Unraveled, Week 29/2024

This week is flying by -- I can't believe it's already Wednesday! That means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and to talk about making and reading. And today I have a finished object to share with you.

I actually finished my Little Plinth Tee preview knit last week before we left, but I didn't have a chance to block it until we got back. I'm so happy with how this turned out! I knit the 6 month size, with the intention of putting it away for my niece (due in November) for next spring. I used Lolabean Yarn Co. Bean Sprout (fingering weight superwash merino/nylon) in the colorway African Violets that I had bought at Indie Untangled before Rhinebeck in 2019 -- not the oldest yarn in my stash, but certainly one that was well marinated! I had some issues with the pattern that were purely user error, namely my apparent inability to count accurately, but no problems with the pattern itself. I believe Kerri is planning to release the pattern next week. It's sized from 3 months up to 12 years -- and there's an adult version (Ravelry link), too!

I'm still working on my Rift tee, but it doesn't look all that different from the photo I shared on Monday, so I'll wait to update you until you can actually see the progress that has been made. Instead, here's how my sweater spinning project is going:

This is the third bit of fiber for the first ply of my body skein (got that?). The body skein is the biggest of the three I have left to spin for this project, but compared to the blue skeins, this is taking a lot less time to complete. This first ply is three parts silver, one part orange; the second will be two of each and the third one part silver and three parts orange. The finished yarn, once plied, will gradually transition from all silver to all orange. The sleeve skeins will do the same but be smaller.

For the first time in a long time, I have finished no books in the past week! That's largely because I spent most of my reading time last week on A Suitable Boy to ensure that I got my weekly pages done before we left on our trip (because I was not taking that brick of a book with me!). I am, however, close to finishing Songs for the Brokenhearted, which I started while we were away, and I'm really enjoying it.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 28/2024

Wednesday again? Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and talk about what I'm making and reading (and rather quickly, because it's a very busy week at work in spite of the fact that it's only a three-day week for me).

My main focus continues to be the Little Plinth Tee, which is *almost* done!

The pooling isn't as dramatic in real life.

Although the stockinette roll isn't helping any here, you may be able to see that the fronts are done and the shoulder stitches are on waste yarn. I'm maybe halfway through the back at this point; once I've finished the back, the only things left to do are join the shoulder seams and do a quick edging on the neckline. There is a long-sleeved option for this sweater, but as I've sized it for springtime wearing, I went with the easy short sleeves.

I have also swatched for my next Rift tee, which I am planning to take with me to the retreat.

I made this swatch extra large to get a really good sense of gauge and used both US 8 (on the top) and US 9 (on the bottom) needles. It should say something about how often I use needles on the larger end of the spectrum that I had no fixed circulars in a US 9 and had to get out my old Knit Picks interchangeable set for that size. I don't use them very often anymore because the cables have a rather annoying tendency to pop out of the needle tips, but they were my only option. Fortunately, it looks like I'll be closer to gauge on a US 8, at least before blocking, and I don't expect the yarn (a cotton/linen blend) to change very much, but I'll know for sure as soon as the swatch is dry.

I got more reading done this past week, in large part thanks to audiobooks and the extra days off from work. I finished three books.

The first of the three was an ARC that I was invited to review (or maybe NetGalley sends those invitations to all its members?). Like Mother, Like Mother is a multigenerational story that appealed to me initially because I'm a daughter and the mother of a daughter and the family at the center of the story is, like mine, Jewish with roots in Detroit. I'll leave you to click over to the Goodreads synopsis rather than repeating it all here, and I'll add that it was intriguing and drew me in. But there were some strange things about the writing that detracted a bit from my enjoyment. The characters, though it's clear the author had very detailed ideas of them, feel rather one-dimensional and not particularly believable as actual people. There's a lot of dialogue, which makes the book feel more like a screenplay than a novel. There are also some oddities like questions ending in period rather than question marks (naturally, that sort of thing jumps out at me) and characters quoting something -- books? movies? -- that the other characters seem to get the reference to but that were lost on me as reader. It's definitely a book that made me think about big things like identity, parenting, and the stories we tell ourselves and whether or not they're truth, but as an editor, I felt it could have been better. I gave it 3 stars.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and Random House in return for an honest review. This book will be published October 29, 2024.

I was ready for a new audiobook a week ago, and I wanted something I knew I would like. I was delighted to find A Place to Hang the Moon available after both Mary and Katie had recommended it. This is middle-grades historical fiction set in WWII Britain. Siblings Anna, Edmund, and William, whose parents died when they were younger, have just lost their only living relative, their grandmother, who never seemed to care for them much and who made no arrangements for their guardianship following her death. Her solicitor decides to take advantage of the evacuation of children out of London to see if the children can find someone willing to take them in. There's a rather predictable plot from that point, but it doesn't detract from a lovely story of siblings looking out for one another above all in a fraught time. It reminded me a lot of The War That Saved My Life and its sequel, and it was a quick listen (especially because the reader was so slow, I had to increase the speed to 1.75x!). I will just point out that the cover of the audio shown here has an error -- Anna is the youngest sibling, though it appears she's the middle child in this illustration. Whoever did it missed out by not actually reading the book! I gave it 4 stars.

