Tesselation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overachieving

Friends, it is done. But unfortunately you'll have to wait a bit for photos that really do it justice because I probably won't be in the same place as my photographer in the middle of the day (when there's sufficient natural light) until the weekend. So until then, a mediocre selfie will have to do:

Warning: Arms are not as long as they appear

Pattern: Goldenfern (Ravelry link) by Jennifer Steingass, size C/40.75 in. bust
Yarn: my ABBA-themed handspun yarn 
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm), and US 6 (4.0 mm)
Started/Completed: October 9/November 20
Mods: worked at a different gauge than specified; shortened the sleeve colorwork; worked a 1x1 ribbed cuff on sleeves rather than corrugated ribbing

Let's go back to the beginning on this project. You may recall that I spun the yarn with this sweater in mind. The pattern calls for using several colors for the colorwork, so I had done all this elaborate planning and splitting of the fiber so that my contrast yarn would start off all silver and gradually change to all burnt orange. The spinning portion of the project really turned out perfectly, and it would have worked as intended if I'd either knit a much larger size of the sweater or if I'd kept knitting and made it a dress. In the end, I didn't even use up a quarter of each of the three contrast skeins I spun. And the reason for that is because I guess you could say I was an overachiever.

Walking boot cameo

You see, when I spin yarn for a sweater, it's obviously one of a kind and I can't get any more, so I always worry about running out. That fear, combined with the fact that this yarn was spun from a silk blend (silk always wants to be spun finely), resulted in what was, if I'm honest, a light fingering weight yarn. I suspect that's part of the reason I had such trouble with my gauge -- my yarn was just too thin. It ended up working out okay as far as the sizing, but when your yarn is skinnier than it needs to be, it also ends up being longer. I certainly had more than the pattern called for (which is what I wanted, both to allow for gauge differences and so I wouldn't have to panic about playing yarn chicken), but it wasn't until I finished the sweater and weighed the leftovers that I realized just how much more yarn I had than I needed. I started out with just shy of 2,000 yards. I still have about 860 yards left. Yeah. That's a lot. Most of it is the contrast -- about 680 yards. And this is all despite the fact that I knit a size larger than I was originally planning!

I am happy to tell you that the fit is good and everything worked out just fine with my gauge. There's just enough positive ease in the sweater that I can wear it comfortably over a long-sleeved tee (which I always do with my sweaters) but not so much that it looks sloppy. I did figure out where I went wrong with the stitch count on the first sleeve -- suffice it to say that I didn't read the directions carefully enough and had picked up two fewer stitches under the arm -- but I replicated the mistake in the second sleeve so they match. The only real modification I made was shortening the colorwork a bit in the sleeves and finishing the cuffs with 1x1 rib to match the body.

Our first snow of the season is falling!

I think this is now the second Jennifer Steingass sweater I've knit, though I have several others in my library. Her patterns are well written (provided you take the time to read them, ahem), but my one complaint about this pattern is the same one I had with the last one: She has floats that are way too long in her colorwork. That wasn't as big of an issue the last time because the colorwork was all in the yoke, but in this sweater, long floats could be especially problematic in the sleeves and could sang on fingers or rings. I added ladderback jacquard floats in several places on both charts that resolved the issue for me, but I don't know how many knitters would know to do that if they hadn't knit another pattern that explicitly used them (in my case, that was my Threipmuir). I wouldn't let this deter you from knitting one of her patterns, but it's certainly something to keep in mind.

I'll leave you all with a photo of Molly's new and improved smile:

It'll only get better once her gums aren't so swollen and after she gets a professional cleaning, but doesn't she look great? I know I'm biased, but I'm also very impressed with what modern orthodontics can do.

Have a wonderful weekend, all!

How I Spent My Weekend

It is the first Monday of Standard Time, and I'm guessing a lot of you are still messed up over the time change. I know there's a lot of to-do about staying in Daylight Saving Time, but I'm in the camp that believes Standard Time is better. Regardless, it's the switching back and forth the gets on my nerves, and I'm thankful that yesterday was a lazy day even without factoring in a broken foot so that I could adjust a little easier.

So, how did I spend my weekend? Let's just say it looked like a lot of this:

We had tickets to go see the musical & Juliet on Saturday afternoon, and I was really looking forward to seeing it with Molly, but even if someone had driven us there, it would have been a lot of walking and too great a risk of someone stomping on my foot, so my father took her instead (my mother had a hair appointment she wasn't able to move or else she would have gone). Molly loved it, and while I'm sorry I couldn't go with her, it was nice to have a Saturday afternoon to myself without errands to run or chores to do. I was also supposed to go with the Mister to his high school reunion that night, but he went on his own and Molly and I had macaroni and cheese and watched Only Murders in the Building.

Yesterday we all slept in a little and had a leisurely breakfast, and I did some knitting and watched some podcasts while the Mister did the grocery shopping. In the afternoon, while Molly did homework, I worked on the sock pattern (the actual pattern writing part) and then we baked another apple cider donut cake with the cider that was left. The one we made on Friday tasted good but came out of the pan in two pieces, so I wanted to give this one a try, especially because more than one person recommended it on Friday. The verdict is that the Smitten Kitchen cake takes longer but is a more sophisticated cake (not as sweet). I think it would be a good recipe for Rosh Hashanah, actually, because it reminded me a bit of honey cake. I neglected to take a photo before we dug into it, but mine ended up looking quite a lot like the one in the recipe, although a bit taller.

