one evening. Still, here is your weekly update photo of my shawl:

And I've added a little to my sister-in-law's socks, or rather the second sock of the pair:

Reading has been a little better, thanks to shorter books. I've finished three this week.

One of the nice benefits of being a member of NetGalley (other than, of course, getting to read books before they're published) is that sometimes publishers will reach out to you and ask you to read one of their books that they think you'll like. That happened to me recently with This Is Not About Us. I'd so enjoyed Allegra Goodman's Isola that I was interested to read more of her work, plus the description of the book made it sound right up my alley. This book is labeled "fiction" rather than a novel, and that's because while it's not quite interconnected short stories, it feels like a series of vignettes that are all connected. The story begins with three sisters, the youngest of whom is dying. In the wake of her death, there is an incident involving a homemade apple cake that causes a rift to form between the two surviving sisters. The rest of the book takes the reader through the repercussions of this estrangement as it has an impact on the other members of the family, who are at all different stages of life. There are births, bat mitzvahs, midlife crises, and divorces. There are holidays and normal days. But family is what ties all these stories together. The characters feel real and the situations relatable, though perhaps that's largely because the experiences of this Jewish family felt so familiar to me. It's never happened in my family, but I could easily imagine an estrangement happening because of food! I really enjoyed my time with this family and gave it 4 stars. Thank you to Random House/The Dial Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published February 10, 2026.

When I was ready for an audiobook over the weekend, I went back to my Hoopla bookmarks and decided to listen to another Kevin Wilson. Now Is Not the Time to Panic is set in a small town in Tennessee in the mid-90s. Sixteen-year-old Frankie feels like she doesn't fit in until she meets Zeke and the two of them decide to create a mysterious work of art with a strange saying and post it all over town. Before it became a thing on the Internet, their poster goes viral, leading to unforeseen and even tragic results. Twenty years later, Frankie finds that her role in the panic has been uncovered and has to face the fact that a long-kept secret will be revealed. While this book wasn't as outrageous as Nothing to See Here, it is a bit of leap to accept that photocopies of a poster could lead to full-on satanic panic. Still, it raises some interesting questions about art and ownership, and it certainly gives a very realistic portrait of the discomfort of adolescence. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally, I revisited a book I read quite a long time ago. I first read Mrs. Dalloway in my senior year of high school for my AP British literature class -- in fact, for this reread, I pulled out the very same copy I used in class (and inside was a bookmark on which a classmate and I had exchanged notes about our college decisions). I didn't remember much of it, but I think I probably made more sense of it then, when it was discussed and analyzed as we read. The brilliance of the stream-of-consciousness narrative is still there, but I think the fact that I read this at night right before going to sleep took away from my enjoyment of it. I would like to read/reread more Virginia Woolf, and this seemed like a logical place to start, but I think my expectations of her were higher than the actual reading of it. I gave it 3 stars.

I am currently trying to get through Katabasis as fast as I can (does anyone else feel immense pressure when they have a library book with a long wait?) and have just started Celestial Bodies for the women in translation book group Mary is leading.

What are you making and reading?

Unraveled, Week 40/2025

Hello, friends, and happy Wednesday! And happy October! Even though it's the middle of the week, I feel like it's been forever since I did a catch-up post because of Monday's OLW post. So I've got a lot for you in today's Unraveled post, and as usual I'm linking up with Kat and the other Unravelers.

For starters, how about a pair of finished socks?

I used my SHaGS pattern (Ravelry link) and 95 g of a skein of Woolens and Nosh Targhee fingering, one of two that came home with me from SSK this year. The colorway name is Penwings, which is a strange name, so I did some digging and it turns out that it has to do with Benedict Cumberbatch and his apparent difficulty with pronouncing the word "penguins" (thank you to Bonny for directing me to this video that explains it all). I used my usual US 0/2.0 mm needles for these, magic loop, and I'm quite pleased with myself for getting them to match pretty much perfectly:

I'm typically pretty successful in getting striped socks to match through the leg, but sometimes something goes off kilter in the heel and the toes end up being slightly mismatched. Not so with this pair (though it may appear that way just because of how they're stacked in the photo). I also grafted the toe of the second sock in a moving vehicle, so I think I earned some sort of knitter's merit badge with these? We're supposed to have some cooler weather for a couple of days, so perhaps these will get their inaugural wearing.

