Ready for Weekending

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unraveled, Week 37/2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are you making and reading this week?

Weekending, 5787*

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

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

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

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

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

Like Magic

Oh, how I love having a Monday off! Of course, dogs don't understand federal holidays, so I was up more or less at the regular time today, but at least I won't have to attend any work meetings, check my work email, or be glued to my laptop all day.

We had a really nice holiday weekend, starting with our anniversary dinner. We went to one of our favorites, and it was as good as always, although I think they were short-staffed in the kitchen or something because it took at full hour for our entrees to come out and my chicken was still raw inside when I cut into it (they whisked it away immediately to cook it properly, and the host came to check that everything was okay when it was returned to me). We had all had a long week and went to bed early.

On Saturday, in between other things, I felted the two pairs of mittens I'd knit recently. I now felt exclusively in the dryer, getting the items good and wet and then tossing them in with a towel or two for friction. I've found that although I often have to run them for several cycles (usually because the load is small enough that the sensor thinks it's done way before the time runs out), the fabric felts very well this way, with minimal water used and the ability to check on things whenever I want. Here's what they looked like before felting:

and here they are after:

They felted so much, in fact, that the large ones are now my size, even though they were meant to be two sizes larger!

I also spent part of the weekend swatching for my handspun sweater, so now I wait for the swatch to dry so I can see if I got gauge. And it's not yet time to cast on a big project, so in the interim I'm knitting another charity hat holding lightweight leftovers double:

The pinky red is Dream in Color Jilly (a superwash merino single), the gold is a merino/ingeo (corn fiber) blend, and the orange is Fibernymph Dye Works sport weight. I started with the Jilly and the FDW, and when the latter runs out (assuming it does before the hat is done), I'll join in the merino/ingeo. I'm enjoying using up leftovers, but it's also fun to pull out these partial skeins and remember what I used them for previously. The Jilly was used for a sweater, the merino/ingeo for a shawl design, and the orange sport was used along with black for Halloween-ish hat for my oldest nephew.

We are all having a quiet day today. I plan to enjoy the cooler, less-humid weather (and, I assume, no road construction) on my run this morning, and Molly and I may do a little shopping this afternoon. Of course, we're not forgetting that it's Labor Day -- don't forget to thank your friendly neighborhood union member for having things like weekends!

Pre-Weekending

Phew, it's been a long week! Single-parenting is a lot easier now that Molly is self-sufficient (for the most part), but doing all the school runs and cooking and cleaning up all the meals and walking the dog and working full time and donating blood on top of all that, all while dealing with an extreme heat advisory has been a lot, to say the least. It's a good think we have a long weekend coming up without any big plans!

The Mister was due to get back from his trip very early this morning (I'm writing this post on Thursday) and will be working from home today, once he gets up. My office is closing at 2. Molly has school as usual but obviously is done mid-afternoon. I think we're all going to be looking forward to a nice dinner out tonight for our belated anniversary celebration.

I'm still in a weird in-between place in my knitting; I don't want to cast on anything too big because my next imaginary internet points thing starts next Wednesday, but I also don't want to be without knitting, so I'm working on strange things. If the mittens weren't finished by last night, they will be soon, and in the meantime I'm knitting a strange little hat with some fingering-weight singles that I thought were non-superwash but aren't (I was planning to knit up a piece of fabric to felt) and so I pivoted:

This will never be a full Ruthie.

What has become the brim is double-knit using just a single strand. The idea was that I'd knit up a tube, felt it, and then cut it open to make a little holder for scissors, darning needle, etc. But now that I know this won't felt (or at least not easily), it's become a baby/child's hat. I moved to bigger needles and joined the other end of the skein so I'm working double stranded, and I'll try to use up as much of the yarn as I can.

While I can't cast on for my next sweater until next week for it to count, I did wind the other skein and plan to swatch this weekend.

I spun this yarn back in 2016, originally intending to knit a different sweater with it, but it's been hiding in the stash ever since. I've got just a little less than 1,500 yards of it. The size of the sweater I'm planning to make specifies 1,345 yards, so I think I should be fine (especially because I'm pretty sure that's a padded estimate). The yarn is fingering weight, so I think it should make for a good fall/spring sweater.

