Unraveled, Week 37/2024

Hump day again -- time to join Kat and the Unravelers with an update on my making and my reading over the past week!

Over the course of Monday I was able to ply up my two bobbins of singles, wind the finished yarn into a skein, and give it a soak. It took almost a full day to dry (even though I squeezed out as much water as I could, then rolled it in a towel and stomped on it!), but I think the wait was worth it.

The green-to-pink gradient turned out pretty much just as I wanted it to, and though I was hoping for fingering weight, I was also pretty much just going with the flow as I spun, so the finished yarn is generally sport to DK (though there are definitely some much thinner spots in there). I ended up with approximately 296 yards, so enough for a small shawl, a cowl, or a hat. Or I could use it in the yoke of a sweater with other yarn. There are many possibilities!

After using up one batch of fiber that came home from SSK 2023 with me, I decided to spin the other one next. It was also fiber that I won as a door prize, some Charollais wool from Into the Whirled. I've spun this breed once before and wanted to try it again, so it was a nice surprise when my ticket was drawn for it.

Though this fiber came as combed top, I'm spinning it using a supported long draw, so my singles are very fuzzy and there's a fair amount of color blending. It's also a very fast way to spin! I'm planning to spin the fiber end to end on one bobbin, wind the singles into a center-pull ball, and ply from both ends.

My knitting time over the past several days has almost exclusively been focused on the lace baby blanket, and it's growing quite quickly!

I've got it on a set of 40 inch circular needles, and as you can see, I've already surpassed that measurement in the perimeter. I've completed five of the eight recommended repeats of the main chart; the pattern says you can do as many as you'd like, but I plan to put stitches on a spare needle when I reach that point so I can fully stretch out my work and see how big it is. I'm sorry to say that although the yarn has been mostly nice to knit with, I've already encountered two knots in this first skein. Yes, I know a few knots is considered acceptable in the industry, but I still don't like them -- especially when I'm buying a large skein with the expectation that it will mean fewer ends to weave in!

I've done some excellent reading in the past week and finished four books!

After both Mary and Katie raved about it, I ended up buying Held (on Kindle) and was eager to read it. This is a book that I suspect is going to be very divisive: The writing is beautiful but very spare, and there's a lot that is going on in the story that is not on the page. It also jumps back and forth in time, and I noticed that there are some character names that appear in different times but that may not be the same people. This is one of those books that I think would really benefit from more than one reading and would likely be understood better if discussed with others (and if you'd like to discuss it, let me know! I still have a lot of questions!). I already the author's earlier novel on my "want to read" list, and now I am even more interested. I gave this one 4 stars.

On the same day, I finished The Road Home, which was the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2008 and was this month's book to discuss in our little group reading earlier winners of the prize. This book follows Lev, a widowed middle-aged man from an unnamed former Soviet republic who has made his way to England to try to find a job and make some money to support his young daughter and aging mother. He soon finds that doing so is a lot more complicated than he anticipated and that he has to deal with guilt over being abroad in addition to the challenges of being a foreigner seeking to make a living. There were some things about this book that frustrated me, namely that Lev's native country is never specified and the time in which the book takes place is a little vague, but the characters are well written and Lev's humanity and determination are heartwarming. I gave it 4 stars.

If you're the sort of reader who can appreciate gorgeous writing that makes you think about all sorts of philosophic questions and your place in the world and can tolerate a book where there's not much of a plot, then I'd highly recommend Orbital. This slim novel (I read it in a day!) follows the multinational crew on the International Space Station over the course of 24 hours, during which they complete 16 orbits of Earth. As they go about their schedule of conducting experiments, exercising, performing maintenance on the spacecraft, and photographing different views of the Earth, we also get a window into their thoughts on all sorts of things -- climate change, loss of loved ones, wars, religion and faith, the possibility of intelligent life in other galaxies, the knowns and unknowns of space and time. It's another one I want to reread. I gave it 5 stars.

Finally, after a surprisingly long wait given that the book is more than a decade old, I listened to Rules of Civility. I had previously read only one book by Amor Towles, though I have his two most recent on my bookshelves. Kym encouraged me to read this one before Table for Two, so I put it on hold at the library. I suspect many of you regular readers have already read this book, so I'll keep my summary short: In the late 1930s, twenty-something Katey Kontent is finding her way in the various worlds of New York City -- the jobs available for working women, the club and bar scene, and the social world of high society. She encounters memorable characters (and is rather one herself) and finds herself in surprising situations. And the writing is superb! I gave this one 4 stars -- and am looking forward to getting to those Towles books I already own!

I'm now in the middle of another Booker Prize longlisted title, My Friends, and am doing a buddy read of September with Kat.

What are you making and reading this week?

Feels Like Fall

Though we're due to have highs in the upper 80s later in the week, this past weekend felt decidedly fall-like. We had some much-needed rain overnight on Friday, with some lingering sprinkles and a chilly breeze on Saturday morning. And it was in the mid-40s when we got up on Sunday! But the sun came out both days and warmed things up enough.