That one went so quickly that I needed another audiobook to get me through the weekend, and I decided to try something a little outside my comfort zone. A Darker Shade of Magic is fantasy, set in a world in which there are four different Londons -- White, Grey, Red, and (previously) Black -- all with different levels of magic in them. Only a few can travel between these worlds, and doing so can be dangerous -- as Kell, the main character, soon discovers when the rulers of one London try to take over another. I enjoyed the book, though I think I would have enjoyed it more had I read it with my eyes; it was tricky to keep a lot of the fantasy elements straight simply by hearing them, and I think that might have been easier for me if they'd been seen. This is the first book in a trilogy, so if I decide to read the others, I'll be sure to read with my eyes. I gave it 4 stars.

I am still steadily working my way through A Suitable Boy, and after Bonny reviewed it recently, I requested and was approved for an ARC of Songs for the Brokenhearted, which I plan to start soon and take with me to read this weekend.

What are you making and reading this week?

Here Comes Another Short Week

It is hard to go back to the usual routine after an extra-long weekend, but thankfully I'd already planned for a three-day work week this week, as Mo and I will be retreat-ing Thursday through Sunday. I'm sure it'll be a busy three days, but there's a lot to look forward to at the end of it.

The weekend was mostly relaxing. I'm happy to report that my blood donation was successful (my arms weren't scrutinized at all this time around) and took only about five minutes once I was hooked up. But I ran in the heat that morning and then was on my feet in heels for at while at the wedding that evening, so on Saturday I was wiped out. I cleaned the bathrooms and managed to walk -- slowly -- about four miles and I was done. I am very glad we had nothing planned and could lay low. I took the downtime to separate my fiber for the rest of my sweater spin:

What you see here is the fiber split and arranged for the body (left) and two sleeves (center and right). I've split up the two colorways so that I will end up with three skeins of three-ply yarn that gradually shift from all silver to all burnt orange. The papers underneath are my cheat sheets so that I can cross off each section of each ply as I complete it. You may recall that I did this sort of fade effect with this skein, though as both of those colors were so light and similar, the effect is much more subtle. I didn't get too into the weeds with measuring out the fiber, but I looked at the pattern numbers for the body and the sleeves and calculated how many stitches were in each for the colorwork to see what my proportions were like. Those numbers told me I'd need a little more than half for the body and the rest for the sleeves (which I obviously split in two). I've already started in on the first ply of the body skein, though I haven't gotten very far.

Mainly what I tried to work on over the weekend is my Little Plinth Tee, as ideally I'd like to get that done before we leave for the retreat. The body did move very quickly once I had the right number of stitches, and by yesterday morning, I was ready to start working the neck shaping. Unfortunately, I had just bound off stitches for the center of the neck opening when I realized that somehow or other one of my side markers was misplaced and my stitch count was all off, so I had to frog/tink all the way back to the start of the sleeve increases. So now it looks like this:

It is lucky that this is a small garment (I'm previewing the 6 month size) and I can quickly get back to where I was, but that likely means less time spinning and more time knitting this week. And really that's fine; it's just a matter of focusing my energies. In addition to wanting to finish this up, I want to swatch for my next Rift tee so I can take it with me on the trip.

Another task that got taken care of this weekend was labeling and inventorying all the handspun I am taking to the retreat -- approximately 90 skeins! I do hope that folks will take some home with them because it would be nice to come home with a lot less. There is still quite a lot that I didn't even get out, not to mention the stuff I wanted to keep, and much more fiber still to be spun, so it's clear that I need to make using handspun more of a priority.

In addition to whatever work throws at me this week, I'll be focused on packing, deciding what projects to take, and trying not to think about the fact that I will have to drive the whole way there (the Mister is typically the driver on road trips, but on this one, it has to be me!). I picked up an EZ Pass for my car after seeing that it would save me about half on tolls, and I'll fill up the gas tank before we leave. I am really looking forward to the weekend away with my kid, though -- and as an extra bonus, we are going to be meeting up with Bonny, Vera, and Dee at a coffee shop on Saturday morning, so soon there will be three more people in the fiber blogging world who can confirm I am a real person! While I always maintain that online friends are real friends, it's nice to meet people IRL, too, sometimes.

I hope your week gets off to a good start. Stay hydrated, friends!

It's Friday -- I Think

As much as I love an extra-long weekend, they do make it difficult to keep track of what day it is. Yesterday I kept thinking it was Saturday, so it was nice to wake up this morning (even if my regular weekday alarm woke me up) and remember it's only Friday. I'd already planned to take a vacation day today, but then the university decided to give us a bonus day off as a holiday and we had a 2 p.m. closure on Wednesday in my office, so my weekend is ending up longer than my workweek!

We had a very low-key Independence Day here. The weather wasn't great -- overcast, hot, and very humid -- so I went for a walk in the morning but then spent the rest of the day indoors. One project for the day was going through my handspun stash (well, part of it, anyway) and pulling out and labeling skeins to take to sell next week at the Twin Set Summer Retreat. Mo helped by attaching the tags after I wrote them out.

I still need to go through all of them to create an inventory, so I don't know exactly how many skeins there are, but let's just say I am feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of handspun I have and really need to focus on using it up, selling it, and/or giving it away!

I also spent some time yesterday working on my Little Plinth Tee preview knit. I was having an issue with it, and it turns out that it's all due to my apparent inability to count, so I had to do a little frogging back. But everything is back on track now, and I have a feeling I will finish it up very quickly now.

It's a bit off center here (the two white markers you can see are the center front), but you get the idea. Right now I'm in the "work even until body measures X inches" part, and everything you see above the ruffle was knit in less than an hour last night.

The most exciting thing to happen yesterday is that after finishing my plying on Wednesday, spending about an hour skeining, and then waiting a good 24 hours for the yarn to dry after its wash, I finally measured the yarn and confirmed that I have enough for the main color of the intended sweater!