The heat is finally supposed to break this weekend, and I'm looking forward to being outside without melting. Other than our dinner reservations tonight, our only plans at this point are a haircut for Molly tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps we'll do some grilling for Labor Day or attend the local parade! Or perhaps we'll just hang out, which would be just fine with me. Do you have any plans? Whatever they are, I hope you enjoy them!

Unraveled, Week 35/2026

Wednesday again, but the first of September! This particular Wednesday, the Mister and I are also celebrating our 19th anniversary. We will have to wait to celebrate until Friday, though, as he's still away at a work conference. But I donated blood yesterday in the room where we had our reception, and that felt appropriate! 

I won't postpone linking up with Kat and the Unravelers, however, so here's an update on my making and reading.

I have not done much knitting this week, mainly because I haven't had much free time being the only adult in the house, but I've finished a positively enormous mitten (that I'm hoping will become a normal-sized mitten once it's felted):

I'm making the largest size in this pattern (why not, given I was trying to use up yarn?) and was happy to see that I have more than half left from what I started with, so I won't be playing any yarn chicken this time around. I was able to get the cuff done on Monday evening and moved on to the hand last night, and I think I'll be able to wrap up the pair by the end of the week.

Although I didn't get a chance to take a photo, I did wind up a skein of handspun so I can swatch for my next sweater, which I hope to be able to cast on a week from today.

I finished four books this past week. Two were okay, one was really good, and one I loved.

I listened to 10 Marchfield Square on a whim because it was available on Hoopla and sounded like it would keep my interest. It's a murder mystery set in an apartment building owned by an older widow. When one of the tenants is murdered, followed shortly by the possible murder of his wife, and the owner is unsatisfied with how the police are investigating, she enlists two other tenants -- a writer struggling to find inspiration for his next book and a cleaner -- to try to solve the case on their own. I thought it got a little convoluted at times and I did figure out the killer before the end, but I thought the narrator did a pretty good job (aside from her unfortunate habit of pronouncing dogs as "dogses"). It was a two-day listen and kept me mostly engaged, so it was fine. I gave it 3 stars.

Both my father and mother read Heft and passed their copy along to me after I had recommended God of the Woods by the same author to them. This book focuses on two individuals: Arthur Opp, a 550-pound man who hasn't left his house in years because of his size, and Kel Keller, a teenager struggling to take care of his alcoholic single mother who longs to play professional baseball. They are connected through Kel's mother, Charlene, who was once Arthur's student when he taught college and with whom he continued corresponding for many years after. Both are struggling to connect with others and to be fully vulnerable with others. I thought the characters were interesting but the story was sad. I didn't love it but didn't hate it. I gave it 3 stars.

I have loved the two other Laurie Frankel books I've read this year, so I thought I'd try another. One Two Three is about three sisters -- triplets -- who live in a small town that was once poisoned by the local chemical company. Their father died before they were born, and their mother has been fighting for their entire lives to try to get justice. Mab is the firstborn who can't wait to get out of town but also can't imagine losing her sisters. Monday is on the autism spectrum, prefers to wear and eat only yellow things, and has appointed herself town librarian since the library closed. Mirabel, brilliant and observant, is confined to a wheelchair and can only speak by using an assistive device. Their family's life is challenging, but they're getting by. And then the family behind the chemical company returns to town with a plan to reopen the plant, prompting the three sisters to join forces to try to find evidence to support their mother's lawsuit or at least convince the townspeople not to take the risk. These three young women are such wonderful characters, and their interactions with one another -- their support of each other, how well they understand each other -- are funny and sad and heartfelt. I really enjoyed my time with them. I gave this book 4 stars.