As for WIPs, here's where things stand:

I have a third of the current repeat and two more full repeats on my shawl remaining in the pattern as written, but it's looking like I will have enough yarn to knit some more. I also discovered four more balls of Felici in my stash, despite thinking I had used up the last of it earlier this year, so they are becoming socks for my sisters-in-law for Christmas. I've already started on the first of these.

On to reading! Last week was kind of chaotic, with not as much downtime, but that's life. I've finished two books since this time last week:

Flashlight is on both the longlist for the National Book Award (fiction) and the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize, and it was highly praised by some readers I admire, so I'd been waiting rather impatiently for my hold to come up from the library. It turns out to have been well worth the wait. This is a family drama at its core. At the outset, we learn that Louisa and her father have gone for a walk on the beach; he is carrying a flashlight and cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found alone, her father presumably having drowned. But then we go back in time and learn about her father's life, from his time growing up in Japan as the son of Korean immigrants to his emigration to the United States to his disappearance in the sea, and we go forward with Louise and her mother, Anne, as they navigate their new reality and their difficult relationship. This is a big book, with a twist I did not expect, and writing that requires one to read slowly. I loved it -- 5 stars.

The Listeners is a work of historical fiction set in West Virginia in the early days of the United States' involvement in WWII. It takes place in a fictional luxury hotel called the Avallon but has its basis in reality: When the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, and its citizens were detained in those countries, the government decided to sequester diplomats and their families from those hostile countries in resort hotels. At the Avallon, June Hudson is the general manager, trained for the role by the recently deceased patriarch of the family who owns it, and she must walk the fine line between maintaining the high level of service the hotel prides itself on and cooperating with the state department and FBI officials who are overseeing the unusual guests. There is also a special relationship between June and the "sweetwater" the hotel is known for, water that is reputed to have therapeutic powers and that somehow enables the hotel to be a success but also is somehow influenced by the events that take place in the hotel and the emotions of those involved. I thought this was a really interesting read in the sense that I learned about an aspect of WWII that was previously unknown to me, but I was also frustrated by how much was left unexplained or skipped over. I gave it 3.5 stars.

As I should have expected, I've gotten a bit overwhelmed by my library holds right at a time when work is going to get busy, so I've had to suspend some holds for a bit while I get a handle on things, particularly as I also have a couple of ARCs on my Kindle shelf. I'm still trying to get through Mrs. Dalloway, though I haven't read more than half a page or so in the past week. Perhaps this weekend there will be more reading time.

Also, by way of a life update, I took a sick day on Monday (which ended up being a good thing, as I really needed to recover from both the race and my COVID shot) primarily because I was going to the eye doctor for a much-needed checkup, and I'm here to report that I am officially middle-aged because I came home with a prescription for reading glasses!

Not So Monday

Monday is a lot easier to take when you know you'll have Tuesday off -- and that you'll be knocking off from work a little early! Rosh Hashanah begins tonight, and we'll have 20 people (including four small children) and a dog in the house. This is technically Ruthie's last day of recovery, but I'm going to wait to give her the sedative until a couple of hours before everyone comes over in the hope that it will help her handle all those people in the house. She's been without her donut since Saturday, when she woke up with it deflated and I finally admitted defeat (I'd patched a hole in it once before). She seemed quite happy with the situation:

Today she'll finally get to be free of the onesie. I probably could have taken it off earlier, as the incision seems to be almost completely healed, but as she wasn't fighting it as much as she fought the donut, I figured I'd keep it on for the full two weeks. 