It really is as shiny as it looks here! I wish I could show you how much drape this yarn has; you'll just have to take my word for it. I've got approximately 1,168 yards total, which is about 200 yards more than the pattern says I'll need. I've looked at the pattern and done a little math to figure out roughly the proportion of the contrast color I'll need for sleeves versus body, so now I am ready to split up the remaining fiber. I'll share how I'm doing that in a future post.

We don't have a lot planned for the rest of the holiday weekend, although today I'm attempting (this is attempt number four, if you're keeping count) to donate blood this afternoon, and this evening the Mister and I are going to a wedding (the son of one of his coworkers is getting married, so we won't know many people and likely won't stay too late). I'm hosting my mahj group on Sunday afternoon, and that's it! I hope to get some more spinning and knitting and reading it as well as to catch up on sleep (the Mister has been snoring a lot this week). I wish you a weekend full of whatever brings you joy and offer you the greetings of this tiny visitor to my zucchini:

Hello, Monday; Hello, July

I was not very excited for my alarm to go off this morning after a not-so-great night of sleep, but at least it's a short week. And while the heat and humidity are coming back midweek, right now it's 56ºF with a 50º dew point, which means I'm going to have a very comfortable run this morning!

We had a fairly low-key weekend, with the usual chores and errands but also a lot of relaxation time. I started out by finishing up both of the projects that were close to the end, starting with the second Bousta Beanie:

Somehow I used less yarn (about nine yards) on the second hat, despite knitting them exactly the same way. No matter -- I'm very happy with them both! Now they're ready for a bath and a block before they're added to the donation pile.

I also finished up the Benny singles Friday evening, so I was ready to start plying on Saturday:

After several plying sessions over both days, I had one bobbin finished yesterday:

I was concerned about having enough of this yarn for the main color of the sweater pattern I have in mind, but based upon how long it took to fill this first bobbin, I'm feeling more confident. I'll have to wait until I skein up the yarn to know for sure, of course, but there seems to be quite a lot of yardage there. I will continue to ply the rest today, as work allows.

I also started my test knit of the Little Plinth Tee over the weekend:

This is the peplum/ruffle along the bottom of the tee, and I actually think this part is going to be the slowest of the whole project because I have to count rows and work a set of short rows every 12 rows. But I've gotten into a groove now and no longer have to check the pattern as closely, so I don't think it will take me too long to get the rest of it done. Once I pick up for the body and start working in the round, I think it will be even faster. It would be great if I could get the whole thing done before Mo and I leave for our retreat next week, but we'll see. I'm focusing on this week first and will think about retreat knitting next week.

As I mentioned, it's a short week. Obviously we're off on Thursday for the holiday (I'm hoping for an early dismissal from work on Wednesday to kick it off), but I decided to take a vacation day on Friday as well, both because I needed to use up some time and because the Mister and I have a wedding to go to in the evening. I'm also going to try to donate blood again (this is attempt number 4 in the last month) on Friday afternoon; I'll share that saga if anyone is interested, but I'm hoping this is the end of it. In the meantime, I'm hoping it's a quiet week at work given the holiday. I hope it's a good week for you!

The First Friday of Fall

Happy Friday, friends! I'm so excited to see September arrive, even more so because as I type this, it's 55ºF -- feels like fall! In fact, September 1 marks the first day of meteorological fall, and I am here for it. The last couple of days when I've gone outside, there's been a bit of a chill and the light has looked different. I even ran through a section of dried leaves beneath a couple of buckeye trees! We've got 90s in the forecast for the long weekend, but I think the majority of the hot, humid days are behind us.

I'm very happy to see the end of the week because it's been a really stressful one. On Wednesday afternoon, just before I was about to leave to pick Mo up from school, I got sent a 40-page layout with a lot of content that needed to be proofread -- by yesterday afternoon. I did get it done, but it was not fun, and it disrupted my usual workout routine (I couldn't go for a walk yesterday until after lunch, once I'd finished it). I'm hoping today is calmer, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an early dismissal ahead of the long weekend.

But enough complaining -- you didn't come here for that! What you are likely to be more interested in is the crafting. I did make some progress on my current sock while I was working on that report (I got to a section where the same corrections were being made over and over again, so I'd mark them and then knit a few rounds while I read through a page at a time), and I think I'm about an inch from the heel of the second sock. I also spent the end of the day and the evening plying and finished up one last skein of handspun for August. I did not have time to set the twist, but I'll be taking care of that this morning.

This was my 23rd bag of Southern Cross Fibre spun this year, so now I have only one left to get to my doubled goal. But I don't think I'm going to stop there. If I remember correctly, I've got five more bags from 2022 unspun, so I'm going to do my best to get through them before the end of the year. Then perhaps when 2024's shipments start to come in, I can try to spin, at a minimum, one shipment from 2023 along with each new shipment each month and get caught up for the first time in my life!

I know some of you were excited about the pattern when I was test knitting it, so I wanted to let you know that Shana has released her Modular Bento Bag pattern! It's available on Ravelry and on Payhip, and it's on sale right now! I had a lot of fun knitting mine and plan to knit more of them in the future (there are four sizes in the pattern, and the largest is a great size for a market bag).

I also discovered that the second size can double as a hat!