A story of mothers and daughters, of the challenges of being a parent and also a person, Mothersick focuses primarily on Mara and Nell, sisters who made a pact never to get married or have children after their father had an affair and their mother, Andy, seemed to abandon them. But then Mara broke the pact when she met her partner and has just given birth to her son, Gabriel. She finds motherhood and her child unlike anything she could have imagined, almost every moment a gift, but also realizes that in becoming a mother, she's had to give up part of herself, the part that was creative and imaginative and that previously provided her for family. Nell, meanwhile, has entered a whirlwind romance with Lenny, a wealthy American who wants a traditional family to make up for the broken family in which he grew up in, and though she can accept that she's willing to break the marriage part of the pact, she's not sure she'll ever come around to the idea of children. While their mother is traveling all over the world and making art, the sisters are supported by their aunt, Jean, who provides them with the love, advice, and acceptance they always wanted but never got from their mother, and Jean finds in her nieces some of the joy in being a parent that she always wanted but wasn't able to have. Over the course of a year, these three women deal with all the usual challenges of being a woman in the world as they grapple with trying to understand why Andy seemed to be so afraid to be a mother and trying to forgive her for leaving. The prose in this book is lush, the kind of writing that you have to read slowly to fully understand and appreciate. The characters are flawed but lovable because they are so real. They have old traumas they have kept secret and new challenges to their sense of self, both of which threaten their relationships with one another. What resonated most for me was the very relatable sense that women, especially women who are mothers, are expected both to be everything -- partners, caretakers, parents, homemakers, career women, etc. -- and to give up the things that matter to them as people (careers, time, hobbies, friends) in the service of caring for others. The unspoken message in this book is that we are at our lowest, we almost always want our mother to care for us -- but what if that mother has not been cared for herself and doesn't know how to provide the love her children need? I gave this one 5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published April 27, 2027.

I'm currently reading The Artist and the Feast (digital) and Shy Creatures (on paper). I'm getting caught up on podcasts at the moment but will likely be ready for a new audiobook later this week.

Finally, I just wanted to let you all know that my new sock pattern, Kesbie, has been published. You'll find it on Ravelry and Payhip.

Unraveled, Week 34/2026

Good morning and happy Wednesday! Today, as usual, I'm joining up with Kat and the Unravelers for an update on my making and my reading.

I'm happy to report that the first pair of to-be-felted mittens has been completed and the second pair has been cast on, this time starting with the cuff:

I am knitting the largest size this time around, so even though I still had some of the burnt orange yarn remaining, I thought I'd use a partial skein with a bit more yardage in it just to be sure I wouldn't run short. That purple crocheted square next to the knitting is a swatch. Ruthie has a habit of pulling apart the padded bedding in her crate and removing the stuffing, so I thought I'd use up some yarn by crocheting and then felting a piece of fabric. I've got a bunch of 50% alpaca/50% wool yarn that used to be sweater (surprise, surprise -- it stretched out, so I frogged it) and that I know felts very well, so I'm going to felt up this swatch to determine how big I need to make the real thing to get it the size I want.

My current hat in progress also has surpassed a half Ruthie:

It's been a slower reading week for me, but I've finished two audiobooks (both fairly deep backlist) and one ARC.

I had an infant when Unbroken was published, so it's not surprising that it didn't cross my radar at the time. I think it took the movie coming out (which I haven't seen) for me to become aware of it. This is a hard story to read, as it tells in excruciating detail of the atrocities that prisoners of war in Japan were subjected to in the second World War, but knowing about the cruelty and privations makes it all the more remarkable that anyone survived it. The story of Louis Zamperini is especially notable given that he lived the rest of his life without the modern-day psychological treatments we now have to deal with trauma and PTSD. The book was well written and clearly very thoroughly researched, and while I hesitate to call it a delight to listen to because of the heavy subject matter, having the late Edward Hermann read it to me made it much easier to digest. I gave it 4 stars.

I was likewise late to the Jackson Brodie series but have enjoyed the other Kate Atkinson books I've read, and I finally got around to reading Case Histories. I think what Atkinson really excels at is character -- you get to know so much about her characters and they come so alive even though she doesn't tell you all that much. I know how much skill that takes. I thoroughly enjoyed this first book and plan to work my way through the series. There were some loose ends and I had some trouble keeping some characters straight, but I never lost interest. One pet peeve: The narrator kept mispronouncing the name of Jackson's sister. Otherwise, the narration was quite good. I gave this one 4 stars.