In between walks and naps, I managed to bake another pair of challahs, and these looked even better than the last batch, if I do say so myself:

I learned from last week and baked them on separate baking sheets so they didn't get stuck together. Tonight we'll get to dig into all of them, with plenty of honey drizzled on top for a sweet new year.

There was some knitting over the weekend as well, though perhaps not as much as I'd like, but that's okay. Here's where the two WIP stand:

I made a rather stupid mistake on my shawl on Friday night and knit a couple of rows I'd already knit (because I missed the arrow I'd written on the chart to indicate where to start when I picked it up again), so all my knitting time was spent knitting and then tinking four rows. But now I'm back on track, and fortunately the sock requires no chart or even remembering where I was because I can measure or compare it to the first sock. I'm very close to starting the heel on the second sock, so if I can get in a little time every day, I may well have a finished sock before the end of the week.

In addition to celebrating the holiday today, we're also going to be celebrating the Mister's birthday -- there will be birthday cake and apple cake for dessert! There will also be plenty of other delicious food, all cooked by my mother: matzoh ball soup, brisket, chicken, vegetables, etc. I'm sure she'll send food home with everyone and there will still be more than enough for another meal for several families, so we'll get to enjoy it more than once. I'd share some with all of you if I could!

I hope your Monday isn't too Monday-ish, and even if tomorrow is just a regular Tuesday for you, I hereby give you permission to eat something sweet, like homemade challah or a ripe apple dipped in honey. See you back here on Wednesday!

Unraveled, Week 38/2025

Hello and happy Wednesday, friends! I hope you're having a good week. It's been a bit exhausting here, but the sun is shining, my sinus infection is finally going away, and it's my favorite day of the blogging week. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

You saw my sock progress on Monday, so I'll spare you more of that and instead show you how my two-color shawl has grown:

I am about halfway through the pattern repeats now, but of course the rows get longer as you go, so there's still a lot more knitting still to do than already done. The pattern has two main body charts, one with the first color dominant and one with the second color dominant, and you alternate three repeats of each for each section. Now that there's more knit, the zig-zag patterning is also much more apparent. I'm also at the point where I basically just have to do a quick check-in at the beginning of each right-side row to get my bearings and then I'm off the chart.

I've also managed to put in a bit more time at my wheel. I'm starting to wonder if this yarn is just going to look grayish brown when it's plied, but we'll see -- I very well may be surprised!

There hasn't been as much reading in the past week as in weeks prior -- not entirely a surprise, given a puppy patient and a big work project -- but I have managed to finish two books since this time last week.

When I asked for audiobook recommendations recently, Pam mentioned Kevin Wilson's latest book, but as you'd expect, it has a long wait on Libby and isn't on Hoopla. Hoopla did, however, have two of his earlier books available, so I decided to finally read Nothing to See Here, a book that many people I know had long ago read and that I actually had a copy of on my shelf, having picked it up from a Little Free Library. The premise of this book is a bit ridiculous: Lillian, our narrator, gets a call one day from Madison, who was her roommate for a year she spent at an elite boarding school. Madison is now married to a senator being considered for secretary of state, but there's a big secret in his family that could derail his plans: His children from his first marriage spontaneously burst into flames. Madison asks Lillian to come take care of the children for the summer while the vetting process is ongoing, and Lillian, whose life since leaving that school has been rather aimless, sees it as a way to get out of her mother's house and get a change of scenery. Though the idea of children catching on fire is bizarre and totally unrealistic, it's a creative way to portray people who feel like they don't fit in or aren't loved by their family. Yes, it's all rather preposterous, but it's also funny and surprisingly touching. And it was an easy listen. I gave it 4 stars.

