New Month, Less Heat

It's August, which means it's almost fall! (Yes, yes, I know there's a ways to go yet, but Molly goes back to school at the end of the month, and I always think of the start of the school year as the start of fall.) After several days of excessive heat and humidity, a cold front came through yesterday, bringing a little rain but also much cooler weather. The high today is only supposed to be in the upper 70s -- that's something to celebrate!

Between the heat and some early mornings (Ruthie has decided to announce she's up between 5 and 6 a.m. lately), it's been a long week, so let's wrap things up with some good things, shall we?

First, I successfully donated blood yesterday, my fourth donation of the year to date. With five months left in the year, there's plenty of time for me to reach the maximum six donations possible in a calendar year.

Second, I got a little treat in the mail yesterday (not a surprise, because it was a treat I bought for myself). 

The photo is terribly due to cloudy weather and the plastic bags, but what you see here are four bags of fiber from Southern Cross Fibre. Yes, I am actively trying to use up stash, but with David retired from dyeing, there will not be any more of his fiber except if someone is destashing, which is what happened here. I got a fabulous deal (I basically paid for the price of two bags, shipping included), and what's more, among these are some of my favorite of David's bases to spin.

Finally, something that I hope will give you a laugh. Do you remember how the name Ruthie was given by the rescue was Kitty? We thought it was a silly name at the time, but it seems that it might have been more appropriate than we thought:

Either she's part cat or she's been looking over my shoulder at one too many pictures of Giroux.

Have as good a weekend as you can, friends! I hope if you've been in the heat, you're also getting a respite.

Unraveled, Week 39/2025

It is another steamy morning here in SW PA, and as it's Wednesday, that means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers! I've been strangely monogamous with my knitting this week; though I've knit up a swatch with the Shibui Linen I brought home from Nashville (still to be measured, blocked, and measured again), mainly what I've been working on is the socks I started on the way there. The first sock was finished up Monday and the second immediately cast on.

If you click to embiggen the photo and look closely, you might notice a fun bit of serendipity. When I finished the first sock, I had just started a new color, so I wound off the yarn until I got to the start of the next stripe and cast on for the second sock at that point. It was not until yesterday afternoon, when I pulled out the first sock to compare the cuff length, that I realized I had managed to start both socks at exactly the same point in the stripe sequence without planning it! In all honesty, I'd planned on not trying to get the socks to match because the stripe sequence is so long, so this was a pretty fun thing to happen.

I've finished another two books this past week:

Some of you who are also on NetGalley likely recently got an email about What We Can Know. This new novel from Ian McEwan tells its story in two parts. First, we follow Tom Metcalfe, a humanities professor in the 22nd century whose scholarship focuses on 21st-century British poet and the famous lost poem he wrote as a tribute to his wife, Vivien. Tom's research is made all the more difficult by the fact that climate change has led to rising seas and dangerous travel. Relying on the poet's archives, which include Vivien's journals, he is convinced that he will be the one to find the missing poem and that it will make his career, but he is so focused on his work and his obsession with the poem and Vivien that he neglects his wife and fails to notice that his students don't appreciate his fixation on the past. In the second part, we get to read the memoir Vivien left behind and learn that the story of her life, as told to us by Tom, was not entirely accurate and that the famous poem written for her might best be left in the past. This book is billed as speculative fiction, but the only thing speculative I found in it was the creation of the world transformed by climate change -- and even that doesn't seem so uncertain these days. The prevailing message of the novel, to me, is that often what we know of history is biased based upon who is telling the story of the past and that even when we tell our own stories, we're not under any obligation to be entirely truthful. I gave it 3 stars. Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for providing me with digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published September 23, 2025.

Broken Country is one of those buzzy new books that seems to be popping up a lot of places. I'd heard of it and thought it sounded interesting but wasn't going out of my way to read it -- but then my mother passed along her copy and I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. This novel is set primarily in 1968 in the English countryside, with flashbacks to a decade earlier. At its heart is a love triangle. Beth, the main character, fell in love with Gabriel as a teenager, but miscommunication and a difference in social class drove them apart. In the present day, she is married to Frank, a farmer who quietly loved her from a distance for years. They are living on his family's farm, still mourning the tragic death of their young son, when Gabriel, now with his own young son, returns to his family home and it's apparent that the feelings of the past aren't entirely in the past. Amid all of this, we know someone has been killed and someone is on trial for murder, but we don't know who (and don't find out their fate or what actually happened) until much later in the book. I can see why this book is making the rounds: It's an easy, propulsive read. Perhaps it's a bit predictable, too, though there were a couple of twists toward the end I didn't see coming. I enjoyed it (4 stars), but I don't think it'll make my list of favorites for the year.