Finally, the ARC: I was invited to review Elif Shafak's forthcoming novel In One Brief Moment All Eternity. This is an unusual novel, as in some respects it reads like a creative biography of Gustave Flaubert, the 19th-century writer best known for Madame Bovary. But Shafak makes it clear in her author's note that although many of the details were based in fact, this is, rather, a fictionalized account of Flaubert's life and his dedication to literature above all else. The most creative aspect of this book, though, isn't that bending of genre but that different moments in his life are narrated by women, from his mother and sister to lovers, friends, passing acquaintances, and even a city, a camel, and his most famous character. The novel reads like a work from Flaubert's time, with a richness of language and a slower pace that are so often lacking in more modern works (and happen to be two things I love). While Flaubert faced adversity and dark times throughout his life -- failure to live up to his father's expectations, the deaths of his father and sister, war, illness, etc. -- he remained dedicated to the power of literature to uplift and give life meaning. And that is very much what was behind Shafak's thinking in writing this book, at a time when we are facing war and conflict, climate change, and uncertainty, as she notes: "Literature cannot stop wars or heal hurts, but without it, without stories, we each would be so much lonelier." I gave it 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 12, 2027.

Finally, I want to say that I was saddened to hear of Dolly Parton's passing yesterday. I'm not a country music fan, but I've long admired Dolly for philanthropic work, especially what she did to get books into the hands of kids. Molly and I both thought that a great way to remember her would be to make a donation to her Imagination Library. Maybe you think so, too?

Oh Bother

I really should learn to stop saying that I'm planning to have a relaxing weekend and that I hope I might be able to sleep in; it really almost never happens. Well, that's not to say that the weekend wasn't relaxing in some ways, but it wasn't the carefree, restful weekend I always hope for. I overdid it a bit on Friday and had both an iced coffee in the afternoon and an alcoholic beverage at dinner, and the combination of the two summoned my old foe acid reflux for a visit, keeping me up for about three hours past my usual bedtime Friday night and then making me feel rotten most of the day Saturday. As if that wasn't convenient enough, I had to contend with this Saturday morning:

This work has been going on in the neighborhood for several weeks and we think they've been replacing gas lines, but we still don't know for sure because the gas company hasn't told us a thing -- not even that we'd be unable to leave our dead-end street for about half the day on Saturday. (I will say that the workers have been lovely and have been stopping traffic for me and Ruthie regularly when we need to cross the street, and they did move that dump truck so I could get to my house when I came back from a Costco run Saturday morning. Calling the gas company is on today's to-do list so I can find out what the heck is going on and when it'll be done as well as whether or not we need to plan for another street closure.) Ruthie and I both napped in the afternoon, and we had a quiet evening in following yet another thunderstorm.

Although I was up at my usual time yesterday, I woke up feeling back to normal and well rested, which was a relief. And it felt a little like fall! The high was only in the mid-70s yesterday, with a nice breeze and intermittent clouds. The Mister and I did the grocery shopping together, Ruthie and I enjoyed our walks, and it was a calm day overall.

I'm still working on that crazy-pooling hat (I'll share an update later in the week), but real progress has been made on the mittens. Here is what they looked like yesterday morning, though by the time you're reading this, I expect they'll be done and ready to be felted:

I'm planning to knit another pair of these when I'm done, and I think this time around I will modify the pattern to knit the cuffs first so I can do a tubular cast-on.

Among the usual stuff to be done this week, I'm hoping to start pulling some yarn and planning out some fall projects, including my next sweater. I've already selected and printed out the pattern, so up next is winding the yarn and swatching. I won't be casting on until at least September 9, but I like getting all my ducks in a row well ahead of time so I can dive right in.

Have a good start to your week and see you back here for an update on Wednesday!