It's a good thing I was listening to a lighthearted book, because my other finish this week was the complete opposite. As Night Watch opens, it is 1874 and 12-year-old ConaLee and her mother are being driven to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum by Papa, the man who ConaLee knows is the father of the three babies her mother has given birth to in the past two years and who they have just given to nearby families but not to her. She doesn't really know who he is, only that since he came to their West Virginia mountain home, her mother has virtually stopped talking and stopped being able to care for herself or her children. Papa tells ConaLee that she must pretend to be a neighbor of her mother's, call her by a different name, and see that she's taken care of in the asylum -- and then he drives off, leaving them alone. The story then jumps back in time a decade, to the last year of the Civil War and the experience of a nameless sharpshooter in the Union Army leading up to the Battle of the Wilderness. And we get some of the story of Dearbhla, the older Irish woman who lived near ConaLee and her mother and who was more intimately connected with them than ConaLee ever knew. All of this is set against the background of the hospital, a real place founded according to the principles of a "moral" cure. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2024, and if you look at the reviews on Goodreads, it's a mixed bag. It's not an easy book to read and includes some very difficult subject matter -- war, sexual assault/rape, racism, etc. -- but I think it was extremely well done. I gave it 5 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 37/2025

It is Wednesday, and that means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers to talk making and reading. But first, a thank-you for all the well wishes for Ruthie. She made it through her surgery with no problems and is now home in a onesie and an inflatable donut. I think she will not be very happy with me for the next two weeks as her activity is limited, but I am thankful that she's now spayed and I didn't have to deal with a heat cycle.

Back to the usual blog content! I have been working on my two projects a bit every day. I didn't take another photo of my socks, though they look pretty much the same as they did on Monday except that there's an additional repeat. The shawl, on the other hand, has grown quite a bit:

I was a bit worried at first because it didn't look like the pattern pictures and I thought I was doing something wrong, but it turns out that you can't really see the zig-zag effect unless you look at it at a distance or squint your eyes a bit. I am still referring to the pattern because I don't yet have it memorized (and I do have to keep track of repeats of each chart because they switch back and forth each section), but I can at least see the logic of the stitch pattern and can kind of intuit the next step. I will say that although the pattern does have both written and charted directions, one thing it seems to be missing is any indication of a repeat for when the stitch count exceeds the stitches shown on the chart. Understanding how the pattern works is how I figured out how to proceed, but a less-experienced knitter might find it challenging.

Something I did not manage to get a photo of (though there's really not much to photograph at this point) is that I started spinning something on my wheel yesterday while Ruthie was at the vet! I pulled out the Shaniko wool that I brought home from SSK and started spinning off one end of the braid. I'm planning to spin the whole thing onto one bobbin, wind the singles into a cake, and then ply from both ends. But I have a feeling that's a ways off yet. The important thing is that I am trying to actually use what came home with me from Nashville rather than just tossing it into the stash. As I did with my acquisitions last time, I took a photo of everything, and I'm crossing off what I've used:

It's worth noting that three skeins of yarn you see here are currently being used in projects, and the fiber at the bottom is what I'm spinning. I have plants for the gray cake with the three minis at the top, the other self-striping skein, and the skein of dark green, so really that leaves me with just one skein of yarn without a plan. Not bad!

My reading was not as prolific or as wonderful this week compared to last, but after a week with three 5-star books, anything is going to be a letdown! Let's just say I finished three books that were fine (they all earned 3 stars from me).

My parents are both fans of Fredrik Backman's books, so I was not at all surprised to get handed down a hardback copy of his latest, My Friends. As is the case with all of his books that I've read (I've read most of them), you don't get the full picture or the full story until the end, but pretty early on you're plopped right in the middle of it. This novel centers around a famous painting and the group of teenage friends responsible for it. An 18-year-old named Louisa, who has recently aged out of the foster care system, is the impetus for the story being told, as she has long adored the painting and wanted to know the story behind it. So the reader learns the story as she does, and it's not a completely happy one. There is a lot of darkness in this book -- domestic abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, death -- but there's also art and beauty and friendship and love. I think it's probably my least favorite of Backman's books that I read.