As you can see from the photo above, there was a lot of knitting on my sweater this weekend, and I've actually just about finished the body -- I just have to finish binding off the back!

I guess I was a bit of an overachiever in spinning the contrast color, because when I completed the colorwork, I hadn't even gotten to the first shift in color. Molly suggested that when I do the sleeves, I work from the other end of the gradient, and I'm toying with that idea. I'm not sure if having the sleeves and the body be different will look good or weird. Thoughts? I have a while before I have to decide, but I'm pondering.

I am hoping that work calms down a bit last week. With all the foot drama last week, I also had a very large (nearly 80 pages) and very high-profile annual report to review, plus December graduation lists started coming in. At least I know that this week I don't have to worry about commuting to the office or picking Molly up from school, so that gives me a little extra time. And I will be able to knit through two additional meetings this week!

Tomorrow's the big day -- please make sure you get to the polls if you haven't voted already! I know it'll likely be several days before we know the results, but at least all the ads and text messages will stop. I will be voting in person tomorrow, either by getting a ride or getting out the crutches, and I'll be spending the rest of the day feeling (as I saw someone post on Instagram) nauseously optimistic.

Unraveled, Week 44/2024

Thank you all for your kind words about my fall. I decided it was probably wise to get my foot checked out, so I have an appointment at the local urgent care center this morning. Please keep your fingers crossed that it's just a sprain!

It's Wednesday, though it feels like it's been a week already with all that's been going on here. Still, it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers to talk about crafting and reading!

I've been giving a little attention to all three of my current WIPs in a regular rotation, but my main focus has been my sweater. It's the largest and probably slowest, so I'm trying to work on it a little every day. On Friday night, I pulled it out to start the colorwork (I'd reached the requisite length under the arms earlier in the day) only to realize that I hadn't yet wound the contrast skein for the body yet, so I had to wait until Saturday to do that. Then it took me a good hour on Saturday to get the first round done because the floats in that round were so long that I opted to use the ladderback jacquard method to deal with them and apparently had trouble counting to four reliably not once but twice. I'm off to the races now, though, and am about a third of the way through the body chart.

While my first skein of main color is getting smaller and smaller, I'm starting to wonder just how much of that contrast yarn I'm going to get through. Will I even get to the start of the transition to to the burnt orange? I've already decided that once I get to the end of the chart, I'll continue in the contrast color to add length, if needed, but there's a distinct possibility that I'll end with quite a lot of contrast yarn left. That's okay, but it would be a little sad if that pretty orange didn't get to play with the other colors. I'll just have to keep knitting and see what happens!

Reading was quite entertaining last week! I finished two new books:

Playground is Richard Powers' latest. I am still thinking about The Overstory after reading it years ago, and this newest novel was on the the Booker longlist, so I preordered it on Kindle. The writing and the stories sucked me in, even though I was a little confused at the beginning. A lot becomes clearer as you continue to read. As in The Overstory, there are several narratives that eventually overlap in this book. In Montreal in the late 1940s, Evelyne Beaulieu gets thrown into a pool by her father to test an early version of SCUBA and finds her calling under the water. In Chicago in the '90s, two teen boys from completely opposite backgrounds forge a friendship created over board games. And in present day Makatea, an atoll in French Polynesia, the dwindling population faces a decision that has profound implications for the future of their island. The book deals with so many topics -- artificial intelligence, race relations, colonialism, parent/child relationships, illness, the environment, friendship, art -- that it's amazing that it's not a 1,000-page book. Even the title has multiple meanings. I really enjoyed it, though I was left with a number of questions when I finished. I gave it 4 stars.

I am often drawn to women's stories and their perspectives on notable historical events, so I was intrigued by the description of Hill of Secrets, a novel set in Los Alamos during the Manhattan project and was interested in the possibility of learning what it might have been like for children and spouses of the scientists to live in a place where so much is secret. I cannot comment on how authentic the author's portrayal of the setting was, but it was certainly convincing to read, and I did get a sense of the tension surrounding the whole community -- for the scientists who were sure if their experiments would work, for the families who knew something important was happening but couldn't talk aobut it, and for the whole community living through a time of war. Ultimately the stories of the main characters show that all humans are flawed: We all make mistakes, we all grapple with the morality of our actions, and we all keep secrets. There were times when I felt like the narrative was heading a little too far into romance novel territory. While I have no problem with romance, I didn't really want that level of explicit content in my historical fiction. Still, it was entertaining and fast moving. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Brilliance Audio for providing me with a complimentary audiobook in return for an honest review.

I technically finished a third book in the past week, a reread of Emma via Craftlit, but I have read it several times before and my views on it haven't really changed.

I'm currently trying to finish up How to Be Both for discussion on Saturday; I started This Strange Eventful History, probably my last title from the Booker Prize longlist for this year, on Monday; and yesterday I got The Third Gilmore Girl (on audio) from the library.

What are you making and reading this week!