Still Drying Out

It has been another wet week here in Western Pennsylvania -- yesterday was especially wet, with heavy rain all morning (exactly when I need to be out to walk Ruthie and then walk to and from work). Needless to say, I got pretty soaked. We were predicted to get as much as 2 inches yesterday alone, and I'm pretty sure we got close to that. I wish we could share all this rain with folks who are experiencing drought! The sun did come out for a little while yesterday afternoon, and the temperatures were only in the low 70s, so it was pretty comfortable and a nice change from the higher temps and high humidity. Looks like there's more rain in the forecast, though, so things aren't drying out completely anytime soon.

We've officially begun the countdown to the first day of school year. Molly goes back (for a half day, sheesh) on the 31st, so next week is her last week of summer break. All this month she's been working on her summer reading assignment and a whole bunch of chemistry assignments (to prepare for AP Chem this year). I'm also preparing for my next big knitalong, which starts September 9, so although I'd like to start a sweater, I'm waiting until it counts for imaginary internet points and biding my time until then with some smaller charity projects. You've already seen the current hat, which is growing a couple of inches or so each day and is now maybe a third of a Ruthie:

I also started some Snowball Throwin' Mittens (Ravelry link), though this time around I'm picking up and knitting the cuffs in superwash yarn before felting.

The part that will be felted is knit in Cascade Eco Wool (bulky), and I'm using some leftover Fibernymph Dye Works Bona Fide (DK) for the cuff. I knit a different pattern a couple of years ago using superwash for the cuff and non-superwash for the hand and it worked well, so I'm hoping that's the case here

It should be a less-dramatic weekend here, particularly as the Mister is recovering well but not yet up for running or biking yet. Molly is slated to work Saturday and Sunday, and there's an arts festival in our neighborhood's business district both days, so she should be busy and not interested in doing much when she gets home. We're planning to take my in-laws out for dinner tonight, and that's all that's on the social calendar. All of that is just fine with me!

Have the best weekend available to you, friends, and see you back here on Monday.

Unraveled, Week 33/2026

Thank you to all of you who left good wishes for the Mister's recovery on Monday. I'm happy to report that he does seem to be improving: He's been getting around the house much easier and even went into the office yesterday. I imagine it will be a while before he's able to run or bike again, which is bound to be frustrating for him, but the upside is that he can't get even more injured than he already is.

It's Wednesday, and as usual, I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers. And I'm starting things off with a stealth FO, one I don't think I even mentioned I was knitting because it came together so quickly.

I had a fair amount of yarn leftover from the baby pants and wanted to whip up a little hat to go with them and the BSJ, so I turned to a pattern I haven't knit in well more than a decade. It's a sweet little cap that looks great in self-striping yarn, and even though I seem to have messed up somewhere along the way because the stitch count didn't quite work out at the end of the decreases, I'm quite happy with how it turned out and don't think you can tell that anything went wrong. Now I just need to block it, sew the buttons on the BSJ, and package it all up to send off to Sweden once I talk to the recipient and figure out the best way to get it to her.

I also started the next stash-busting charity hat and am mildly entertained by how the variegated yarn is pooling now that I'm in the "knit until there's only enough yarn left to decrease" phase:

While the knitting has been small this week, the reading has been rather prolific (helped quite a bit by things being very quiet at work last week). I've finished five books, and I'll start off with the one I liked least and move on with the better reads.

The Angel of Warsaw by Rebecca Scott (audiobook)

2 stars

I found myself in need of something to listen to over the weekend, just before I was about to take the dog for a walk, so I was a bit rushed to make a choice and ended up with this fictionalized account of Irena Sendler and her efforts to save Jewish Polish children during WWII. I knew a little bit about Sendler (mostly from having watched a movie about her a number of years ago), and I knew that this was fiction inspired by her life, but even so I was pretty disappointed. I don't think it's expecting too much for a work of historical fiction based on a real person to have some grounding in the facts, but apparently the author didn't think so and was more interested in making this book just as much about the romance between Irena and a collaborator as it was about her saving children. Also, as some reviewers have pointed out, there are some pretty big mistakes, such as having Irena go into the Warsaw ghetto on a date that was months after it was liquidated. If that wasn't enough, the writing was overwrought and used way too many similes and metaphors that often sounded impressive but didn't actually mean anything (and in the case of the audiobook, this issue was compounded by the narrator's tendency to read just about every line in the most dramatic tone of voice possible). The only reason I gave this book 2 stars rather than 1 is because I think it at least does some justice to Sendler and what she and her collaborators accomplished. But if you're interested in the story, do yourself a favor and skip this book -- see if you can watch the movie instead.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (paperback)