I have a bad habit of not having a queue of audiobooks I want to listen to so that I'm not rushing to pick something right before I need it, so sometimes I don't make the best choices. That's what happened to me last Friday, when I needed something in my ears for my run. I'd just heard someone mention The Wedding People, so I thought I'd see if the author had any other books. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is her previous novel, and it is told from the point of view of Sally Holt and addressed toward her older sister, Kathy, who dies in an accident pretty early in the book (this isn't a spoiler; we know from the beginning that Sally is looking back from her late 20s and that Kathy died when the two were 13 and 16). What this novel is, at its heart, is a book about grief and the ways people deal with it. I thought the characters were well written and multifaceted, but I also wanted to yell at many of them to go get some therapy. I think The Wedding People, which also has a dark side, is a much better book.

My last finish was The Emporer of Gladness, which I'd put on hold after Kat raved about it. I had a little trouble getting into it but was determined to persevere. This is a story set in a run-down Connecticut town that starts with a thwarted suicide attempt, when Grazina, an aging widow with dementia, spots Hai, a 19-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, on a bridge and talks him down. Hai ends up living with and caring for Grazina and going to work with his autistic cousin, Sony, at a chain restaurant that seems a lot like Boston Market and that employs its own cast of misfits and outcasts. It's a story about found family and about the lasting impacts of trauma. The writing is strong, but I found it to be depressing. There's a lot about drug addiction, poverty, death, etc. There was a scene in the middle with a pig slaughtering operation that was particularly hard to read. I might give Ocean Vuong's poetry a try, but I don't think his novels are for me.

I'm currently rereading Mrs. Dalloway -- even using the copy I read my senior year of high school with my notes in it! -- and just started Night Watch. I'll be in the market for an audiobook later this week, so let me know if you have any good recommendations!

Recovery Days

It was another quiet weekend here, which I think we all needed. The Mister has been feeling better, though he still has a lingering cough. I've had what I'm pretty sure was a sinus infection that's been getting better day by day but has been giving me a sinus headache pretty much every day for the past week. And Molly is still adjusting to being back at school and worked a five-hour shift on Saturday. Needless to say, we all were in need of rest. We did manage to get ourselves cleaned up and out to dinner on Saturday night, but other than a couple of walks and taking Ruthie out, I spent the weekend relaxing.

Saturday was pretty gloomy after some rain early in the day, but yesterday was a gorgeous fall day -- the sun was out, there was a light breeze, and because the high was only in the upper 60s, it was cool enough to wear wool socks. I decided to give my most recently finished pair their inaugural wearing:

I cast on some new projects over the weekend, but before I could do that, I wanted to finish up a lingering WIP that had some issues. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen this scary-looking photo:

This is the hat I was knitting using the two 50 g skeins of Loopy Ewe yarn I picked up from the giveaway table at SSK. I did weigh them before I started and saw that one was slightly heavier than the other, but I figured I'd just use a little less of that yarn. It wasn't until I switched from the pink to the blue, however, that I realized that the blue was noticeably thicker than the pink, and that meant that it didn't go as far. So when I finished the blue half, it was shorter than the pink. To make the hat work, I needed to take some fabric out of the pink half, which I thought I'd do by running needles through two points, removing the fabric between them, and then grafting the stitches back together. In reality, my eyesight is now apparently bad enough that I didn't follow a round of stitches the whole way, so when I tried to pull the excess yarn out, I ended up having to undo it stitch by stitch to get to one continuous round. At that point, it was easier to just reconnect the yarn from the part I'd pulled off and knit up the crown again. It took much longer than it should have, but it's done now. Next time, I'll remember to count rounds or at least measure so that the length is the same!

This is going into the charity pile, unless someone I know expresses interest. And it's two skeins used up!

The two new projects are also using SSK yarn -- I'm determined to use it all as soon as possible so it doesn't linger in the stash. First, a pair of socks using superwash Targhee/nylon fingering from Woolens & Nosh. The colorway is called Penwings, and I don't know the meaning or inspiration, but it sure is pretty! I also didn't expect it to stripe this way, so that was a fun surprise.