This weekend should be a relaxing one. Tomorrow is our anniversary (16 years!), and we have reservations at one of our favorite restaurants. I have plans to get together with my mahj group on Monday morning but nothing else on the calendar. The weather is supposed to be beautiful, and one of my library holds just came in, so I plan to take full advantage of three days away from work! I hope you can do the same!

Winding Down

The problem with a trip that includes a weekend is that I don't get a weekend at the end of it to recover, so it's been a long, tiring week! And the oppressive heat (we're suppose to hit a heat index at or near 100º F this afternoon) does not help things -- I'm feeling very thankful for air conditioning and cool drinks this week!

Yesterday was an especially long day, though thankfully not because of work. My daily morning meeting got cancelled, likely because two of my coworkers were off, so I was able to get out for my walk a little earlier. Then I went to donate blood (I hit the two-gallon mark yesterday!) and ended up having to take a second shower afterward because I got so sweaty walking there and back. It was a bit surreal because the room where the drive was being held was the same room where my wedding reception was held.

This building used to be a private social club, started by Jewish Pittsburghers when they weren't permitted to join other clubs, but with dwindling memberships, it closed a number of years ago and the university I work for bought the building. I'm glad the building has been preserved, but it's still weird for me to think of it; that balcony and the stairs in the back corner are where the Mister and I made our grand entrance.

Crafting is continuing here despite the heat. I've started the third (and final) square of my test knit for Shana, which is simple but so clever!

After this square is knit, there will be an I-cord edging added around the top edge and loop handles created. I'm hoping I'll be able to finish this up in the next couple of days.

On tap for today, workload permitting, is plying these singles, which I finished up last night:

When I split up this fiber, I simply folded the length of top in thirds and broke it apart at the folds, so I didn't do any sort of planning for the colors to match up, so I'm quite curious to see how the finished yarn looks. With any luck, I'll be able to ply the full skein this afternoon.

I'll leave you for today with two amazing stories from my trip to Nashville:

• I told you about my trip to Parnassus Books, but I did not tell you the dramatic story of what happened afterward. When we finished shopping, we had a bit of a wait for our Uber (traffic in Nashville is ridiculous!), so we went around the corner to a cute donut shop for a snack and a drink. Our Uber came and took us back to the conference center, and I went to my room to FaceTime with Mo. I was showing her my purchases from the outing (I bought a skein of yarn at Haus of Yarn) when I realized I did not have the bag from Parnassus! I panicked, and as soon as I got off the phone with her, I called the donut shop, thinking I'd left the bag there. But they said there was no bag, so then I realized I must've left it in the Uber. I texted my friend Laura, who'd been the one to order the Uber, and she called our driver and left him a voicemail. I figured it was a lost cause and I'd have to go back to the store to replace my purchases the next day. Then, about half an hour later, she texted to let me know that she'd heard from the driver, who had my bag and was bringing it back! I went out to meet him and thanked him profusely, but he brushed it off as if it was nothing. Three cheers for amazing Uber drivers!
• The biggest draw of attending an event like SSK for me is meeting other crafters from all over. I told you earlier this week about meeting some lovely knitters from other countries, but I also met wonderful people from much closer. On Saturday afternoon, I was knitting upstairs in the main building (the market was open to the general public by then, so I was avoiding the crowds) and chatting with some other attendees, including a mother and daughter pair who had been in my spinning class the previous day. The daughter is entering her senior year of high school, so another attendee, who has worked in college advising in some capacity, came to talk to them about schools they might want to look into. Somehow it came up that this woman is originally from Pittsburgh, so I asked her where, specifically. It turns out that she not only grew up in my neighborhood, she lived around the corner from my childhood house! What's more, she also grew up attending the synagogue where we belong and (are you ready for this?) graduated from the same independent all-girls' school that I did and that Mo goes to now! How is that for an amazing coincidence?!

I hope you're staying cool if the extreme heat has hit your area, and I hope you have a great weekend! I will be back on Monday for my monthly One Little Word check-in.

Unraveled, Week 30/2023

Happy hump day, friends! This week has felt weird, what with my return home on Sunday afternoon; I kept thinking it was already Wednesday yesterday. But today is the day, and it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

Despite being at a knitting retreat for several days, I actually did not get all that much knitting done while I was away -- too busy talking and having fun, I suppose! Here's the current status of my WIPs:

I added maybe a section and a half to my Mas Vida Shawl, but I'm still not quite to halfway through my yarn (it's the type of shawl where you increase until you've used about half your yarn and then start decreasing). The sock you see here was cast on in the car on the way to the airport at the beginning of my trip; I finished the toe on Sunday evening at home. This pair is for my mother and is being knit in Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (I know you're shocked) in the colorway Cosmic. The color isn't quite accurate here -- I'm already noticing that the light isn't as bright in the mornings, sob -- but the good news is that I started the second sock and it looks like the stripes will match up pretty darn closely.

Last night I started a new project, a cute modular bag that I'm test knitting for Shana in three colors of Knit Picks Dishie (I actually had to steal a couple of skeins from Mo!).

The colors are way off here; they're suppose to be a coral and a honeydew green.

I had signed up for this project before I left for my trip, but I'm extra excited about it now that I've actually met Shana in person and gotten to know her a little better. It turns out that she's originally from the same area of suburban Detroit where my aunt and uncle live!

In addition to not getting a lot of knitting done while I was away, my reading also wasn't plentiful, though that was partly because of technical difficulties with the Hoopla app. I've been having issues where it signs me out of the app and then doesn't recognize my username and password, and the only way to fix it seems to be to reset my password. I've gotten in touch with Hoopla about the issue and they're investigating it, but there was nothing I could do when this glitch happened while I was on the plane. As a result of the issue, I have only finished one book since last week, and that is largely due to the reading I've done since I've been home.