4 stars

This book came out four years ago, and I remember hearing about it everywhere, but the wait at the library was always really long and I sort of forgot about it -- until I happened upon a copy in a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. Alice works in admissions at the NYC private school she attended, she has no children, and she's single once again. And her father is in the hospital, slowly dying. On the eve of her 40th birthday, she gets drunk and ends up back at the house where she grew up with her father after her parents split and her mother left town. When she wakes up the next morning, she's still there, only she's 16 again and her father is alive and well. Alice has to figure out how to get back to her life in the future but also has to figure out what, if anything, she can do to change the outcome. Yes, you have to accept that time travel is possible in this novel, but that's really only the tool used to get Alice to reflect on her choices, then and now, and evaluate whether any change she effects in the past is really worth the unconsidered consequences in the future. I really enjoyed the relationship between Alice and her father, and it wasn't surprising to read the author's note at the end indicating that much of it was grounded in her own father/daughter relationship. Though it deals with death quite a bit, what shines through the most is how important our enduring relationships are throughout our lives, whether or not we get to go back in time to try to adjust them.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (audio)

4 stars

There was a lot of buzz about this book when it came out last year, notably from Facebook/Meta, which tried to keep it from being published, and that alone leads me to believe in the veracity of its content. Sarah Wynn-Williams worked as director of global policy at Facebook for almost a decade, initially joining the company because she believed it would be revolutionary for creating connections and improving lives around the globe. But what she discovered was that the public faces of the company behaved differently in private, that the company didn't care about following other country's laws or putting people in physical danger, and that no matter how hard she worked -- even while in the middle of giving birth to her first child! -- she could not escape from the misogyny and sexual harassment that pervaded the office. I deleted my Facebook account years ago, but this book made me wish I'd never had one. It was eye-opening and shocking, but, like a car wreck, I couldn't look away. I have so much respect for the author for staying as long as she did to try to fix things (and I really enjoyed listening to her read the book, with her lovely New Zealand accent). 

Is It too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench with Brendan O'Hea (digital ARC)

4 stars

I really enjoyed the first collaboration by Dench and O'Hea focused on Shakespeare, so I was delighted to spend more time with the two of them in conversation about Judi Dench's life and long career. She reflects on her childhood, her schooling, her early days in the theater, her marriage and collaboration with her husband, and her relationships with many actors and directors over the years. Even in her early 90s, she is sharp and witty and has an amazing memory of roles she's played. She talks a lot about laughing and playing pranks, but there's also a wistfulness to her stories, such as when she talks about the trees she's planted in her garden for loved ones and friends who have passed away. It was a delight to spend more time with her, and I certainly hope there's going to be an audiobook of this one, too! Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published November 3, 2026.

Under Story by Chloe Benjamin (digital ARC)

5 stars

I have such clear memories of reading Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists back in 2018, and I've found myself thinking about it almost a decade later, so when I heard about her forthcoming novel, I immediately requested an ARC -- and it did not disappoint. Laurel Salter is a mycologist in Wisconsin, but after suffering an unimaginable loss, she no longer finds any joy in her work and decides to get as far away from Wisconsin as she can: the McMurdo Station research base in Antarctica. There she works not as a scientist but on the galley crew, doing all sorts of menial tasks to keep her body busy so she won't retreat into her mind and her grief. And it seems to be working -- until her ex-husband, Eli, a physicist, shows up. He's there to study what has been called the Arc, a strange phenomenon of light that Laurel has felt drawn to and that no one can understand. When Laurel has a dream about the Arc, she becomes convinced that it holds the key to healing her pain, and Eli's theory about a sort of mirror universe might be the answer to undoing the tragedy that tore them apart. There is a lot of science in this book, but it's never overly technical or boring (in fact, I don't know how accurate any of it is, but it's specific enough to convince me that it is). Instead, it's engaging and fascinating; even when the physics was well over my head, I never felt that I wasn't smart enough to understand but rather that the workings of the universe might be too big for any one brain to hold. Benjamin creates an idea for an alternate world that is so compelling and unusual, not least because she's thought of even small details that make it seem almost believable. But you don't have to understand the science or believe any of it to appreciate what's really at the heart of this novel: the characters and their relationships. Laurel and Eli are at the center, but there are also friendship and professional mentor/mentee relationships, and what's especially wonderful is seeing how the same relationships are the same but also different in the alternate universe. This is a big book (500+ pages), but when I finished, I still wanted more time with these characters, and I think this may very well end up being one of my favorite books of the year. Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 1, 2026.