I also cast on a new shawl using a semisolid from the giveaway table and one of the skeins of Lorna's Laces that was a doorprize. The pattern is Tessella (Ravelry link), and it's a lot more straightforward than it looks. What you're seeing here is actually a second version; I had started it with the colors switched and realized it was messing with my brain to have the darker color associated with the light squares in the chart and vice versa, so I ripped it out and started again. There's not as much contrast between my two colors as the samples in the pattern, so it may be that the patterning doesn't show up as well as it could, but who can argue with using free yarn? And I can always make another one.

I'll leave you for the day with a little bit of eye candy: After nurturing it all summer, my one sunflower finally bloomed late last week, and this weekend, the bees found it.

Tomorrow Ruthie is getting spayed. I'm sure she'll be fine, but if you can send a good thought or two her way (and then a good thought or two my way as I take care of her after), I'd appreciate her!

Still Drying Out

I'm sure you'll all be shocked by this, but we had more rain over the weekend. It poured late in the day on Friday and rained overnight. It did clear up a bit during the day on Saturday, but it came back overnight and rained off and on for most of yesterday. And it's been warm, so it's very humid out there. It's the time of year when blowing my hair dry is a bit of an exercise in futility!

Puppy class went well on Saturday. I didn't give Ruthie anything to eat other than a few small treats for going to the bathroom outside before we left, but she was still sick in the car on the way there (fortunately, I had a towel under her and it wasn't much). She did much better on the way home, I think because she finally figured out that if she was lying down, it wasn't so bad. Mostly she just drooled. The class instructor recommended putting her in a crate in the car, at least until she grows out of it, so I ordered a travel crate to use for transporting her. If this video will work, you can see a bit of class. Most of the hour is free play for the puppies, so they can get used to socializing with each other and with other people. During this time, you're not allowed to to call or interact with your own dog, though you are free to do so with other dogs. Ruthie was definitely a bit reserved, but she didn't hide under my chair the whole time and did interact with some of the other dogs.

In terms of knitting, all I've really made progress on is my Hitchhiker. It's been the easiest thing to pick up and put down quickly. I attempted to start the lace on my Kouyou but had to tink back twice because I got to the end of the row and didn't have the correct number of stitches to finish the pattern. I think I will need to mark off the number of stitches required for each repeat with stitch markers before I try again. I think once I have the lace established, it'll be easier to find my place, but clearly my brain hasn't been fully engaged thus far. Thank goodness for the simplicity of the Hitchhiker!

The last time I counted, I had 31 teeth, but I don't know if the yarn that remains is enough to get me to the official 42. We'll see!

This week the (golf) U.S. Open is in town, and the Mister will be attending a couple of days because his company has some sort of sponsorship thing there. Molly's scheduled for two shifts at her job, and I've got my usual schedule. This week's challenge is to try to keep Ruthie off the couch. She's not supposed to be on it, so of course it's the only place she wants to be. The puppy class instructor recommended giving her a better alternative (cuddles, treats, etc.), but of course now she seems to be going on the couch on purpose to get whatever the reward is for getting off. She likes to push my buttons!

Finally, because I know some of you asked to know, I wanted to let you know that more than 90% of the households who voted yesterday were in favor of unification, and the numbers for the other congregation were similar. So we will soon have a new entity forming!

Hello, Summer

It's a muggy, foggy Friday morning here. We've had several days of heat (mid- to upper 80s F), and we had some rain overnight, with more on the way later today. I should be able to fit in a run this morning, but I will be happy to camp out inside this afternoon if we do get a storm or two. The short stretch of days we had without rain and with the addition of heat was enough to dry out the soil in the front, so I'm always thankful when Mother Nature takes care of watering the flowers for me.

It has been an interesting first week of summer break (for Molly). She started her job this week with two four-hour shifts. On Tuesday, it was just her and the owner there, so she manned the register while he did the actual smoothie making. Yesterday there was a third person there, so she got to do some fruit prep. So far, she's enjoying it, and I'm enjoying the fact that she's getting up and out of the house. I think it will be a good experience for her.