The translation of The Postcard just recently came out, so I was excited to find it on Hoopla. This is a book about WWII and the Holocaust in France and about uncovering the truth about family when many forces have conspired to hide it. I'm still not completely sure if this book is meant to be fiction, but it's certainly quite autobiographical. Anne is trying to discover who sent a postcard with the names of four family members who were all killed in the Holocaust and why it was sent, and in the process of investigating this mystery, she uncovers the history of the two generations of her family who came before her. She also reveals a lot about the complicated involvement of France and the French in WWII. There are some heartbreaking details of what happened to Jews in France but also some heartwarming stories of those who fought in the resistance. I gave it 4 stars.

When Hoopla crapped out on me on my return trip home (despite having worked while I was waiting to board my flight in the airport), I started Poverty, by America, which I'd bought not too long ago when it was a daily Kindle deal because the author is part of the upcoming speaker series. I haven't gotten too far in it but have already highlighted quite a lot. It's nice to be reading some nonfiction for a change, even if it's quite devastating nonfiction.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 39/2022

Every week I think that Wednesday sneaks up on me, but this week it feels like it even more because I took Monday off. But here we are again, and it's time for the weekly link-up with Kat and the Unravelers.

As it is the last week (really, the last few days) of September, I've been in a finish-it-up mood. First, I finished some socks that I started way back at the very beginning of summer. I'll forever think of them as COVID socks, because I finished up the first one when I was stuck in the den while the Mister was isolating in our bedroom.

Pattern: Roaring Twenties Socks (Ravelry link) by Nicole Simmons
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Sunshine (100% superwash merino) in Peacock
Needles: US 0 (2.0 mm), magic loop
Started/Completed: June 20/September 26

I knit only the first sock of the pair initially because it was a test knit and I only had to complete the one. And as you can tell from looking at the pattern, the stitch design is quite elaborate and requires a lot of attention, so when I finished that first sock, I needed a break. But I really did want the finished pair, so I set myself a goal of finishing them this month -- and really I completed them just in time for the start of hand-knit sock weather!

The yarn I used for these isn't one I'd normally use for socks, but it was a semisolid that I already had on hand that would work well for the test. I have a feeling these aren't going to be worn all that often because they're rather fancy, and I do have a fair amount left of the skein (I used just 66 g for both socks) should I need to do some darning in the future.

Another thing I finished up this weekend was the last of the big bag of HipStrings batts from this year's Tour de Fleece. You may remember that this is what they looked like all together:

When I originally laid them out like this, I noticed two general groupings of color families, and I put those together for the two bigger skeins that I spun earlier. But the two at the bottom -- the ones that look a little brown, a little red, a little purple -- didn't really fit so well, so I decided to spin them on their own. I spun both onto one bobbin, wound the singles off into a center-pull ball, and plied from both ends to create this little skein of about 150 yards of light fingering weight:

The camera unfortunately doesn't do a great job of capturing all the depth in the color, but perhaps if you click to make the photo larger, you'll be able to see some of it. Jill is extremely talented in putting together colors and fibers with such dimension to them -- my only complaint about this bag of batts is that I have no idea what was in them! I know there was wool and silk, and I suspect some flax as well, but I don't know any specifics. It doesn't really matter, in the end.

I've also been finishing up in my reading life. After only one book done last week, this week I've finished three.

Continuing in my Booker Prize short list reading, I finished The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which may not yet be out in the United States (I ordered a hardback from Blackwell's -- I couldn't resist that beautiful cover!). This is a hard book to read in many respects. To begin with, the title character is dead when the book opens; the title refers to the seven days following his death in which he is trying to figure out how he died and whether his death can have some impact on the world he left behind. It's also a story that's set in Sri Lanka in 1989, a place that has been ravaged by civil war between multiple factions and that shows little sign of reaching a peaceful resolution. I really did not know much about this period in the country, so my ignorance added to my difficulty in making sense of the story at times. But I stuck with it, and it was worth it. In my opinion, there's a big payoff in the last 50 or so pages of the book, when everything finally seems to come together. I'm not quite done with my short list reading, but this would be my pick to win the prize. I gave it 4 stars.

The Trees was yet another Booker short list read. This is a biting satire in which white Southerners, all descendants of those who committed lynchings and all presented as stereotypical "rednecks," are found brutally murdered alongside the body of an unknown Black man who appears to have been dead a long time. The initial murders in Mississippi are soon being investigated by two Black special agents of the Mississippi Board of Investigation and, soon, a Black FBI agent. And soon the murders spread to other parts of the country, triggering an outrageous reaction from white Americans. It's clear that what's happening is a bit of retributive justice for the lynchings of Black Americans over the centuries, but there's a supernatural element at play as well. As satire, the book works quite well, and yes, it is way over the top. But my main complaint is that I think the author got so deep into writing what some might call a revenge fantasy that he never really explains some key aspects of what's happening, and I finished the book feeling a little unsatisfied. I can't say I enjoyed the book so much as appreciated it, though, and I ended up giving it 4 stars.

Finally, I was inspired by Kat to do a reread. I'd read Olive Kitteridge on paper back in 2020, and at the time, I thought it was a story just about her and was confused when I got to a new chapter and realized instead that it was a collection of short stories. After enjoying other Elizabeth Strout books on audio, I decided to listen to it this time, and I did enjoy it more on my second read. Whether it was the different format that improved the experience or just knowing what to expect I can't say for sure, but I did get the humor more this time, and I'm looking forward to listening to Olive, Again once I'm ready for a new audiobook. I upped my initial rating of 3 stars to 4 stars for my reread.