Hello, Monday; Hello, July

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for Finishing

It's the last Friday in June -- and I have today off! I get two personal days each year in addition to my vacation time, and if I don't use them before the end of the fiscal year (June 30), I lose them, so inevitably I end up taking off two random days in June. It's nice to take a day off just because, and I plan to make the most of having the day to myself (though not really to myself, because I've got Mo to hang out with).

My primary goal today is to finish up two projects. First, there's the second Bousta Beanie. I started the crown decreases last night, so I don't have much work left to do on it.

I also want to finish up my Benny singles today. This is all the fiber I have left to spin!

Tour de Fleece, that annual celebration of spinning that happens alongside some sort of bike race, starts tomorrow, and I'd like to kick it off by plying my three bobbins of blue singles. I have a sweater pattern (Ravelry link) picked out for the yarn, but it all depends on whether or not I get enough yardage from these three blues plied together for the main color.

In addition to working on these projects and going for my regular run, my only other planned activities for the day are making some dessert with Mo for our family dinner this evening  and joining my in-laws for a final walk-through of the condo they're going to be moving into next month. I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but they decided they wanted to move into the city from the suburbs to be closer to their grandkids, and they found a condo less than a mile from us. Their house went on the market late last week and they had an open house last weekend. They had multiple offers that day and are already under contract. It's a wild real estate market right now!

We've got a quiet weekend planned, which is just fine with me. I have some reading to get caught up on and would love to get all that plying done. And next week is a short week! I hope you have something fun and/or relaxing planned. See you here again in July (gulp)!

Unraveled, Week 25/2024

It's Wednesday, and it's still beastly hot, so let's get on with linking up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I'm actually off today for Juneteenth, though my routine isn't going to be much different from the usual other than staying off my work computer. I still got up at the normal time, and day off from work means I can go for my run a little earlier, before it gets dangerously hot. And I will have some extra crafting time today! I am almost to the crown decreases on my Bousta Beanie:

I'm really enjoying the rainbow, and though I'll have to weigh my leftovers when I'm done, it's possible I might have enough yarn to knit another with the colors reversed.

I've also been giving some attention to Benny on my wheel:

I had to sit through an hourlong presentation on Zoom for work on Monday afternoon that was interesting but ultimately useless for me, but it at least gave me some dedicated spinning time. I think I'm almost halfway done with these singles, and I'm starting to get really excited about plying. Ideally I'd like to have the yarn done by the end of the month, but we'll see what happens.

I've done a lot of reading in the past week, though most of it has been in my Big Book, so I've only finished one book.

Piglet is a relatively new release (it came out in February), and I'd heard a fair amount of buzz about it, so when it was a Kindle deal a couple weeks ago, I decided to give it a try. The titular character seems to have the perfect life -- a job she loves, a fiancé who adores her, a new house -- but there seems to be something missing. And then her fiancé reveals something that threatens to undo everything. This book has a lot to say about food and women's bodies and our expectations about them. It also addresses Piglet's struggle with what she believes she should want and what she actually wants out of her life. I really enjoyed the writing in this book and the descriptions of food and cooking (don't read it when hungry!). I think this is a novel that would be great to discuss in a group, too. I gave it 4 stars.

I am nearly finished listening to Anne of Avonlea, which I started over the weekend when I wanted something easy and enjoyable. Today I hope to start Enter Ghost, which I'd been waiting for from the library for a long time and finally got yesterday.

What are you making and reading this week?

Unraveled, Week 21/2024

Greetings from a warm Southwestern Pennsylvania, where we are having a brief taste of summer! I believe it hit (or got darn close to) 90ºF here yesterday, and if you ask me, it's much too early for that here. It's Wednesday, which means it's time to join up with Kat and the Unravelers again.

I am happy to share that my colorwork cowl, while not yet blocked, has officially been finished, with ends woven in and openings grafted.

The only reason it has not yet been blocked is because my blocking racks are currently full with another load of sweaters, but they should be dry by today and I can get this in to soak. As you may be able to tell from the photo, there's a twist in the cowl so that it sits nicely around the neck. I like the effect, but I'm also pondering how best to block this thing, and I have a feeling some towels as props might be involved.

Because that's now off the needles, I've started swatching for a new bigger project: a Rift tee.

I am using yarn that I won from the Unraveling podcast sometime last year. It's called Uru Yarn Asher (it was an exclusive yarn for Knitcrate, which was since folded), and it's a sport weight with a chainette construction. It's a really interesting fiber blend: 34% cotton, 35% linen, 19% Lyocell, and 11% nylon. The color in the photo is not quite accurate; it's more of a pale yellow-y green called Cucumber. As you can see from the swatch, it's got a bit of crunchiness to it, so it's not going to be the smoothest fabric, but I think it'll be really comfy for summer and will probably soften up with wear. Assuming I can get gauge, I'm going to be knitting the smallest size in the pattern, which is a 40" bust. The pattern calls for 6-12" of positive ease, but the 5" I would get from this size should be plenty for me and my little chest.

It's been another excellent week of reading with two finishes -- both yesterday, in fact!