On Saturday morning, the Mister had to go help a friend with some computer/internet stuff, so Molly (she's said I can now use her full name on the blog!) and I went to the art festival and met up with my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. There was a lot of good stuff to see -- including my high school U.S. history teacher, who retired from teaching a couple of years ago and now makes jewelry! I did find the potter I was looking for and picked up a couple of pieces:

The lighting isn't doing these pieces any justice, but it was the best of several attempts. The one on the left is a spoon rest; I accidentally broke the one we had several months ago, and we'd been making do ever since with some silicone ones the Mister found on Amazon. This sweet one with the goldfinch is so much nicer and coordinates with the mug I already had (it has the same branches and leaves without any birds). The one on the right is a small-ish serving platter, about the right size for a wedge of cheese and some crackers or clusters of grapes or a selection of cookies, for example. I have quite a few large serving platters but very few smaller ones, and I thought this was such a pretty design.

We also found an artist who makes some really gorgeous batik pieces and bought a couple prints:

The photographer was slanted, not the artwork.

Molly loved the one on the left, so we will likely find a frame for it and put it in her room. I picked the one on the right -- definitely click the photo to enlarge it so that you can see that those lines in the top two-thirds of the image are tree trunks!

Much of my crafting time over the weekend was spent at my wheel, and I have two finished bobbins of singles to show for it:

This was a pretty quick spin, one in which I wasn't too concerned about consistency or smoothness (though I did pull out some of the add-ins when they were too bulky or rough). I have no idea what weight of yarn this will ply to or how much I will have, but it doesn't really matter; this is an instance of spinning the yarn that the fiber wanted to be and then finding a suitable pattern to go with it.

I also came into some new yarn this weekend. Now, you all know that I've been trying to work from stash whenever possible, and I've actually bought very little yarn in the past year or so. But I suddenly have a lot of baby gifts to knit, and as Molly has used up nearly all of my solid and semisolid partial skeins and leftovers in the scrappy granny square blanket she's been crocheting, I did have much suitable on hand. Fortuitously, Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works was running an end-of-summer sale last week, so I ordered three skeins of DK in baby-suitable semisolid shades. The order was placed Wednesday afternoon, it was in the mail by Thursday, and it was delivered Friday evening. Occasionally the USPS does something right!

In addition to knitting for my niece, I have a coworker expecting a baby around the same time, I still haven't knit anything for a cousin who just had a baby this summer (I sent a board book about Andy Warhol because I didn't have anything on hand to knit at the time), and some of our neighbors also recently had a baby. For the sake of simplicity and speed, I expect all will be getting hats, which will also leave me some of these three skeins for future needs.

I expect the big work project to return this week (though apparently it's being cut in length by about half), and I also have Curriculum Night at Molly's school to look forward to on Thursday evening. I'll be continuing to work on the lace baby blanket whenever possible, and with any luck, I'll get to ply those singles in the next couple of days. Have a good start to your week, and see you back here on Wednesday!

Wrapping Up and Casting On

Why is it that the short weeks seem to last longer? That's certainly been the case this week. In addition to an important project at work (which I started and then was told abruptly to stop because major changes needed to be made), I donated blood on Tuesday and then went to get my annual breast MRI on Wednesday (all good!). And I've generally felt a little off all week -- nothing major, just not feeling quite 100%. So I'm glad it's almost the weekend and there will be some extra sleep in my future.

Thanks to the stoppage of that work project, I had some extra time on my hands the past few days and wrapped up some knitting. On Wednesday afternoon and evening, I finished up the hat to go with the Newborn Vertebrae and the first sock of my current pair.

The hat is a free pattern that I have made many times before; I often refer to it as the "rude baby hat" because that strip of fabric that's knotted on the top looks, well, rather phallic before it's tied up. The sock is a pattern that I've basically made up myself by looking at another pattern; I could have bought the pattern, but it was easy enough to reverse engineer, and I would have had to make adjustments to it anyway because it's written for a larger gauge. The biased fabric on the front of the sock definitely makes for snug fit and a little difficulty getting it on over my heel, but it does fit once it's on. I'll be casting on its mate soon.

The Pigskin Party officially kicked off yesterday, so I started two new projects. The first is a spinning project, one that's a big contrast to the spin I just finished.

These two batts were a door prize that I won at SSK last year. They're from Bricolage Studios and called Luna Moth, and they're a blend of Rambouillet, mohair, CVM, tussah silk, and silk noil. Each batt is 2.5 ounces, so I figured I'd spin each one on its own bobbin and ply them together. I started spinning the first batt yesterday and got about halfway through it. I've split up the batt so that it's kind of being spun in a gradient of green to pink, though there's quite a lot of blending. I'm hoping that the finished yarn will have the same subtle color shift.

This spin is a departure from what I've been doing all summer because, for one thing, I'm using a woolen prep rather than worsted. And though I'm still using generally my same short forward draw, with this prep and the chunky bits of silk noil in it, it's pretty much impossible to get an even, smooth single. I'll admit that I am pulling out some of those chunky bits when they're excessively clumpy and/or rough, but I'm generally letting this yarn be more textured.