I'm currently reading the last book of the Booker Prize short list, Glory. I've only read a bit the last two evenings before bed and am finding it a bit slow, but I haven't even made it 50 pages in. I am committed to finishing it, though, especially because I bought a hard copy, but there are already things that are annoying me about it. I reserve the right to change my mind, of course. When I finish it, I will have read nine of the 13 books on the long list, and I have two more of them on hold at the library (and eventually I'd like to read the last two). I didn't set out to read the entire long list, but it looks like it will happen eventually! And I think it's worth noting that so far I have liked all but one of the books, so it's been well worth my time.

What are you making and reading this week?

A True Everyday Sweater

I promised you a real FO post, and here it is -- I love this sweater so much!

Pattern: Quotidian Tee by Kerri Blumer, size 34" with short sleeves, A-line body, and mid-hip length
Yarn: Knit Picks Lindy Chain in Serrano, 4.84 skeins (871 yds./797 m)
Needles: US 3/3.25 mm
Started/Completed: August 17/September 15

I'm so glad I got a chance to preview-knit this pattern for Kerri; when I saw her version on Instagram, I knew it was a pattern I had to knit. As the name suggests, this is truly an everyday sweater. The pattern has so many options (seriously -- click over to her website and scroll down to read all the different options!) that even though it seems like a basic tee, it can be customized in so many ways. I knew I was going to use a summery yarn for this, so I chose options that would make a comfy warm-weather tee: short sleeves and an A-line body for a relaxed fit. And "relaxed" is truly how I felt when I wore this on Saturday (those of you who were on a Zoom with me that afternoon might have noticed I was wearing it!). The pattern is extremely well written and has so many thoughtful details: shaped shoulders that are joined with a three-needle bind-off (so there's no seaming), short-row sleeve cap shaping, twisted ribbing for the edges, and a simple purl round that separates the ribbing from the stockinette. My only modification (if you can even call it that) was to work a slightly different method for some of the short rows, but even if I hadn't been preview-knitting the pattern and thus committed to following it as written, I wouldn't have changed anything.

Clever decreases maintain the twisted ribbing at the V of the neckline

This was my first time knitting with Lindy Chain, a cotton/linen blend, and it will not be my last -- it makes a great warm-weather fabric that feels silky and cool to the touch. Once I got the hang of the join, it was very easy to join in a new skein, too. But it does have a couple of characteristics that frustrated me just a tad. Simply because of the way the yarn is constructed, there are some irregularities that make it a bit thick and thin, and so the fabric has some lumpiness to it, which I think you can see in the photo above. This didn't really bother me except for the fact that some areas where stitches were picked up had a tendency to look a little more stretched out than I think they would with a wool yarn. I found that the areas of the sleeves just to either side of the underarms had some areas that looked like they had holes, so I wove in my ends on the inside to close those up. Also, as you'd expect for something with a linen content, the fabric has a tendency to wrinkle:

Granted, this is what the back looked like after I'd been wearing the tee for most of the day, but you can also see a definite fold line from when it was laid flat to dry when it was blocked. All this means is that my tee might need a little steam before it's worn, particularly if it's been folded in a drawer before, or I just need to not care about wrinkles!

I think the true mark of a good pattern is the feeling that you could knit it again, and this is absolutely one I would and probably will knit again! I think my next one will be in wool or a wool blend, and I very likely will choose a different body style and/or sleeve length. My time to wear this first one is probably limited, but I have a feeling it will be coming with me to Florida in December and will get a ton of wear next summer!

An FO for Friday

I had hoped I'd have some modeled sweaters to share with you today, but it turns out that when the house is cool, it takes a bit longer for a cotton/linen sweater to dry. But my sweater is officially done!

I'm well aware that this is a particularly bad photo of it -- the light isn't great and there are still some visible wrinkles -- but it's at least proof that it's complete. I believe Kerri is planning to release the pattern today, so I finished just in time! I should note that I wasn't required to finish the sweater before the pattern was published, but it did work out that way, which makes me unreasonably happy. Of course I'll be sharing all the details when I do a proper FO post, likely on Monday, but I can tell you that the fit on this is perfect and I would not be surprised if I knit another one of these.

The garden isn't quite an FO yet, as we have several cantaloupes getting bigger by the day (and the first one getting ever closer to being ripe), some tiny bell peppers, and a handful of green tomatoes. I'm sorry to say that the squash I shared last week didn't last -- I found it on the ground, off the vine, the day after I posted it. But this week I found two more with blooming flowers, and so far they're still attached.

This afternoon Rainbow and I are going to get COVID boosters and flu shots (the Mister will get his on a later date so that we don't have an entire household of miserable people if we have aftereffects), and we have a quiet weekend ahead. I am hoping to make it to the bookstore to pick up Maggie O'Farrell's latest book (something I wanted to do last weekend but didn't get around to), and I'm going to try to spend as much time outside as I can to enjoy the good weather while it lasts. I hope you also get a beautiful weekend to enjoy!

Unraveled, Week 37/2022

We've made it to Wednesday, dear readers, and in my neck of the woods, it's finally starting to feel like fall -- it's currently 58F outside! The weather this week is just about perfect, and I am enjoying my time outside immensely (even the slightly more intense run I did yesterday). As per usual, this morning I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers and here to share an update on knitting and reading.