The Reading List came out nearly three years ago but didn't get onto my radar until recently, and it was a lovely audiobook listen over a few days. There is a nice story, but I think the bigger message of it is about the power of books (and libraries) to bring people together, to help people understand others, and to improve themselves. It's quite clear that books and libraries are important to the author, and I consider her one of My People! I quite enjoyed the narration as well. There is a list of books that's central to the story, and I believe I've read all but three of them. In fact, this book and the list are the impetus for several of us who are tackling the biggest book on the list this summer! There are sad moments in the book, but overall I found it to be a joy. I gave it 4 stars.

My other finish is a book that's really amazing but also amazingly hard to describe. Same Bed Different Dreams was a finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction, an honor well deserved if only for the craft. There are so many pieces to this novel that weaves together strands as disparate as the history of Korea, a technology giant that seems to own and control almost every facet of life, the assassination of President McKinley, film criticism, cultural identity, adoption, science fiction writing, religious cults, and many other random stories and factoids that somehow all come together. I spent much of the book thoroughly confused but also fascinated, and even though I felt very satisfied at the end, I also felt like I should start the book over because I was certain I missed so many things! This isn't an easy read and definitely won't be for everyone, but I thought it was brilliant. 5 stars!

Now I am trying to finish up Kairos before we leave on our trip because I don't really want to take a hardback book with me, and I've got quite a lot on my Kindle shelf to choose from for my next book.

What are you making and reading this week?

That Was Unexpected

Ah, Monday again -- how soon you always arrive! The weekend went by quickly, as it always does, though it was a surprisingly beautiful one! We'd originally thought Saturday was going to be a rainy day, but it ended up being clear and sunny. And that wasn't the only surprise. Late Friday afternoon, a quick but powerful storm moved through the area. In our neighborhood, we just had some heavy rain, but not that far away were four confirmed tornadoes! The closest was less than five miles from our house, not far from the Pittburgh Zoo. Fortunately, it seems like no one was hurt and the damage left behind wasn't too bad, but it was still pretty scary. For context, the last time a tornado touched down anywhere close was 25 years ago, and I remember that storm clearly because it was quite violent and scary.

We wound up having dinner with my side of the family on Friday (where my brother spent a good portion of the evening trying to keep my nephew from wiping his lasagne-covered hands through his hair) and then with the Mister's side of the family on Saturday, so we had a lot of family time. I also took Mo to get a haircut on Saturday afternoon, had a couple of good walks, and spent some time in the garden, filling up the new planter with soil and spreading more of it around the flower beds. Thanks to all that enjoyable time doing other stuff, there wasn't a ton of crafting time over the weekend, but I am just about done with  my cowl thanks to a few episodes of Downtown Abbey (we're into season 4 now) and my Sunday Zoom session:

The last step in the finishing is grafting the two ends together, something that I don't mind doing (yes, I'm one of those weirdos who loves to graft) but that will take a bit of time. And then of course I have to write up the pattern, though I don't expect that to take very long because once you cast on, it's just a matter of knitting around and around in the colorwork pattern until it's long enough.

I also pulled out the Felici socks I've got on the needles when we were at dinner on Saturday and managed to knit and turn the heel, and then I got through the gusset decreases and into the foot yesterday afternoon while keeping Mo company while she was studying:

Mo has her finals in math and French this week, on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday is a make-up day, so as long as nothing prevents her from taking her tests on the scheduled days, she'll be off from school -- which is perfect, because we're going to Chicago for the weekend for my cousin's daughter's bat mitzvah. We're flying in midday on Friday and will be coming home Sunday so that we still get a day off. Next week, she has several days of fun mini courses, and then she graduates from middle school that Friday afternoon. And then she'll be home with me for the summer! She doesn't have any camps or anything this year, but I've told her that I expect her to wake up at a reasonable hour and get some useful things done every day, like helping out with chores around the house and getting some exercise. We're going to do some more cooking together for sure, and she said she'd help me with one of my summer projects: reorganizing my bookshelves. I also hope she'll take advantage of the time off to do a lot of reading for pleasure.

Okay, friends, time to get my day going so I can get in my run before it gets too hot. Have a good start to your week, and think of me tomorrow morning when I am (sob!) back in the office!

Almost Time for Weekending

It's been one of Those Weeks here, so I am very happy to see Friday come. I have been into the office twice this week for meetings, and starting next week, I'll have to go in Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I'm not very happy about it, but perhaps someone will realize before too long that I don't get anything done in the office that I can't get done at home and I can go back to full-time remote (I certainly plan to bring it up at my annual review, that's for sure). The Mister's also been away on a work trip for a couple of days, which on the one hand means I've been sleeping better but on the other means I'm doing two school runs a day. Needless to say, I plan on getting in some extra relaxation time this weekend!

Although I've been kept busy during the day, Mo and I have continued our Downton Abbey watching in the evening (we just finished season 4 last night!), and I've been working on my colorwork cowl. I'm getting closer and closer to the end -- I'm on the fifth repeat, and I'm hoping that when I finish it, I'll be happy with the length and can close it up.

Although I didn't plan it this way, the yarn I'm using for the colorwork pattern is just a tad thicker than the background color, and I love how it looks a little three-dimensional here. I expect things will even out with blocking, but it's fun for now.