I also cast on a new knitting project last night, and I'm doing some lace knitting for the first time in a long time.

 

I only just found out recently that my college roommate (who was also my maid of honor in my wedding) had a baby over the summer, her second daughter. I knit her first daughter a lace blanket five years ago that was apparently much loved, so I decided to do the same for the second. As with the first one, I've adapted a triangle lace shawl to be a square, using thicker yarn and larger needles to up-size the lace. I'm using this free pattern (Ravelry link) with -- don't be shocked! -- Caron Blossom Cakes, a 61% cotton/39% acrylic yarn purchased at Michaels. My top priority when I knit for babies is to make sure that what I make is easy to care for, and the big box store acrylic blends have come a long way. I wanted this to be something my friend could toss in the washer and dryer without having to worry about messing it up, and having felt this yarn before (my mother just used it to make blankets for my nephew and expected niece), I can say that it's very nice. Mo also picked up some of this yarn to make herself a blanket.

After I post this, I'm going to attempt a run (always a challenge after donating blood), and if my inbox cooperates, I'm hoping to do a little cleaning and laundry. Today is my sister-in-law's birthday, so she and my brother are going out to celebrate and my parents are babysitting my nephew, so dinner will be just the three of us. At some point this weekend, I'm hoping to make it over to A Fair in the Park -- the potter who made my favorite coffee mug will be there, and I'd really love to pick up another piece or two (I missed out on the fair last year because I had COVID).

I hope you have a restful, enjoyable weekend full of the things you enjoy!

Unraveled, Week 36/2024

A short week means that Wednesday comes sooner than expected! It's time to link up again with Kat and the Unravelers, as per usual. Before I get into the crafting and the reading, though, I have a little update on Monday's festivities. We had a gorgeous day for the parade and found a spot to watch just a little down the road from the starting point.

We didn't see the president and vice president, but we did see one of our senators!

Sen. Bob Casey is the guy right in the center.

The president and VP did come to town, but not until almost dinnertime, and they were at a union hall for a rally. Mo was watching a livestream of it and came running to show us:

See the girl with the dark hair just over the president's shoulder? That's one of her former classmates! It turns out that the girl's father is president of one of the unions there, so she got a prime position for the event.

Since Monday, I've managed to finish spinning and plying the last skein of yarn for my sweater. I started this project at the beginning of May, and though it's taken me quite a long time to finish, I feel like savoring the process was appropriate given how precious this fiber has become.

My second sleeve skein, despite weighing a gram more than the first, is also about a dozen yards shorter; clearly I was in a hurry to finish! In total, I have just shy of 2,000 yards of yarn, more than enough for the sweater I have planned.

My knitting the past few days has been entirely focused on finishing up the hat to match the Newborn Vertebrae, and I'm now at the point where it looks a little rude:

I have to knit that tube at the top to five inches, at which point it will be closed off and knotted. I expect I'll finish today or tonight, depending on how busy work is today.

I've also finished three more books in the past week.

I'd been waiting a long time to get Clear from the library; my library only had it available as an audiobook, and I could not figure out what was taking the people ahead of me so long because the book is only 3 hours long! I think I started out 10th in line, and I waited at least a month to get it. And when I did, I managed to get through all of it in a morning (I listened to most of it while on a run and finished the rest while I was getting my lunch ready). I think I will likely want to reread this book with my eyes at some point because I think there are things I will appreciate more in print, but even in audio I was able to appreciate a beautiful story of two people seeing the humanity in each other and overcoming their differences. I gave it 4 stars.

I was very excited to read Sarah Perry's newest, Enlightenment, because I loved her earlier The Essex Serpent, so I had high expectations for the new release, particularly because it was named to the Booker Prize longlist. This novel follows two people, Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley, who have in common a Strict Baptist church. We see them and the others in their orbit at three points in time and how their actions and decisions lead to serious consequences for their friendship. There is an element of a mystery in Thomas's search for a female amateur astronomer who lived in their village in the late 1800s and an examination of faith on both their parts. There are discussions of physics and love and fate and time. There's a lot going, and much of the time, I felt like there was a subtext that I was missing. The writing is excellent, but I still prefer the previous novel. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, another short audiobook that came on my radar thanks to Mary: The Order of Time is mentioned by Sarah Perry in her acknowledgements at the end of her book as a text that greatly informed it. The audio is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, which makes it quite enjoyable to listen to, but this is a nonfiction book about our understanding of the concept of time and what physics has to say about it. Though I took physics in high school and astronomy (which ended up being more like astrophysics) in college, most of this book was over my head and I found myself losing interest. There were some fascinating points that were made, and I did stick with it because it was short, but I would not call it a favorite. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm still trying to finish up The Road Home ahead of Saturday's discussion, and I started Held, another title from the Booker longlist, yesterday.

What are you making and reading this week?