(P.S. Chloe Benjamin is a knitter and there's even a little bit of knitting in the book! She's collaborated with Ritual Dyes and designer Sari Nordlund on a small collection inspired by the book that will be out the same day.)

What are you making and reading this week?

I'd Prefer Boring

When last we talked (and by "talked," I mean I wrote something and you read it), I was getting ready for an uneventful weekend. We didn't have plans other than dinner with my side of the family on Friday night, and I was excited that Saturday we were going to get a break in the rain. And then, of course, things got more interesting than I'd like.

Do you remember when the Mister had a run-in with a tree branch while bicycling back in 2020? Well he had a bike outing planned with a friend on Saturday and I didn't hear anything from him while he was gone, so I was surprised that when he got home in the early afternoon, he was having a hard time walking. It seems that he had slowed down a bit to wait for the friend to catch up while on an incline on a bridge, his bike wheel got caught in the paving seam, and he didn't have enough momentum to carry him over it, so he keeled over sideways. He had only a little bit of road rash on his arm, but his main complaint was that he had terrible pain in his upper thigh/hip area. He put ice on it and took some Tylenol and hung out in bed for the afternoon. We'd talked about going out for dinner, but as he could barely walk, that wasn't happening, so I managed to cobble together a meal of leftover salad and some pizza from the freezer. He said that if it didn't get better, he'd get it checked out, but it was clear to me that he shouldn't wait, so I told him to make an appointment at the urgent care center on Sunday morning. The good news is that they took x-rays and nothing appears broken, but of course he's still in pain and can't walk. They told him if it didn't start to improve to go see an orthopedist. He's working from home today, and as he can't do much of anything physical (we still had my crutches from when I broke my foot, so he's been hobbling around on them when he needs to move), that means I'm doing everything -- I did the grocery shopping yesterday, I'm on cooking and cleanup duty, I changed the bedsheets, etc. Life is always exciting, isn't it?

But hey, this is a knitting blog. Here's some knitting -- a finished but still badly in need of blocking hat:

And I've got yarn all wound for the next one, because having mindless knitting on hand at all times is useful when your husband seems to be trying to injury himself all the time.

I'll leave you with a bit of lightness -- a photo of Ruthie playing with her friend Finnegan, whose owners and I refer to as Ruthie's "Kentucky cousin." Finn is also a rescue who came from Kentucky, and we think the two dogs look alike. They certain play the same way!

Here's hoping this week is a lot less eventful! I will be back on Wednesdays with some more knitting and some book reviews.

Unraveled, Week 32/2026

It's Wednesday, so that means it's once again time to join the fun with Kat and the Unravelers.

It's continued to be a wet week, with occasional heavy downpours and thunderstorms. Yesterday I was running behind when I went into the office and left without an umbrella (I didn't want to make myself even later by digging through the closet for one) only for it to start raining pretty hard. Luckily, I was able to get the newly licensed driver to come pick me up! As much as it saddens me to know how quickly Molly is growing up, it is very helpful to have another driver in the house.

On Monday night, I finished plying my current spin, dealing with some tangles at the end in an effort to use every last bit of singles; I anticipate that some of that messy yarn at the end will be removed.