I'm currently reading a book my brother lent me after we adopted Ruthie called Dog Is Love, which is fascinating both as a dog owner and as someone who majored in psychology in college, and another ARC -- the forthcoming ninth book in Ann Cleeves's Shetland series!

What are you making and reading this week?

Less in 2025: July

Somehow it is the last Monday of July and it will be August by the end of the week. How that happened, I'm not sure, but I think we can all agree the year is flying by. As it's the last Monday of the month, that means it's time to check in on my One Little Word. Thanks to Kat for hosting our monthly link-up!

This month, particularly the end of this month, there has been LESS worry and anxiety, especially with regard to Ruthie. I know you're all aware of how worried I was about how she and the Mister would do alone together while Molly and I were in Nashville. You all told me it would be fine and good for them, but there was a lot of negativity before we left and I really wasn't convinced. And aside from that, I'd also had some moments of frustration and had been questioning whether the decision to adopt a dog when the Mister wasn't fully on board was the right one. But when we got home and found out that not only did they both make it through but she had no accidents and didn't bark at him the whole time we were gone, I felt so relieved and reassured. It's clear that I will forever be her favorite person, but I'm seeing better interactions between the two of them -- and it's not just that Ruthie is more tolerant of the Mister, it's also that I see him willingly spending time with her and trying to get her to come to him.

All this is not to say that the stress of having a puppy is totally gone, but I think enough time has passed that I've gotten some perspective on the early days and can see how far we've come. And with every day that passes, we get closer to leaving the puppy period behind. Maybe one day I'll even miss it (though not the pre-6 a.m. wakeups)!

Because a post related to Ruthie is not complete without a photo of her, here is a portrait of the new branch manager:

Ready to Rest

I am thankful to have made it to the end of this week. The trip was a lot of fun but not particularly restful, and of course coming back on Sunday afternoon meant we were thrown right back into the usual schedule on Monday morning. I am getting this post ready ahead of time because I have an early appointment for my mammogram this morning and then have to get back for more (pointless) work meetings.

Since my last post, I have been able to finish up the hat I started just ahead of the trip, so now I have two for the charity pile that are ready to be washed, blocked, and put safely away:

And I've added some more stripes to my sock WIP and am almost to the heel (unfortunately they're only a small fraction of a Ruthie long):

We have a quiet weekend planned. It's going to be hot again, like upper-90s-with-heat-index hot, with a chance of rain every day, so it'll be a good weekend to stay in the cool and relax. Molly and I talked about maybe going to a local farmer's market tomorrow morning; she has a hankering for fresh cherries, and maybe we'll find some other yummy things to eat for lunch or dinner. The Mister has a high school friend in town on Sunday and they're getting together for dinner with friends (I may or may not go along). Other than that, the weekend is wide open and that's just fine with me. I need to clean bathrooms after skipping a week and would like to maybe sneak in a nap, as I doubt Ruthie will let me sleep in.

Whatever's on tap for you this weekend, I hope it's enjoyable. I will see you back here on Monday for my July One Little Word post -- can't believe this month is almost over!

Unraveled, Week 38/2025

Time continues its forward march and here we are again on a Wednesday. Time to link up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I spent most of my knitting time when we were away working on a charity hat, and I'm quickly approaching its end. As of yesterday afternoon's nap time, when I snapped this photo, it was about 4/5 of a Ruthie:

Funny story: She actually woke up when I first draped it on her, and I thought she was going to try to eat it and quickly snatched it back, but she almost immediately closed her eyes again. I guess the desire to sleep was stronger than her desire to chew! This yarn is Fibernymph Dye Works Bedazzled, which is 438 yards per 100 g, but as is usually the case with the skeins I get from Lisa, this one was a bit overweight at 106 g, so I've actually got about 464 yards to work with. I'll use most if not all of it, and that should make for a nice slouchy hat for someone.

I also worked a bit on the socks I started in the car on the way to the airport, but I was holding back a bit so that Molly and I could do heels at the same time. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how much she got done on hers considering that this is probably the first time she's ever worked on such small needles (her sock on the left is on a US 1/2.25 mm; mine on the right is on a US 0/2.0 mm).

While I'm working on these smaller projects, I'm also pondering what to cast on next. I think I may try to knit another summer top, specifically this one (Ravelry link), which was my original plan for the Miss Babs silk/linen I used on my Midsommarkrans. In fact, the Shibui linen yarn I found on the giveaway table at SSK should be pretty perfect for it. I may start swatching that soon.