I've had a relatively quiet week at work (no complaints there), though Ruthie has been challenging. Her latest is jumping up on the couch, where we haven't allowed her, so it's been really hard for me to sit down and eat a meal because I'm constantly getting up to shoo her off the furniture. She's also peed in the house twice in the last 12 hours for no apparent reason -- except maybe she's showing her annoyance? She has her first session of puppy kindergarten tomorrow morning. Please keep your fingers crossed that she makes it there without getting carsick! (I'll be giving her only a very small amount of breakfast before we go.)

While I haven't cast on my silk/linen top yet, I did start a new project, and this photo shows you why I can really only knit around Ruthie while she's napping -- just a second after I snapped it, she chomped down on the yarn cake and tried to carry it away.

This is another project for SSK. The featured designer for this month and next is Angela Tong, and I just happened to have her Kouyou (Ravelry link) shawl pattern already in my library from a knitalong my former LYS did way back in 2016. I'm using handspun from HipStrings for bonus tickets, starting with the blue/green skein:

I expect that I will use all of that skein and then will use the dark gray from the other skein. I'm just about done with the stockinette portion (I think I have two more rows left to knit), so it will be moved to evening knitting and I'll be getting my Hitchhiker out again for puppy nap knitting time.

Other than puppy class tomorrow morning, we don't have much planned this weekend, although on Sunday there is a big vote related to the future of our synagogue. For more than a year now, we've been involved in discussions with another congregation about the possibility of unifying into one new congregation. There's been a long process of looking at the many aspects of both organizations to look at areas of overlap and difference, the involvement of a consultant who specializes in this kind of process, and many meetings and town halls. Just last week, the boards of both congregations voted in favor of unification; this weekend is the vote by the membership. Our family is in favor of the unification because we're of the opinion that the two separate congregations will not survive much longer on their own. I think declining membership and declining interest in religious affiliation are issues that aren't unique to Reform Judaism, but they are major challenges for us, and I'm excited by the possibility of created something new. I will certainly let you know the results as soon as we know them!

I hope you have something good to look forward to this weekend! Enjoy it, and see you back here on Monday.

A Friday FO

We've been lucky to have some beautiful weather here in Southwest Florida since we arrived late last week, but this morning we woke to rain -- rain that will likely stick around all day. It's a bummer, but it happens. Really all that means for me today is that I'll do an aerobic workout indoors rather than go for a run, and frankly my knees probably won't mind one bit. (On Wednesday, when it was cooler and the humidity was low, I ran only my second-ever 10K without stopping, so they could use a little extra rest from hitting the pavement!)

Thankfully the sun was out yesterday when I bound off my Hitchhiker:

I have a little bit of yarn left but definitely not enough for another repeat, so I decided to bind off when I got to the last "tooth" on the end. I'm a little bummed that I only have 41 teeth -- I was hoping for 43 to match my age! -- but I'm so happy with how the yarn worked up that I can't really be too disappointed. Every minute of knitting this was pure delight and so fast, especially when you consider that it took me less than a month to spin the yarn and knit the shawl. I really think this is the perfect pattern for handspun because you can work at any gauge and knit basically until you run out of yarn. I suspect I will be casting on a new one shortly after we get home and I have access to my handspun stash again.

Mo's friend went home yesterday, but today my best friend's parents -- longtime family friends -- are coming to stay with us overnight before they drive over to Miami to see their youngest daughter and her family, so we'll have some good company. And on Sunday we're planning to drive to the other side of the state to see my aunt and uncle. So we should have a nice weekend.

I'll leave you today with the rainbow I've been seeing every day as I walk or run past one of the many fountains in this development. Also, if you haven't seen it already, be sure to go visit Bonny's blog to see her stunning version of my Hydrophily pattern.

Have a great weekend! See you back here on Monday for a One Little Word check-in!