On a totally different subject, I know at least a couple of you have tried the Tin Can Knits app and, like me, were a little annoyed that it didn't keep your place in a pattern. Well, yesterday I got an email from the TCK folks in which they specifically asked for app feedback, so I sent off a message expressing my frustration with this one thing. Within just a few hours, I got a reply back from Emily that the app does in fact keep your place! Perhaps this has changed since I last used it or I was doing something wrong, but either way I'm happy to see it working as I always thought it should.

Here's a screenshot from my iPhone (it may look different on a tablet or an Android device). When I opened up the pattern, I kept hitting that yellow/orange down arrow button to move on to the next step. I verified that when you quit the app, reopen it, and pull up your pattern again, it does indeed go back to where you were. This make me very happy because the TCK Simple Collection is such a great one for baby knits, and it's always nice not to have to find a paper pattern that I printed out and then misplaced.

We've got close to nothing on the calendar this weekend -- just a haircut appointment for Mo. It's supposed to be rainy again, at least on Saturday. I'm hoping to get some soil to fill in the second planter for the front yard and put the last of my Mother's day plants in. And we might have to do a little shopping ahead of a trip out of town next weekend for my cousin's daughter's bat mitzvah. Whatever's on the schedule for you, enjoy it!

Unraveled, Week 17/2024

What a week it has been -- and we've only reached the midpoint! I'm happy to report that our Seder went well, even if it was an exhausting night. The little ones all reached their breaking point before we reached the meal portion of the evening, so we were down to a dozen people around the table fairly quickly. Because we had started so early, we had finished dessert and said goodnight by around 8, and by 9 we had finished doing all the dishes and put away the extra tables and chairs. I'm pretty sure we all fell asleep very quickly Monday night. And then last night Mo and my mother went to Seder at my brother and sister-in-law's house (they also hosted their next-door neighbors) while the Mister and I attended an event with Baratunde Thurston hosted by our local PBS station. I'd say we're all looking forward to having a normal evening tonight!

Before I give an update and link up with Kat and the Unravelers, I have to share a photo from last Friday, which I forgot to do on Monday. I mentioned last week that we'd gone dress shopping, in part because Mo had a school dance on Friday, and several of you wanted to see the dress she picked. So here's a photo of the three of us:

Yes, she is wearing heels and I'm in flats, but she's quickly threatening to overtake me in height!

But back to the knitting content! This week, it's a tale of two socks:

On the top is the one using the yarn from String Theory Colorworks that I shared last week. I decided to make things a little more exciting and am doing some faux colorwork by slipping every other stitch on the round when the color changes. I'm also doing a forethought afterthought heel on these (if you look closely, you can see the white waste yarn near my needles) because I didn't want to change the width of the stripes by working a flap and gusset. On the bottom is the sock I started on Saturday for my theater knitting. We got there about an hour before showtime (we've been going early to deal with a ridiculous amount of construction downtown and to ensure we find a parking spot in the closest garage), so we sat on a bench before the house opened and I cast on. I got through a full stripe repeat over the course of the show. The yarn is Knit Picks Felici in the colorway White Russian; it was purchased back in 2022, which I know because I had the foresight to write the date it entered the stash on the ball band. I did rewind the yarn into cakes before casting on because I didn't want to risk the skein getting yanked out of my project bag in the dark in the theater.

My other active project is my design project:

I've been meaning to cast this on for a very long time, and in fact the colorwork pattern is one I've been playing around with for years. I'd originally tried it out in a sock, but stranded work in socks is always a little risky, so I decided to use it in a cowl instead. This is one of those cowls that is knit as a long tube and finished by grafting the two ends together. I've now completed a little more than one repeat of the pattern, and I'm very happy with how this is working up. I'm still deciding just how long to make this, but the beauty of this construction is that you can basically decide to make it as long or as short as you want.

I have only finished one book in the last week, but it was an excellent one!

The memoir How to Say Babylon is the next Read With Us selection, but I actually already had it on hold at the library when it was announced, and finally it was my turn last week. I decided to get the audiobook, read by the author, as I always seem to get more out of memoirs when I hear them in the author's own voice. Safiya Sinclair recounts growing up in poverty in Jamaica in a strict Rastafarian household, with a father who was occasionally abusive and whose beliefs governed what she could wear, what she could eat, and what she could do with her life. Eventually, Sinclair began to question those beliefs and to want a different life for herself, one that would allow her to not only make her own choices but also to pursue a career as a poet. Although this is a memoir and not a poetry collection, you can tell from her prose that she is a poet; even in describing things that are hard to read, her writing is beautiful. It's hard to say that I truly enjoyed all of this book; there were times when I forgot that the events she described had actually happened. But I found her skill as a writer to be astonishing, and I am hoping to find some of her poetry to read soon. I am really looking forward to the RWU discussion! I gave this book 5 stars.

On my to-do list for today is finishing Long Island Compromise (my Kindle app tells me I have about an hour of reading left), and I have about 100 pages remaining in When I Lived in Modern Times.

What are you making and reading this week?