I didn't read as much while we were away as I would have at home, but I've still managed to finish two (short) books in the past week:

Continuing my exploration of the work of Nobel literature laureate Han Kang, I read her latest, We Do Not Part. In terms of the subject matter, this felt like a logical continuation of Human Acts in that a large part of the book explores the trauma of massacres in Korea, this time on Jeju Island. (Note: If you've read The Island of Sea Women, then the history of this island will not be new to you.) The way this history is presented, however, is a bit strange. We start with Kyungha, who is struggling with nightmares in the wake of writing a book about another massacre (presumably the one depicted in Human Acts) when she gets a call from her friend Inseon, who is in a hospital in Seoul after a carpentry accident and begs Kyungha to come see her. When they meet, Inseon begs Kyungha to go to her house on Jeju to take care of her bird, and Kyungha makes the long journey in a treacherous snowstorm. When she awakes in her friend's house, with the power out, she is surprised to see Inseon there, all signs of her injury gone, and the two begin going through Inseon's extensive research on the massacres on Jeju and her intimate connection to them. The writing (or at least the translation of the writing) is beautiful, but the story itself is odd and at times hard to follow, and I felt a bit frustrated when I finished and found there was no explanation for how Inseon could be both in a hospital in Seoul and in a house on Jeju. The novel does serve as a vehicle for communicating the impact of the generational trauma of the events of 1948 and 1950-52, and presumably a Korean audience would have more knowledge of those events than I did; I felt at more than one point that I should stop and read about some of the history in order to have a more complete picture of the period. It's a hard book to read for a number of reasons, and it's one that perhaps I will revisit once I have a better handle on the context. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Shortly after we got to Nashville, I got a notification that my library hold on Intimacies was ready. This relatively short novel follows a woman who works as an interpreter in the international court in the Hague and details her personal and professional relationships. There's her friend Jana, who lives in a seedy neighborhood and witnesses a violent mugging. There's Adriaan, the man she's seeing who she soon learns is a married (but separated) father. And there are the incarcerated individuals on trial at the court she translates for and whose accused heinous acts she has to listen to as part of her job. There's a bit of a plot to this book, but overall I wasn't sure what the point of it was -- not to mention that the author seems to use the word "intimacy" a little too much for the title to have any subtlety. Maybe I would feel different if I read with my eyes rather than my ears. In any case, I didn't care for it much. I gave it 2 stars.

On the way home, I started an ARC of Ian McEwan's forthcoming novel, which is being billed as speculative fiction. And I've also started Broken Country, one of those buzzy books you've seen everywhere lately and which I was lucky to get passed by my mother.

What are you making and reading this week?

Home Sweet Home

After a whirlwind trip, Molly and I arrived home yesterday shortly before noon (we actually got in about 15 minutes early, something that almost never happens with air travel these days!). We missed the final breakfast and didn't really have a chance to say goodbye to a lot of people, but getting an early flight out made the most sense. And we got treated to a beautiful 360º view of Downtown Pittsburgh on our descent into Pittsburgh International Airport:

Let me catch you up on the rest of the trip. On Friday afternoon, we had our class on pin loom weaving with Angela Tong. I had learned how to use one of these looms before, but it had been several years since I'd done it last and I had forgotten a lot. We both really enjoyed it and can see how these little looms could come in handy for using up all those little bits, especially as each woven square takes only about 8 yards of yarn.

Both of these squares were woven using DK weight yarn; these looms are designed to use yarn in the sport/DK/worsted range. But Angela also showed us how to use fingering (the trick is doing some of the warping with the yarn held double).

Saturday was market day. I only had a couple of things I wanted to buy, and though I did end up going back for an impulse purchase later on, I think I was pretty restrained. The market opened at 9, and we were not among those waiting in line for the doors to open until just a few minutes before. I asked the woman who was first what time she got there, and she said about 7:20 (for reference, breakfast was served starting at 7:30).

I know some of you are really here to see what I came home with, so I won't keep you in suspense any longer! I came home with more than I expected, although only some of it was actually purchased at the market.

One of the perks of attending this retreat is that there is always a long table along the side of the wall in the lobby of the main building that's the giveaway table -- anything on it is free to a good home, and anything that's left after the retreat ends is taken to a local creative reuse place. There's always the usual acrylic/fun fur/novelty yarn that typically stays the whole time, but some people also drop off some really nice yarn, and if you happen to check the table at the right time, you can get lucky. That happened to me -- I found four skeins of fingering almost right off the bat, one from Miss Babs, one from lolodidit, and two 50 g skeins from The Loopy Ewe. I also found three skeins of Shibui linen yarn that will be enough for a summer tank, a skein of what looked to be DK or worsted with some minis, and a cute cotton drawstring bag from Quince & Co.

Here is what I bought at the market: a bag from Fat Squirrel Fibers, two skeins of self-striping Targhee sock yarn from Woolens and Nosh, three lotion bars from Tuft Woolens (not pictured), a pair of tiny yarn skein earrings from Oink Pigments, and a braid of Shaniko wool from Cesium Yarn. I actually went back to get the fiber because not only was it a breed I've never spun, but the colorway is Neighborhood of Make Believe, and I couldn't resist a Mister Rogers reference.