Thanks to some quieter days at work (which I feel like I've earned after some very busy days the past couple of weeks), I am getting very close to having another finished sweater!

I finished up the back and joined the shoulder seams on Monday evening, and I started and completed the first sleeve yesterday. These sleeves are knit using short rows, and because I'm doing short sleeves, once the short rows are complete, I'm nearly done with them (there are about ten rounds of knitting before the ribbed cuff is worked). I picked up the stitches for the second sleeve before I set the project down for the night, so starting on the short rows on that one is atop my to-do list for the day. I think the second sleeve will be faster than the first because I now know what I'm doing and also will have my needle arranged so that things are slightly less fiddly. The collar will be the final bit, and it's only about eight rounds of knitting, so I think it will be pretty fast. And it looks like the weather is going to be perfect for wearing this over the weekend!

Reading has been (mostly) very good this past week, with four finishes.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors had been on my radar for a couple of years, but I finally got the kick to read it when Mary mentioned she'd just finished it on our Zoom a couple of weekends ago. It was perfect timing because I was in need of a new audiobook to listen to while walking/running and my library had it available with no wait. I have no doubt it was just as powerful a read on the page as it was in the ears, but I really appreciated the multiple narrators who knew how to pronounce the Hawaiian words/terms and who made the story really come alive. This is a sad family story with a bit of magical realism, and though it made my heart ache a bit, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars.

My next finish was the next selection for the Erdrich-along, The Plague of Doves. I'll admit that I struggled with this one for a while. For one thing, there are no familiar characters in this book, so I had to try to keep track of a bunch of new names, and that's made doubly hard by the fact that there are so many connections between so many characters. Central to the story (though for most of it in the background) is the mystery of the murder of an entire family save the baby, the vigilante justice that's meted out in reaction to the murder, and the generational trauma that results from these actions. I trusted Erdrich as always to bring the whole story together, and she did -- the answer to the mystery is revealed in the final pages. I gave this 4 stars as well.

In the category of "not so great" reading this week was Treacle Walker, which I wanted to read only because it's on the Booker Prize short list. Katie was kind enough to send me her copy, and I'll be passing it along to someone else. It arrived in the mail on Monday and I sat down and read it in about an hour that afternoon. I'm glad it only took me that long to read because I did not care for it at all. I got the basic gist of the story but spent most of that hour completely confused about what was happening and what people were saying. I suspect some of my difficulty is due to the dialect in which it's written, but I still feel like I need someone smarter than I to explain it to me. I gave it 2 stars.

Finally I finished a book I'd had tagged "to read" on my Libby app after hearing it mentioned on several bookish podcasts. A Place for Us is a saga about a Muslim Indian-American family that deals with the struggles of immigrants and their children to find themselves in a country that sometimes doesn't seem to want them and where their religion often sets them apart. Though it deals specifically with Islam and with the children's grappling with how observant to be, in many ways it's a universal examination of children becoming adults and defining themselves as apart from their families. I listened to this book, which was a good choice (in my opinion) given the many references to Islam and the religious practices of Muslims, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars.


I'm currently reading The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida as part of my effort to get through the Booker short list. I've only read a bit the past two evenings, so I'm hoping to find some more sustained time to focus on it.

What are you making and reading this week?

Little Rest, but a Lot of Progress

Good morning, friends! It's always hard to wake up on Monday, but this morning it seemed a bit harder than usual, probably because I did not have an especially restful weekend. That was mainly for good reasons -- we were busy doing fun things! -- but part of me is wishing I slept a little more. Yesterday was a day of rain and general gloominess, so we crammed a lot into Saturday, including a trip to an art fair in a local park (called, appropriately, A Fair in the Park). I came home with what might be my new favorite coffee mug from a local potter:

The leaves are actually indented into the surface, so there's a bit of texture to the mug. The potter also had a lot of beautiful pieces featuring birds -- definitely click over to her site to take a look! She had so many bowls and mugs and vases I would have loved to take home but limited myself to just this one piece.

I had thought that yesterday would be a day to knit and read because of the weather, but Rainbow announced that she really wanted to make a trip to Michaels to pick up more kitchen cotton (isn't that music to every crafting parent's ears when your child wants to go yarn shopping?), so we took a little shopping trip yesterday afternoon. I'm happy to say that she found some yarn that pleased her and I purchased zero skeins for myself, though we also stopped at Marshalls and found some fun stuff, so I didn't come home empty handed. And in spite of all the activity over the weekend -- including a birthday party for my brother-in-law at a brewery on Saturday night -- I still made some serious knitting progress. My Quotidian Tee is finally looking like a real sweater!

Apologies for the terrible photo, but it's still very cloudy here this morning. As you may be able to see, I've completed the fronts and am working on the back. I'm hoping to finish the back today, which will mean all that is left is the (short) sleeves and collar. Kerri is planning to release the pattern this week, and while I don't have to have my version done just yet (she's given us until the end of the month), it would be great if I could finish mine up very soon -- not least because the weather is starting to cool off and I want to wear it before it gets too chilly for a t-shirt!

I'd also hoped to share some progress on the mate to this sock, but after working on it Friday and Saturday evenings and getting ready to transition from the cuff to the leg pattern, it wasn't working and I realized it was because I'd completely misread the instructions. So I frogged and restarted, and as there are only about two rounds of knitting complete, I didn't think it was worth taking another bad photo. 