Looking for Normal

Happy Friday, friends. It's been a very long week. All week I've been feeling off -- slightly spacey, more tired than usual -- and then feeling more anxious because of it. First I thought it was just because I haven't been sleeping well (because of snoring, then noise from having the windows open, then an unexpected iPad alarm in the middle of the night), and that's certainly adding to it, but I think part of it is also allergies. I mentioned earlier in the week that I've been getting off of allergy medication; I had been taking cetirizine (Zyrtec) for a long time and had tried to get off it twice before, but each time I failed because I suffered from intense, full-body itching. It was so bad that I ended up with bruises all over my body just from scratching. So for months now I've been tapering off my dose, and after taking a quarter of a pill (just 2.5 mg!), I went off entirely last week. I had the itching again this time around, and the bruising, but I've made it through this time. It's now been more than a week since I had any of this drug in my system, and while I'm still a little itchy from time to time, it's much more manageable. But -- not taking an allergy pill daily, after taking it for several years, means that the allergies have come back in full force, on top of which it seems to be a particularly bad year of pollen. So I suppose it's not surprising that I'm feeling weird! I think getting a bit caught up on sleep will help, and I hope that will happen this weekend.

Sorry if all that is TMI! I am happy to report that my sweater is done and has been blocked, but you'll have to wait until Monday to see it modeled. In the meantime, I've started two new projects -- a pair of socks and a colorwork cowl that's a new design -- and have made a bit of progress on both.

I didn't intentionally choose yarns that had some colors in common, but it's always a happy coincidence when that happens. I may need to cast on something else because Mo and I have tickets to see Company tomorrow and neither of these projects can be worked on without looking (I'm slipping every other stitch on the first round of the color change on the socks for a little fun, but that requires being able to see the color change).

Before I can get to any of that, though, I've got to get through a day of work and a pile of laundry. Here's hoping everyone has a restful weekend!

Unraveled, Week 8/2023

It's a very gloomy morning here, so I ask your forgiveness for the quality of the photos in this post. We are expecting rain all day, off and on. Then tomorrow they're predicting a high of 72, followed by a retreat to the 30s on Friday. I can't remember such a roller coaster of an end to winter before!

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my hat pattern on Monday -- and many thanks to those of you who purchased the pattern as well! I really had not expected much because the pattern is so similar to others out there, but I've been very pleasantly surprised.

It's Wednesday, which means it's time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers and to give an update on my making and my reading! I am very happy to report that I have an FO to share today:

Pattern: Hive Mind (Ravelry link) by Adrian Bizilia from Yarnitecture by Jillian Moreno
Yarn: my handspun, a combo spin of two Southern Cross Fibre colorways
Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm)
Started/Completed: February 13/February 21
Mods: corrected the errors in the pattern

These are technically not finished finished finished because they still need a good blocking (as you can tell from their slight wonkiness), but the knitting is done and all the ends have been woven in. And I am very glad to have them done, because they were not the best knitting experience. I've already expressed my frustration with the errors in the pattern, though those were easy to correct. The other issue was just the general fussiness and discomfort. I generally enjoy stranded colorwork, but the small circumferences and dealing with some tension issues meant that these were physically uncomfortable to knit when it came to the thumbs and the tops of the hands. While the patterning on the thumbs is very clever in that, if you look closely to see it, the pattern is uninterrupted from the hand, there are some stretches of the background color across the transition from front to back of the thumb that can result in some tension issues if you're not careful.

I also generally don't love the placement of the thumb on the palm side of the hand like it is in this pattern. I know that's a sort of feature of a certain tradition of mitten knitting, but anatomically, that's not where my thumbs are. I much prefer a thumb that comes out of the side of the hand. But they're done; they fit Rainbow (so she'll get them once they're blocked); and I still have a bit more than 300 yards of yarn left of the combo spin, so I can use the remainder for some other mitts/mittens or even a pair of sock for me. I've posted specifics about the errors I found on my Ravelry project page, which is one of only a handful. No one else seems to have noticed the issues, though one other crafter did note that the ribbing should be longer (and, in my opinion, done on a smaller needle) and the hand shorter, and I agree with those assessments. I also did a tubular cast-on for 2x2 ribbing for the first time with these, and while blocking might help, I'm not terribly impressed with it at the moment.

Now that those are done, I'm still working on a pair of Felici socks for Rainbow, but one knitting project is never enough, so I'm planning my next cast-on. I've been craving some sweater knitting, so I think the time is finally right to cast on a Love Note sweater. This seems to be one of those patterns that everyone has knit, and I've certainly had my eye on it for a long time. I've even had some yarn for it for quite a while!

The four darker skeins are Hedgehog Fibres Skinny Singles, a fingering-weight 100% superwash merino yarn. I won them a number of years ago in a giveaway that Bonny had on her blog. They've been waiting for just the right project to come along, and when I got these two skeins of Fibernymph Dye Works mohair/silk laceweight, I knew the two combined would be perfect. So I have some winding and swatching in my future.

Reading has been a bit more plentiful this week thanks to some audiobooks. I've finished three books

Over the weekend, I finally finished up the interconnected short story collection The Tsar of Love and Techno. I have not read a ton of short stories over my reading career, mainly because I find them to often be unsatisfying -- either because they're not fully formed enough or they are really good and end too soon for me. But I think this may very well be the most perfect short story collection I've ever read. While each story can stand on its own, there is a thread that runs through all of them that ties them together in a really interesting way. They aren't chronological, but in reading all the stories you can see the evolution of the Soviet Union to (nearly) modern-day Russia and how the political climate shaped its inhabitants. The book is incredibly well written and thoroughly enjoyable. I gave it 4.5 stars.