But wait, there's more! Another big feature of SSK is the door prizes! Vendors and attendees generously donate a ton of prizes -- yarn, fiber, project bags, accessories, etc. -- that can be won via a random pull of door prize tickets (everyone gets some to start in their goodie bag, and you can earn more through the knitalongs of teachers' patterns prior to the even and at random during the event). There are also special prizes on offer if you donate to the Scarritt-Bennett Center; every dollar gets you a ticket. I was lucky enough to win one regular door prize (two skeins of Lorna's Laces sock yarn) and a special SBC raffle prize (a hand-woven towel).

Let's not forget the aforementioned goodie bag, either! Molly and I both opted to just get the goodies included in the retreat fee, which was delightful without all the add-ons. We got a large zippered tote bag, a skein of yarn dyed by one of the vendors, a pen, a tape measure, a gauge ruler, and a set of point protectors. There were also folks from two local yarn shops (Haus of Yarn and Bliss) handing out goodies as we were waiting in line to check in on Wednesday. Needless to say, we were very spoiled! I'm happy to report that everything fit in my luggage, though Molly ended up using her tote bag as a second carry-on on the way home, mainly because we'd purchased some snacks and had a lot left and those bags wouldn't fit in our backpacks, so it was just easier to carry another bag.

I'm also very happy to report that Ruthie was a Very Good Girl while we were away. We'll ignore the fact that she chewed through two harnesses (a replacement for the newest one is on its way!), but she didn't have a single accident and didn't bark at the Mister at all! I think he is exhausted and very happy to have us home, and she was certainly thrilled to see us, but it honestly went much better than I expected and I am so relieved!

I predict she'll be a velcro dog for the next several days until she's sure I'm not leaving her again, but we all got through a challenging week and made it out the other end okay. You all told me it would be fine, but I needed to live it for myself to believe it!

This week it's back to the usual schedule, with a couple of medical checkups thrown in for fun (going for my mammogram on Thursday, so here's my reminder to get your boobies squished!). I'll be back on Wednesday for my usual update, and I'll try to be a little less verbose then!

Our Trip Thus Far

Happy Friday, friends! I have to admit that taking a trip and leaving on a Tuesday has really messed with my sense of time and what day it is. I've been confused for the past two days, so it's a good thing I have Molly around to keep me in check.

We've had a good first part of our trip. The retreat didn't officially start until Wednesday evening, so we came in a day early so we could do a little tourist-ing. Wednesday morning we hailed an Uber to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame, partly because there's some Taylor Swift stuff there, but also because why not?

There's also a special Dolly Parton exhibit right now, featuring a number of her outfits, some shoes, one of her Grammys, and various other memorabilia. There were some fabulous beaded high-heeled boots that I neglected to take a photo of, but I did remember to capture this:

That's her ribbon and medallion from the Kennedy Center Honors -- Dolly clearly is a national treasure!

The retreat kicked off with the opening reception Wednesday evening, at which general information was shared and some door prizes were given away (neither of us won anything). I told Molly that it would probably be the most people knitting at once that she's ever been around, and I don't think I was wrong.

On Thursday morning, after breakfast, the two of us covered ourselves in sunblock and walked a little more than a mile to Centennial Park (partly through the campus of Vanderbilt University) to see the replica of the Parthenon. I had gone to see it my first year at SSK, back in 2017, but Molly wanted to see it, too. We opted not to spend the money to go inside; as cool as it would have been to see the giant sculpture of Athena Parthenos, I thought it better to save the money for yarn.

You may notice some dark spots on my shirt. I'll be honest with you: That's sweat. Even at about 9 in the morning, it was hot and very humid. We had water bottles with us and didn't walk very fast, but we had to shower when we got back.

We didn't have classes on Thursday, so we spent the afternoon in the main building sitting and talking with other attendees. I even did a little spinning, my first since we adopted Ruthie!

We went to dinner with some new acquaintances and then explored the Try-It-On Room a bit -- people bring in sweaters and other garments that you can try before you decide to make them for yourself. A lot of what was available to try was a bit big for me, but I think this Isabel Kraemer sweater might be a possibility:

This afternoon we have our class -- pin loom weaving with Angela Tong -- and this evening is the Tasting Room, where we'll have the opportunity to try out all sorts of tools and fiber equipment. Saturday is market day and then the closing reception in the evening, and then we leave Sunday morning!

I may have already acquired a bit of yarn from the giveaway table (some may still go back if I change my mind), and I'm sure I'll pick up a few pretty things at the market. I promise a full report on what comes home with us on Monday. In the meantime, have a great weekend!