Okay, time to finish chugging my coffee and get this day started! I hope to see some of you tomorrow evening for the Read With Us discussion of Sorrow and Bliss, and I'll be back with another update on Wednesday.

Unraveled, Week 35/2022

It's Wednesday -- again?! I'm having a little bit of a hard time keeping track of what day it is this week because Rainbow's first day of school was yesterday (a Tuesday), which is a weird day to start school, if you ask me. She had a great first day and was very excited to tell me all about it when I picked her up yesterday, so now we just have to make it through the rest of the week.

As per usual, I'm linking up today with Kat and the Unravelers and giving an update on my making and my reading.

Knitting has been a bit slow the past couple of days because work has been very busy. I got a bit annual report dropped on me late last week that has been filling up my days, but I should be able to finish it up today, and then I'm hoping there's a bit of a lull. I've still been working on my Quotidian Tee pretty much every day, though, and I'm almost ready to split for the front and back after finishing the last of the decreases Monday night.

That ball off to the right is all that's left of my third skein of yarn, and I'm hoping to take some photos of my process when I join the next skein.

I'm thinking that I might give this project a little bit of a break, though, in order to whip up some socks. I cast on a pair last week while I was at the orthodontist with Rainbow (you saw just the cuff last Wednesday), and I'd like to get them done to give to my sister-in-law for her birthday next week. That might be a tall order, but I figure that if I can't quite manage the pair, I could at least give her one completed sock and then give her the other one as soon as it's done. These are just plain stockinette -- I'm letting the yarn do the work -- so they should be fast.

Reading this past week has been all about quick books. I've finished three, but it feels a bit like cheating because they were all so fast!

My first book was a reread of Sorrow and Bliss in preparation for the Read With Us discussion next month. I read it earlier this year, prior to the announcement of the Women's Prize, but at the time could only get it on audio from the library. I really loved it, but I also wanted to experience reading it with my eyes, so this time I read it as an ebook. The good news is that I liked it just as much. I still found it to be laugh-out-loud funny at times, heartbreakingly sad at others, and overall very well written. I think it's a really clever way of addressing how and if mental illness has an effect on interpersonal relationships and the impact of a label (in this case, Martha's illness is made up and isn't even given a name). This is a still a 5-star read for me, and I'm looking forward to talking about it!

Next I listened to two short audiobooks by Julie Otsuka, both less than four hours: When the Emperor Was Divine and The Buddha in the Attic. Although I read them in the order in which they were written and published, I'd recommend you read them in the reverse order if you plan to. Buddha follows the immigration of Japanese "picture brides" who came to the California prior to WWII and is told largely in the first person plural, giving a sense of the collective experience of these women who were promised an exciting new life in a new country and instead found lives of hard work and frequent discrimination.

From those varied stories with common through-lines, Emperor focuses on one (unnamed) Japanese American family in San Francisco, beginning just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The father has been arrested and sent away to a prison camp, and soon the wife and two children are on a train headed to an internment camp in Utah. The story follows their experience and those of the others in the camp for the duration of the war and their return to their homes afterward. 

Both books are well written and impactful in their stories of the treatment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans, but they really only scratch the surface of a part of U.S. history that's often not told. I'm interested in reading more, so if you have recommendations, let me have 'em! I gave both books 4 stars.

Currently I'm reading the next selection for the Erdrich-along, The Plague of Doves, though I've only just started because I have been so tired the last few nights that I've only managed a few pages before I've been ready to call it a night.

What have you been making and reading this week?

Hopeful Signs

It's Friday, and the last Friday of summer vacation. Rainbow starts back at school on Tuesday, though she'll be there for a bit on Monday because she's been asked to be a buddy to a new student joining her class and they have an orientation/welcome session Monday morning. I'm still in denial a bit that I will shortly have a seventh grader, and I'm also a little sad that I won't have her around all day, but I think it will be good for her to be back to a regular schedule.

A while back, Kym was using her Friday posts to focus on things that gave her hope, and those posts always lifted my mood, so I've decided to copy her use her posts as inspiration for today. First, after feeling like my sweater was creeping along, I was very pleasantly surprised to measure it yesterday and see just how much I'd knit:

You can click on that photo to embiggen if, like me, you have older eyes, or you can just trust me that the measuring tape says I have 11 inches of body knit. I have three more sets of decreases to work (I'm knitting an A-line body) and then have to work even until the body measures 17 inches before I split for the front and back. That suddenly doesn't seem so far off! I joined my third ball of yarn yesterday.

Even though the summer is coming to a close, our garden still apparently has some surprises in store for us. We've managed to keep our melon vines alive and even have a melon growing! We thought it was a honeydew, but based upon what's happening with the skin, we now think it's a cantaloupe. I've got the vines draped over the fence along our driveway to keep them off the ground, but I think I'll need to rig up some sort of support for the melon soon.

Finally, I can't remember if I mentioned it, but a while back something (I suspect a bunny or bunnies) ate all the leaves off our bell pepper plants. I figured that was it for our attempt to grow peppers this year, but I just left the bare stems in the ground and continued to water them along with the other plants in the front yard. To my delight, more leaves grew, and then yesterday, I discovered flower buds:

Although September is usually still warm here, we may or may not have enough time to actually grow some peppers, but I'm delighted to see these buds all the same. I have grand plans for next year's garden, including putting in a raised planter in the front to lift what we plant off the ground and, I hope, out of reach of local wildlife.

I hope (hehe) that you're finding some hopeful signs in your life this Friday. Happy weekend, all!