When I needed an audiobook for my exercise listening, I decided to try one that many of you have read and recommended (and that was very short to boot). Grief Is the Thing with Feathers imagines a family's grief at the sudden loss of its wife and mother as a physical manifestation, a loud and troublesome crow that takes up residence in their home. I thought it was a really original and clever way to think of grief as something totally illogical and completely disruptive, but it was all a little weird. I think perhaps audio was not the best format for this, and perhaps I'll have to give it another go in print sometime. I gave it 3 stars.

As I said, Grief was a very short book (I think less than 2 hours on audio, which took even less time than that when listened to at faster-than-normal speed), so I started another book right away. This time, it was another Gabrielle Zevin novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. This novel about a widowed bookstore owner on a fictional island off Massachusetts who finds a toddler left in his store is a bit predictable and a bit unrealistic, but it's also just a lovely story that, at its heart, is a love letter to books and stories. It's no Tomorrow x3, but it was thoroughly enjoyable to listen to (even if the narrator sounded a bit snooty). I gave it 4 stars.

I'm currently reading -- still -- War and Peace, though I have officially passed the 50% mark, and I've started The Shipping News for the next Read With Us discussion. This is technically a reread for me, but the first time around I was 14 or 15, so it's a very different experience in addition to my not remembering much of it!

What are you making and reading this week?

A Long Weekend (Sort of) Ahead

TGIF! This has been a strange week that has included water advisories and an unexpected school closing and a record high temperature. Work has also been a little unusual. So I'm quite happy to see Friday arrive.

It's President's Weekend here in the United States, and yesterday marked the end of Rainbow's second term of school, so she has today and Monday off. I'm working both days, but having her around and not having to leave at 3 to pick her up in the afternoon is a nice change. We've been invited to have dinner at my brother and sister-in-law's house tonight, so we will be baking challahs to take with us. 

Because of the weirdness with work, I had a couple of days where I didn't get as much crafting done as I'd hoped, but everything is moving forward. The mitten is growing very quickly; I finished the hand last night and got started on the thumb:

That locking stitch marker is indicating a little oopsie. I got a bit tangled in my knitting Wednesday evening and when the mitten fell, the needle fell out of some stitches and a few got dropped. When I picked them back up, I only realized later that I picked up a stitch in the wrong color. I didn't want to tink back (colorwork knitting in small circumferences is hard on my hands, and I do have a deadline for these), so I'm just going to duplicate stitch over that one later.

Rainbow's sock is also ready for a heel flap! I was able to get in some time on this while doing a work project (I was reading on my screen and only periodically had to type some things, so most of the time my hands were free). This isn't the most exciting project for me, but I feel like I have to knit her socks quickly if they're going to stand a chance of actually getting worn before she outgrows them, and they're fairly mindless knitting anyway.

Finally, there's the spinning, which is going slowly but steadily. It's what I've primarily been working on while reading War and Peace on my iPad. I'm closing in on finishing the first bobbin of singles.

We have no plans for the weekend other than dinner tonight, and I'm hoping that means extra crafting and reading time. The weather is supposed to be much colder, so I won't be tempted to spend more time outside, and it will be a perfect excuse to curl up with a cup of tea. Judging from the number of spring flowers I've seen coming up this week and the increasing level of birdsong I've been hearing in the mornings, our days to stay inside are dwindling. Stay cozy and have a great weekend, friends!

Unraveled, Week 7/2023

What a strange week it has been! With Rainbow being home on Monday unexpectedly and planning for her to be home on Friday (for a planned in-service day), I'm all mixed up on what day it is. But thanks to Kat's weekly Unraveling link-up, I can be sure that today is Wednesday. So, here's what I'm working on this week!

After finishing up the second combo spin skein on Sunday afternoon, I needed something to work on that evening while watching the Super Bowl, so I started a new pair of socks for Rainbow using more of the Knit Picks Felici she picked out a while back. I thought I'd so something a little different and use a tubular cast-on for these, in part to see if I could make a slight adjustment and end up with a tidier edge. All I did was make my yarnovers backwards (and then corrected how they sat on the needles on the the next round). Reducing the amount of yarn used for each yarnover ever so slightly seemed to work well -- look at this edge!

This colorway is called Friendly Skies, but I can't help to think that the one section of the stripe sequence looks like candy corn.

On Monday afternoon I wound the two skeins of handspun so I could start my mittens that evening, and all went well until I tried to start the colorwork and found that my stitch count was off (specifically, I had two more stitches than I should have had). I took another look at the chart and found the reason why. Can you spot it?

That little loopy symbol in the first and last squares on the first row of the chart is the symbol for make 1. Except that if you look closely, you'll see that the number 1 along the bottom of the chart falls not beneath the first stitch of the chart but rather below the column of row numbers. While the numbers at the bottom seem to indicate that you should have 28 stitches on each side of the mitten, you actually only need 27, so when I increased two stitches on each side, I ended up with those two extra stitches. I'm not sure how this error was missed in editing, or how the fact that the decreases also aren't indicated for the top of the mitten were also missed. These errors don't seem to appear anywhere online, either. I'll be sure to note them on my Ravelry project page. The good news is that as soon as I tinked back and removed the two extra stitches, everything was smooth sailing, and I'm now about halfway through the hand of the first mitten:

The white is waste yarn where the thumb will go.