Sleeping In, Cooling Off, and Celebrating

Happy Labor Day, friends! It's a day off for all of us, but it's also a day of celebration. For one thing, the Mister and I are celebrating our 17th anniversary today. But Labor Day is also taking on some special significance for me as my union ballot is in the mail and I could be a union member by the end of the month. This morning Mo and I are going to the annual Labor Day parade downtown with my parents. It's one of the biggest in the country, and in the past it's featured some pretty high-profile guests. There was talk that the president and vice president might appear, but now it's sounding like they're going to be doing another campaign stop. Still, it should be a good time.

Personally, I'm also celebrating the fact that the heat and humidity have broken again! As I type this, it hasn't yet hit 60ºF, and the high today is only 73ºF. I can't wait to run in this cool weather!

I got an early dismissal from work on Friday afternoon and took full advantage of the long weekend to get some crafting and reading done. We got some rain on Saturday afternoon and evening, though not the thunderstorms I was hoping for (they ended up north and south of us), but Mo and I spent the afternoon bingeing Gilmore Girls and crafting in any case. She's been working on a pretty epic crocheted blanket, which I will share at some point in the future, and I finished up the Newborn Vertebrae!

I know it looks like the sleeves don't quite match, but they do, even down to a few stitches of gray in the bind-off. The thin brown stripes that appear on the right side were all in the yoke; because the stitch count was at the largest right before the sleeve stitches were split off and that color is a thin stripe, it just didn't make it across the whole yoke. I'll admit it bugs me a little, but this is what happens when you use a self-striping yarn for an item with variable stitch counts -- and I highly doubt my niece is going to care! Now I'm working on a hat to go with it that should be finished up in a day or two.

I also worked on my sweater spin and finished up the first sleeve skein:

This ended up approximately 183 yards for 46 g, and I've now spun more than 1,800 yards for this sweater! I am nearly finished with the second sleeve skein, the final one for this spin, and should finish the singles today. I'm hoping I can find time in the next several days to swatch for the sweater because the Pigskin Party is kicking off on Thursday, and I'd love to start a new sweater!

Today's plans, other than the parade and a run, include doing some laundry and trying to finish a book. We're making dinner at home tonight, and then tomorrow it's back to the grind. I have a big work project waiting for me that I'm trying not to think about today. If you're off today, be sure to thank a union member! See you back here on Wednesday.

Short and Long

For a short week, it's been a long one. Being the only parent at home is certainly a lot easier now that Mo is a teenager and fairly self-sufficient, but it does mean twice the driving (usually the Mister does drop off in the morning and I do pickup in the afternoon) and cleaning up after dinner in addition to cooking, so I've been busier than usual this past week while he's been at a work conference. But he got home last night, so we're back to the normal routine for one day before we have another long weekend.

I am just about done with the Newborn Vertebrae, and I very well may finish it today if I can find an hour or two to knit:

I wound off yarn before starting both sleeves so that the stripe sequence wouldn't be interrupted, and I'm hopeful that the sleeves will match each other well enough. Obviously the recipient isn't going to care one way or the other, but it's the kind of thing that would bother me if they didn't match.

Yesterday I also managed to ply the first of my sleeve skeins for my sweater spin:

The singles were spun so quickly that I didn't even mention that I was spinning them! I'm hoping to skein this up today and also get started on the second skein. It would be great to have all the yarn spun and be ready to cast on the sweater in time for the kick-off of the Pigskin Party next week!

We don't have any really exciting plans for Labor Day weekend, though we'll be getting together with family. This evening my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew have plans, so instead of our usual family Friday night dinner at my parents' house, we are taking my parents to Friday night services at our synagogue (they haven't been since we hired our cantor) and then the five of us are going out to dinner to celebrate my parents' anniversary yesterday (48 years!) and our anniversary Monday (17 years). We'll be having dinner with all the family, my in-laws, and my brother's in-laws on Sunday, and then Monday we may be going to the Labor Day parade because there's a chance both the president and the vice president will be here for it! I think I am most excited about the fact that the temperature is supposed to drop after today and that we are supposed to get more rain tomorrow. I am sick of the heat and humidity!

Have a wonderful weekend, whatever you have planned!

Unraveled, Week 35/2024

Weeks that start with a Monday off feel simultaneously long and short, and this one is no exception. It's also back to school week! Mo is now officially a high schooler (no, I don't know where the time went, either).

She got to ease into the start of the new school year with a half day on Monday, which seemed a little ridiculous to me, but I don't make the schedule. Yesterday was her first day of classes. She's taking geometry and physics in addition to French, history, and English, plus she's taking glee club (choir) and clay/ceramics as her electives. It should be an interesting year! One extra-nice thing about school this year, at least from my perspective, is that lunch and snack are now included with tuition, so I don't have to pack her lunch (or remind her to pack her lunch) or clean out a lunch box every day. Apparently the roll-out of getting everyone through the lunch line didn't go so smoothly yesterday, but I'm sure it'll get better very soon.

It's Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and to update you on my making and my reading.