While I didn't weigh the fiber beforehand, there was supposed to be 2 oz. in each bundle, so that's ostensibly 6 oz. of finished yarn. The next step is to skein and wash and then likely wait several days for it to dry, as it's incredibly humid here because of all the rain, but I hope to be able to show you some finished yarn by the end of the week.

Meanwhile, I'm on the third mini skein on my hat, and it's currently measuring a partial Ruthie:

I'm not particularly enjoying working with this yarn, as it's on the coarser side. If I had to guess, I'd say the 3-ply minis are a Corriedale base, whereas the 2-ply skeins might be superwash Merino. I am hopeful that the hand of the yarn will improve once the finished hat is washed, as it's very possible that the person who dyed the yarn wasn't particularly skilled at it and may not have rinsed the yarn as much as they should. At the very least, a bath in warm water with some wool wash will add a bit of lanolin.

Reading this week has been all nonfiction and heavily dominated by ARCs. I finished three books.

An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America by Keri Leigh Merritt

4 stars

For most people who have learned about the history of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, the term "white Southerners" will conjure images of violence and hatred. But not all Southerners supported segregation, and some brave ones spoke out against it and worked with the more well-known leaders in the movement to fight it. That said, throughout history, the role of women in political movements has always been minimized and, in some cases, even forgotten, so I was not surprised that despite her record of prolific work in support of racial equality and her friendships with such famous names and Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., I had never heard of Lillian Smith. This biography proved to be an excellent way to rectify that. Lillian Smith spent the entirety of her adult life writing essays, works of social criticism, and novels to advocate for racial equality and to attempt to show that racial discrimination harms whites as well as Blacks. As a queer liberal woman unafraid to share her opinions, she faced backlash and very real physical threats, yet she didn't let anything stop her, and she used what power she had as a white woman to uplift and promote people of color who often faced much worse. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know her and her work a bit, and I am glad that this biography is doing its part to ensure that Smith's story isn't lost to time. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. It will be published on September 29, 2026.

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

3.5 stars

I loved Stanley Tucci's memoir Taste, especially its gorgeous descriptions of food, so I thought this second work would be as enjoyable. And partially it was. There are still some elements of memoir and personal life, and I loved the parts when he talked about cooking for himself and his family, but this newer book also contains a lot of complaining about how bad food is as well as what seemed to me to be an awful lot of name dropping. I know, he's a famous actor and he knows a lot of other famous people, but sometimes the mention of celebrities seemed rather irrelevant to the discussion of food. That said, I love listening to Stanley Tucci talk, so to have him in my ears for about six hours talking about food was overall a good experience. It also made me want to eat a lot of pasta.

The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice by Natalie Livingstone

4 stars

The Nuremberg trials are famous for bringing a sense of closure to the horrors of World War II and some sense of justice to the atrocities committed by the Nazis. They've been written about extensively and dramatized on screen. But, as far as I know, little has been documented about the small but significant group of women who were present at the trials. In The Nuremberg Women, Natalie Livingstone focuses on eight women from varied backgrounds, nationalities, professions, and political beliefs to show the importance of their involvement. We get to know a brief biography of each woman, her role in the trials, and a bit about her life afterward. As a collection, these profiles show that these women all played a crucial role, but those roles often were behind the scenes or downplayed as less important than those of the (male) lawyers and judges. What was particularly fascinating was learning about how their views of the trials changed over the years and colored their experiences of the Cold War in the decades to come. War is so often characterized as a masculine arena, but these women -- a lawyer, three journalists, an artist, a survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, and an interpreter -- all recognized that wars inflict suffering on women just as much as men and that they should have a voice in the processes of reckoning that follow a war. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. It will be published November 3, 2026. (Side note: There's currently a Goodreads giveaway for this book, if you're interested.)

Currently, I'm in the last third or so of This Time Tomorrow (reading on paper before bed), I'm more than halfway through a historical fiction/magical realism/mystery audiobook called The Sirens, and I'm reading yet another ARC that I already think might end up being one of my favorites of the year.

What are you making and reading this week?

Wet Weekending

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

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

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

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

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

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

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