Lest you think I'm letting my wheel sit idle, I also started a new spinning project yesterday. Remember my combo spin from last fall? I wanted to spin a bit more yarn to go with it so I could use it for a sweater, so I've pulled out last October's Southern Cross shipment, Dragon's Breath, and have split it up a bunch to mix up the colors. This will be a three-ply fingering weight (or at least I hope it will!):

I've continued to read quite a bit in the past week, but because of what I am reading (hello, brick that is War and Peace!), I have only finished one book.

Fresh Water for Flowers came highly recommended by both Katie and Mary, and it was available as both an ebook and an audiobook on Hoopla. I was out of podcasts to listen to toward the end of last week, so I opted for the audio. This translated work tells the story of Violet, a French cemetery caretaker. It's a bit of a mystery that jumps around in time as it tells the stories of her life and how she ended up caring for the final resting places of others. The book itself is quite good, but I found that my enjoyment of it was somewhat diminished by the fact that the reader was butchering all the French names and words in it. I may be a bit more sensitive to this than others because I'm trying to relearn my French, but you would think that for a book with so much of a foreign language in it, the publisher would try to find a reader who had some familiarity with that language. I wouldn't let that dissuade you from reading the book, but if mispronunciation is something that bothers you, you may want to read this with your eyes. It really is a beautiful book. I gave it 4 stars.

I'm 37% of the way through War and Peace (I've been reading while spinning, mainly) and have less than 100 pages left of The Tsar of Love and Techno. I'm reading the latter primarily before bed, so I don't get a lot read in each reading session, but I'm enjoying it so much that I may need to sit down and finish it during the day.

How about you -- what are you making and reading this week?

A Mixed Bag of a Week

Phew, finally it is Friday! I'm not sure why, but this week has felt very long, so I'm happy to see the end of it. Perhaps it's the weather -- as I type this, it's 39F outside, and I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for going out for a run. Weather like this is always problematic because I start off cold and want to wear extra layers but very quickly warm up and then have to deal with those layers I no longer need. Even more unnerving is the fact that there's (whispers) snow in the forecast for next Tuesday. I know in some places that's not surprising, but if it materializes, it will apparently tie the record for the earliest snowfall here; we usually don't see our first measurable snow until some time in November or even December.

But enough about the weather -- this is a knitting blog! I finally made some real progress this week, namely in sitting down to do the necessary math to figure out all the grading for my sock pattern, and that meant I could finish up the first sock:

The next item on my to-do list is to take all the notes I've scribbled on scraps of paper and turn them into an actual pattern. I'm hoping that can get done this weekend.

I've also made a little bit of progress on the hat, which was just a crown the last time you saw it. Now it has some colorwork!

These are the happy parts of the week, but there were some not-so-happy parts as well. Do you remember last October, when I discovered some moth damage among our winter accessories? It seems I did not learn my lesson, because I made a rather disgusting discovery this week. Some time ago I'd reshuffled my sweater drawer and set aside a handful of sweaters that I didn't really wear anymore. I put them in the corner of our den temporarily -- or so I thought, but apparently I just forgot about them. And I think you know where this is going. When I pulled them out earlier in the week, I saw the telltale signs of moth damage, so they all went into the tub. Fortunately most of them appeared to have made it out okay, but one of them -- my first handspun sweater -- appeared to have been the primary target. I'm not surprised, because it was a very wooly wool, and in truth it was in the pile because I never wore it because it was itchy. It was spun from wool that was free to me and not very high quality, stuff I'd never spin today. It was also more than a decade old, and my tastes have changed since then. Given all these factors, when I pulled it out of the bath and saw how bad it was, I just tossed it into the dryer. I figured that because it was destined for the trash anyway, I had nothing to lose. Amazingly, even felted, I can still get it on, but it's still incredibly itchy. And now I can see just how much it was munched on.

I put a white piece of fabric inside so you can see the holes better.

I plan to cut off the buttons so I can reuse them and then either toss it whole into the trash or, if I have the energy for it, cut it up and toss the bits into the garden as mulch.

I'm really hoping this doesn't become an annual October thing, but consider this another PSA: Pull out your knits regular to inspect them, wash them frequently (moths are attracted to the smell of dirty wool), and don't leave them out where they are prime targets! I'm pretty sure that these are still the same moths (well, their descendants) that were in the infested fleece from a couple of years ago, and I may never be free from them, so it's all about mitigation here. I consider myself pretty lucky that the sweater that was eaten wasn't a favorite, and I'm also trying to have a general attitude toward my knits that there is nothing that can't be made again if it's beyond repair. Yarn, after all, is biodegradable, so nothing made from it will last long term. Also, this is my hobby and something that brings me joy, so if the worst that happens is that I have to reknit a sweater, how bad can life be?

Here's hoping the weekend brings more joy for all of us!