I've spent quite a bit of time the last few days working on this, which looks like it could be a hat with cat ears for an adult but is, in fact, a newborn sweater. I have knit this pattern enough that I didn't read the instructions carefully and actually knit past where I needed to on the body, so I had to pull out my needles, reinsert them into the knitting where I should have stopped, and rip out several stripes' worth of knitting. Fortunately this sweater is small enough that what was ripped did not represent too much time. I have departed just a bit from the pattern in that, after I bound off the ribbing for the body, I kept the last stitch live and immediately picked up around the fronts and neck for the body ribbing. The pattern doesn't have you do this until the very end, but I didn't see the need to add two more ends to weave in on such a small piece.

I have also put in some rounds here and there on my Malabrigo hat; I've been thinking of it as my work project because I can knit on it while I'm reading something for or at work.

The camera is washing out the yarn quite a bit here -- in real life, it's much more vibrant! I'm thinking this might make a good hat for my middle nephew, who has a big noggin, so it may get put away with the holiday gifts instead of going into the charity pile.

Reading has been good, thanks to a bit of quiet at the end of last week and an extra-long weekend.

After setting it aside for a couple of weeks while reading several library books, I finally got back to True Biz late last week and focused on finishing it. The story is set primarily at a residential school for the deaf in a Rust Belt town in Ohio and focuses on three main characters: February, the headmistress of the school, who is a CODA (child of deaf adults); Austin, who comes from a very well-known deaf family in the town; and Charlie, a new student at the school whose mother insisted on her getting a cochlear implant that she hates and who has never really been around other deaf people. The book has a lot to do with these individuals and their lives at the school and with their families, but it also has a good deal to say about Deaf culture and how American society has dealt with deafness in its history. This was a book I appreciated reading with my eyes because the chapters are interspersed with instructional material about American Sign Language, articles about the history of the deaf in American society, and other documents. I gave it 4 stars.

This past week also marked a big reading accomplishment: I finished A Suitable Boy! There's technically still this week left in our original reading schedule, but I really wanted to find out how it would end (and also wanted to have some time to read another book for a discussion in early September). This book follows the members of four families -- the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Khans, and the Chatterjis -- over the course of about a year and a half in the early 1950s in India, not long after Partition and independence. The title refers to one of the overarching themes, that of Mrs. Mehra trying to find a suitable husband for her younger daughter, Lata, but the book follows so many different plot lines and deals with quite a lot of serious subjects: Indian politics, religion, caste, generational differences, colonialism, colorism, prejudice in all its forms, and of course the usual drama around love and marriage. It is rare for me to find a book that makes me both laugh and cry and that keeps me entertained for nearly 1,500 pages, but this book did! I gave it 5 stars, and I'm sad that I'm finished because I got so used to reading it almost every night before bed this summer!

Finished just yesterday afternoon, The Seed Keeper tells the story of Rosalie Iron Wing, who was raised by her father until his untimely death and then placed by the state in with a white foster family. We follow her as she marries a farmer, has a son, and then returns to the cabin where she lived with her father as part of an effort to reconnect with her identity and to the Dakota culture from which she was separated as a child. Through it all is a connection with the earth and a respect for nature, and we learn of the history of the women in Rosalie's family, who kept seeds as sacred objects because of the power they have to feed us and to connect us with those who came before. I gave it 4 stars.

Now I am reading Enlightenment, a release from earlier in the year that is on the Booker Prize longlist, and The Road Home, the next book to be discussed among those of us reading past winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction.

What are you making and reading this week?

Better in 2024: August

It's shocking to me that it's already the last week of August and that my kid is starting high school today, but such is life, am I right? It's the last Monday of the month, and that means it's time to check in with my One Little Word. Thanks, as always, to Carolyn for hosting the monthly link party!

Whereas in past months I've focused on one specific part or aspect of life that's been Better, this month, it really felt like a more general sentiment -- that life and my outlook on it have been generally improved since this time last month.

Obviously things are finally getting fixed on the work front. It's not done yet, but at least I know that it will be. Union ballots are now either in the hands of eligible employees or have already been mailed back, and I'm feeling hopeful for a outcome in favor of the union. Both of these things are likely to improve my daily life (and certainly the presence of a union in the past year would have helped a lot with the job classification debacle).

More broadly, the changes in the political landscape over the past month have me feeling a lot more optimistic about the state of this country and where it's headed. It's been encouraging to see the excitement and enthusiasm within the party, especially among younger people, in a way I really hadn't seen since the Obama years. I'm sure I'll still have plenty of moments of anxiety over the next several months, but, in general, I'm feeling, well, Better!

And in a very literal way, I've been feeling physically Better because we've had a roughly weeklong break from the heat and humidity, and that cooler weather has enabled me to have easier and more effective workouts. I feel better and sleep better when I get high-quality exercise, and that's a lot easier to do when I'm not struggling to breathe just because the air is so heavy and I'm not sweating so much that I feel like a puddle at the end.

I think what all of these facets of Better have in common is that they are largely out of my control, but while I can't always take an active role in making things Better, I can certainly take the time to focus on them and notice when they are.

Let's Get the Weekending Started

It's finally Friday -- and I'm officially on vacation! It's a quick one, but it's a much-needed break from work-related stress. Life is going to get 100% busier next week with the start of the school year, so I'm grateful I could take this brief pause. Of course, as usual, my alarm went off at the normal time this morning. I inadvertently hit "snooze" rather than "off" on my Fitbit but figured I could allow myself a few more minutes of sleep. And then the Mister's alarm went off, so there went that plan. Oh well!

Today is officially Girls' Day. Later this morning Mo and I will meet up with my mother and head to the mall to do a little shopping. Fortunately Mo still has her uniform for school, though now that she's in the high school, she's allowed to wear red and navy polo shirts in addition to white and green, so we've already bought her a few more and we don't need to do any major back-to-school shopping. She's hoping to find a few more tops that follow non-uniform guidelines (she's not allowed to show her midriff or bra straps), but generally this is just a "let's walk around and see if anything appeals" shopping trip.

The shopping trip is really the only thing planned for the weekend, excluding the usual chores that I typically do. The Mister is leaving Sunday for the conference that he goes to almost every year that always seems to coincide with the first week of school. After last weekend was so productive in terms of crafting and reading, I'm hoping for a repeat. High on the list is finishing A Suitable Boy -- I have about 130 pages left!

I'm still working on my knitting WIPs, and I've started the first of the sleeve skeins of my sweater spin, but I got a little distracted the past two evenings playing around with some Tunisian crochet.

I've had a general understanding of Tunisian crochet for a while but had never actually followed a pattern, so I decided to give it a try with a free pattern I had in my Ravelry library. I did mine all in one color for the sake of simplicity and clearly have room for improvement, but I did it! This cloth measures about 8 inches across and used 30 g of yarn (boring-old Sugar 'n Cream). Though I used a smaller hook than called for in the pattern, my fabric looks a lot looser than the designer's sample, so next time I may use a smaller hook. The pattern also called for a provisional cast-on and using grafting to close the seam at the end, but I might try a regular start and just whip-stitch the seam closed. Now that I've gotten the hang of this technique, I might also look into some other patterns to see what I can do with it.

Before I go, a little update on the work meeting that happened yesterday: There are still some things to be figured out related to when the change will happen (which has to do with annual pay increases that happen in September), but the good news is that it's a go as far as the change in my job classification is concerned. My new classification is "editorial specialist," which is a salaried (exempt) position at a higher pay grade than my current classification. It's going to be processed as a promotion, even though I'm technically still doing the same job, but it also reflects the fact that I do a lot more and have more responsibilities than I did when I was hired for this job nearly 19 years ago. I have to look at some numbers related to how the annual pay increase is implemented to determine whether I want the change to be made as soon as possible or after the raises are processed, but the good news is that within about a month or so, all of this will be resolved and a significant source of stress from this year will be removed. Thank goodness! Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed for a positive outcome on the union vote.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Unraveled, Week 34/2024

Happy hump day, friends! It's time for my weekly link-up with Kat and the Unravelers, always the highlight of my week!

I can now update you with the details of the handspun skein I shared on Monday (the cooler weather meant that it took almost two days to fully dry!).

The skein is 125 g, so a bit more than 4 ounces, and I have approximately 476 yards. I was a bit surprised to get that much yardage, but then again, with the high silk content in the fiber, it clearly cooperated with being spun quite fine.

I also took this photo of part of the skein, which I think illustrates how the transition works quite well:

I'm still working on my two -- no, make that three -- current WIPs. I've added a bit to my socks and the hat, though the Newborn Vertebrae doesn't look all that much different. In the past week, my brain has been so fried by the end of the day that I haven't wanted to do much knitting that would require me to pay attention, like remembering to do increases, for instance. But I know that once I get back to the sweater, it will work up quickly.

The good news this week is that I've actually managed to do some reading! Apparently library books, which have the inherent threat of being whisked back to the library, are a good motivator, as the three I've finished in the past week were all borrowed and all read fairly quickly.

The first is a book that I probably wouldn't recommend to everyone because it has all the content warnings. But I was intrigued by Little Rot after hearing an interview with the author on The Stacks podcast. I also think Akwaeke Emezi is a very talented writer, and I'm very interested in how they manage to take on so many different genres with their work. This newest novel examines the dark side of Lagos, Nigeria, and the titular rot that seems to pervade all aspects of life there. It takes place over the course of a day or so and follows a handful of characters who lives become intertwined in a dangerous and dark series of events. I think the book is well done and well written, but it's a hard read. If you're a sensitive reader, I'd avoid this one. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Book number two was much more enjoyable, even if it does deal with some serious subjects. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water was written by a local-to-me author (she's the director of the writing program at Pitt), and it's been on my radar since it was published two years ago. It tells the story of Cara Romero, a Dominican immigrant in New York City struggling to make ends meet after the factory where she worked shuttered and moved overseas. Her story is told in a series of sessions with a job counselor and interspersed with job applications, letters from her landlord, job coaching videos, and other ephemera. It was absolutely delightful on audio, not only because the narrator very convincingly sounds like Cara but because there are other sounds included -- the ding of an elevator, the sound of a noisy hallway, the scratch of a pencil. I gave it 4 stars.

Finally, after putting off my hold twice, I finally had time to read The God of the Woods. This is a very buzzy book right now, and for good reason. It opens in 1975 at a summer camp adjacent to a private estate, and the daughter of the landowners has gone missing -- reminding many of when her younger brother went missing more than a decade earlier. These two mysteries unfold over the course of the novel in shifting timelines and from several different points of view. It's propulsive and tightly written; I couldn't put it down. I also thought I knew where it was going several times and was completely wrong. The book is almost 500 pages but didn't seem long at all. I definitely recommend this one and gave it 5 stars.

I'm now back to reading True Biz, which I ignored for a while due to library holds and work generally being busy, and I'm hoping that this week I'll be able to finish A Suitable Boy -- I have less than 200 pages left!

Finally, some exciting news: My union ballot has been received, filled out, and mailed!

The Weekend I Needed

After the stress of last week, I am so thankful to have had a nearly uneventful weekend. I got sleep, I exercised, I got my chores done, and I had plenty of time for crafts and reading. We got some much-needed rain. And I wasn't even too bitter when my alarm went off this morning!

I say "nearly uneventful" because there was a bit of excitement yesterday. The Mister and I both woke up shortly before 6 a.m. yesterday morning thinking we'd heard a crash, but we both noticed that the cable box had turned on, so we figured the power had blipped and the sound we heard was everything resetting. When he went out to do the grocery shopping later in the morning, though, he discovered that part of a tree in our neighbors' yard had fallen, taking out part of their fence and hitting the power line on the hillside below it:

While we lost power only briefly, the other side of the street was completely out for most of the day. Luckily the power company was on it, and one they were able to get to the branch and saw off the parts that were pulling on the line, power was restored. Some of you might remember that, three years ago, another branch pulled down a power line on the same hillside and the whole street was without power for a couple of days, so I'm glad it wasn't as big of an issue this time around!

I'm also thankful that my crafting didn't rely on power in any case. I spent a good amount of the weekend at my wheel, plying this long-in-progress skein:

This is the body skein for my next handspun sweater, and I'm hoping those of you who couldn't quite understand my color progression explanation will get it now that you can see the skein. It's still fairly damp, so I don't have yardage yet, but based on the number of wraps on my niddy-noddy, I'm not concerned. The mini skein off to the side is a two ply from the singles that were left after two of the three bobbins ran out. Once I focused on the final bobbin of singles, this skein was finished up fairly quickly (isn't it funny how that works?), so I'm pretty confident I can get the two (much smaller) sleeve skeins done soon, maybe by the end of the month. It would be great to be able to cast on the sweater in September!

This week is likely to be busy, but I have an extra-long weekend coming up. I'm taking Friday off because it's Mo's last day of summer break, so we're going to have a girls' day with my mother, and she has a half day next Monday for her first day, so I'm taking that day off as well so we can do lunch when I pick her up. I might regret it next week when work is piling up, but I'll try to enjoy the time off as much as I can.

Have a great start to your week! See you back here on Wednesday.

Bright Spots

Ah, Friday. It's been another long, stressful week, mostly due to work stuff. I'll spare you the details, mainly because they're not that interesting and it's a lot like flogging a dead horse, but I am hopeful things will improve soon. I have a meeting scheduled next Thursday with my supervisor and someone higher up in my office plus the two people who have been in charge of the job classification issue for all of my office to discuss the changing of my (incorrect) non-exempt job classification to one that better represents what I actually do and that is a salaried position. Knowing how slowly things move with my employer, I'm sure it'll be a while before it's all resolved, but I am hopeful we're at least in the last chapter of this saga.

Instead of whining today, I thought I'd share some bright spots from the past week, specifically the past few days.

On Wednesday, Mo and I got to dog-sit unexpectedly. My brother had confused his schedule a bit and had to be in all-day negotiations that he thought were on Thursday, so he asked if we could take Leo for the day. That meant we got to take him for a walk in the neighborhood midday, and while he was sniffing something, we spotted a hummingbird flying in and out of a bunch of flowers across the street. I could have tried to take a photo, but it wouldn't have done it justice, so I opted to just enjoy the moment.

The past two evenings, I've cast on some new projects. First, because I like having something I can knit on without looking, I started another top-down hat. I did have to pay attention during the crown increases, but because I'm making this one of my double-layer hats, I have a lot of plain stockinette in the round to go.

This yarn is the Malabrigo sock yarn that was in the box with the swift and ball winder I got in the swap at the retreat last month, and I thought it was just brown and green until I started knitting and discovered all these colorful pops! I'm not sure if this'll be added to the charity pile or become a gift, but it doesn't really matter at this point.

I also started a Newborn Vertebrae (Ravelry link) for my niece using some special Fibernymph Dye Works MCN that I've been saving for a special occasion.

The yarn is from 2022 and was the special skein dyed for those who participated in Lisa's yearlong makealong that year. The colorway is called Community because the colors were selected from a mashup of all the ravatars of participants in the makealong. I think an MCN is perfect for a newborn, and it's exciting to be knitting something tiny for this baby -- I didn't do anything this small for her brother because he was born in May (though who could have predicted we'd have a freak cold spell and I'd be wearing a wool sweater when I met him the first time?). I've knit this pattern many times as a baby gift, and as I've done in the past, I'll be knitting a little hat to go with it.

Yesterday work was quiet enough that I could spend some time reading and spinning, and that time was enough to finish the singles on my final bobbin for the contrast skein for the body of my sweater project, so today I am ready to ply:

I don't know if I'll be able to ply today, but if not, I'll do it this weekend.

Finally, though there are some issues for me due to all the job drama, I got a notification that union ballots were officially sent out yesterday! Faculty have already unionized at my university, but this is an effort to unionize the staff that's been in progress for a couple of years. Ballots aren't due to be returned and counted until mid- to late September, but I'm hoping that before too long I'll be able to say I'm a proud member of United Steelworkers!

That's all I've got for today. Hope you have a good end to your week and a relaxing weekend ahead. See you back here on Monday!

Unraveled, Week 33/2024

Well, I jinxed myself. I put it in writing that I was hoping for an easy workweek, and the universe conspired against me and sent me a ton of work that I didn't stop until shortly before dinner on Monday. I've learned my lesson! Fortunately because of that work and some other stuff going on around the office, our team meeting was virtual yesterday, so I got to stay home (where I'm more productive anyway!).

But enough about work -- it's Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers! A wee bit of knitting has been done the last couple of days, in large part thanks to meetings (oh, so many meetings), and I have finished my charity hat:

This was the perfect knitting for what's been happening lately -- I really only had to think while I was increasing the crown, and then I switched to ribbing when I felt like it was long enough. I used my Spinning in Infinity pattern (Ravelry link) and US 5/3.75 mm and US 4/3.5 mm needles. I ended up using the equivalent of about half of the skein of yarn, from which Mo had already crocheted a charity hat while we were at the retreat, and there was a small ball weighing about 5 g remaining. Not bad!

While given the choice, I will still prefer to knit with natural fibers, I was rather impressed with the quality of this 100% acrylic yarn. It feels good and is not squeaky to work with. IT was a bit splitty, but that's down more to the construction of it than the fiber content. And certainly for a charity hat, with an unknown recipient with unknown laundering abilities, it makes a lot of sense.

I have once again failed to finish a book in the last week. Being busy at work has played a part, but I've also been focused on A Suitable Boy. At some point I mistakenly thought I was a week ahead, and the result is that I ended up a week behind, so I had to read two weeks' worth of chapters to get caught up. And now that I have a little more than 300 pages remaining, I'm feeling excited about finishing! The way I see it, this one book is the length of approximately five average-length books, so I'm not being too hard on myself about my lack of finishes lately.

What are you making and reading this week? Anyone else feel like they need to cram in more books before the end of the summer?

Pretty Perfect

Good morning, dear readers! I wasn't exactly happy when my alarm went off this morning, but I woke up having had a pretty spectacular weekend. For one thing, the weather was spectacular. After the remnants of Debby moved through on Friday, the temperature and the humidity level dropped and we had sun and blue skies. It was actually a bit chilly in the shade! That meant that we could quite comfortably spend time outside instead of hiding in the air conditioning.

We had a really nice visit with our cousins, though it was very brief -- they arrived late Friday afternoon and left after breakfast on Saturday. Despite not living that far away from these cousins (they live in Chicago), we don't often see them, so it was a treat to spend time with them for the second time in three months.

After breakfast on Saturday, Mo and I went to the big used book sale with my parents. It wasn't quite as big as I was expecting, but I still found quite a lot -- and it was a steal, at $15 for a paper grocery bag full, so I pretty much picked up any book I saw that I was interested in. This is what I came home with:

I have read two of these books but didn't own them, but one of those -- the one at the far left in the bottom row -- is pretty special. The Blue Nature was written by one of my two high school English teachers (I had her freshman and junior year). I read the book back when I was in high school because the school library had a copy; I think it was out of print back then. I never in a million years would have expected to find a copy! This one was a little beat up, but I snatched it up right away and will treasure having it. I'm planning on putting it on my bookshelf next to the book from the collection of my other high school English teacher that I received as a gift with the English prize when I graduated. (If you're wondering, the other book I'd already read was Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.)

A fair amount of knitting was accomplished over the weekend, too:

Somehow my new socks, even though they have patterning every other round, seem to be moving much father than my father-in-law's socks did. Yes, they have fewer stitches, but you'd think plain stockinette would've been faster. I also put in some time on the charity hat while reading, and I don't think it'll be on the needles much longer.

I am hoping this week is a little less busy than last week, as least as far as work is concerned, because I'd love to have a little more time for reading. I had two library holds come up over the weekend and had to delay one, so now I'm trying to finish the first book before the next one comes my way

Have a great start to your week and see you back here on Wednesday!