by Kat | Jan 31, 2024 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unravelers!
At long last, we have arrived at the last day of January… it has been A. Month. (that felt like a month and a half… at least!)
We had “winter” for roughly ten days… ten glorious flannel sheet days. There was snow for less time, but for those brief days everything felt clean, bright, and hushed. I think snow makes the dark days of winter… well, less dark. But we are back to dark, dreary, with a yard that is like one giant squishy sponge. My game of “whack-a-mole” with the squirrels returns… because of course they STILL are trying to dig bulbs up! (more on those bulbs later this week… )
Happy Handspun Socks!
And yes, on this last day of January… I have a finely finished pair of socks that make me so happy! I have barely taken them off since finishing them last week. My love for them and the love of having a mindless sock to knit while watching television at night caused me to dig out an already wound ball of yarn (from a failed attempt at socks, I think) I tried again… but the yarn is just too fine and I am not going to knit on smaller needles. So I am going to frog this start and get a hat started. I think it will be miles and miles of mindless nighttime knitting once I get past the increase portion, that is. I was going to knit a Musselburgh, but I like the look of Sarah’s crown increases and decreases better… so I made the purchase yesterday. I will get it started later today.
Frogging in 3…2…
As you can see above, the BIGGEST NEWS of all is that I have just ONE button band to go on the Great Cabled Sweater! I have begun the shawl collar increases… which is really a great deal of knitting… and it is pay attention knitting, so it not exactly “mindless” knitting. But I have a method for this madness. My countdown is the row of markers on the completed collar. As I increase, I move one from the completed to the in process… and that countdown is a bit like a cheerleader! I also wanted to begin the “wash and pin out to the correct dimensions” portion of the making…but I woke Tuesday to no water (thanks to a water main break… sigh.) We still have no water at this writing so the sweater blocking will move to another day’s list… hopefully we have water soon!
The reading remains slow… just two finishes this week. I have struggled to “stay awake” to read at night… only to wake around midnight to toss and turn. No reading then, because I am hopeful of falling back asleep… grrr! But, my listens were delightful… The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo was lovely! (It will be published February 13th!) And I listened to Geraldine Brooks Year of Wonders… very different from The Fox Wife, but I liked it as well! Brooks does such a wonderful job on research… and I am so very thankful for vaccinations! Haha!
What about you all on this final day of January?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Jan 24, 2024 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unravelers and Happy Wednesday to you all!
It has been a study in slow making in my house since last week… very slow. I have not knit a single stitch on my cabled sweater… I know, I know! I have been stitching… which is so delightful but it is certainly not taking up all my daily making time. I have been knitting that second sock in fits and starts. Not much TV knitting this week… I have been having a horrendous bout of insomnia so sitting to watch TV is putting me right to sleep! I am down to one cup of coffee in the morning… no second cup in the afternoon when Steve get’s home. I make myself a cup of tea instead… I am hoping the return of sleep happens soon. Insomnia is the absolute worst!
Page one… Done!
Most of my time has been spent going through my yarn stash… trying to sort it out. If I ever contemplate buying another skein of sock yarn, I hope one of you quickly reminds me that if I knit socks every day from now until I live to be 100, I will still have plenty of sock yarn yet to be knit! No more sock yarn!
I also have a large assortment of “lace weight” yarns that I bought… eons ago. In some prior lifetime when I must have thought myself a “lace shawl” knitter. Not so much these days… I am contemplating what to do with all of that.
The remainder of my “yarn stash” is very manageable. Bits and odds and ends of previous projects. I have bagged them, clearly labeled for what projects I think they might work for (i.e. color work, hats, mittens) I am feeling accomplished at this small task. I still have some sewing things to go through, which I know won’t be as rewarding… but once it is done, I will feel better about having a more organized stash!
I have had a slow reading week as well. I have been carefully listening to a most fascinating story, The Fox Wife by Yangtze Choo. It is part mystery, part folktale, and entirely engaging! But it is a slow listen for me, as I try to take in all that is happening! (This book will be published February 13th) At night, I am reading another ARC, Family Family by Laurie Frankl. It took me a bit to settle in with it, but once I did… the story takes off running! My only finish this week is barely worthy of recognition…. Cacophony of Bone. (Pro tip… the title is the best part of the book.)
That is my nearing the end of January update… what about you? What do you want to finish this month?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Jan 17, 2024 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings gentle Unravelers!
When I look at a weather map, almost the entire US looks plunged in cold… and knitters everywhere knit on with a bit of delight! Right? I know I did… Sock One is DONE! and Sock Two is moving right along. I shall have pink socks soon! Really, I don’t know who I am knitting socks this quickly!! It is the perfect “sit and knit” project for night time television viewing!
I have YET to heed my spinning “reminder”… despite pushing it forward to the next day… I have been on a bit of a “deep clean” tear. Yesterday was the kitchen’s “turn” … and the stove and the refrigerator each got a deep clean, and I scrubbed the floors and the baseboards.
I have not knit much on the Great Cabled Sweater but I am hoping that once I have this cleaning jag out of my system, I will be back to my regularly scheduled knitting!
The reading continues to breeze along… I had three finishes this week! (Audiobooks are a great deep cleaning companion!!) I listened to Richard Russo’s Somebody’s Fool and Katherine May’s Enchantment. Both of which I enjoyed so much! I also finished reading The Caretake by Ron Rash… I loved it. It was so good, it had so much food for thought, the writing was so perfect!
This week’s reading with my eyes is not quite as stellar… sigh. I am trying to settle in with The Cacophony of Bone by Kerri ní Dochartaigh. I have heard such great things about this book… and I am wondering what I am missing. I am just over 40% though… and I am not sure I will finish it.
What about you? What are you doing to stay warm on these wintry days!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below!
by Kat | Jan 10, 2024 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unravelers and Happy Wednesday!
It has been a week with a good bit of actual unraveling here… sigh. Yes, on the Great Cabled Sweater… because of course. This time it is 100% knitter error… I somehow** skipped an entire section of the “straight” portion and went right on to the decreases. (Somehow** = the pattern author was lazy and instead of writing out instructions for the “right front” {which is a mirror of the left front, in theory, correct?} she has you follow the left front sort of. So you are shuffling back and forth between the fronts. Sigh.) I somehow** missed 16 rows of a repeat. So I ripped back on Monday and have not had much time to get myself caught up. All the shuffling means that this is not a good “TV” project. But maybe this afternoon I can catch myself back up!
However, the sock knitting… well it is going gangbusters! No unraveling, just the joy of pure mindless knitting!!
ALSO!! I have a new year-long stitch project to share with you. I spent a good bit of time in December thinking about stitching in the New Year. I knew I wanted to stitch, but I did not want to have to pull together all the “parts” to do so, so a temperature project was out. Way back in 2018 I spent a year just stitching. I did a “sampler” each month. This was truly my favorite stitching ever… no pattern, no temperature tracking… just my own inspiration. I wanted to do something “like” that again… and I stumbled across Karen Turner on Pinterest and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to use her “starting point” for my inspiration. And so I began and I am loving it. I have one small space to fill each day and it is easy to get done with my morning coffee.
The reading is not going bad either, I have finished two (!!) books this year… Starter Villain and The Apology. And I am currently reading two more… I am listening to Somebody’s Fool (which I am loving despite not really caring for the second book in the trilogy) and on my Kindle I am reading The Caretaker.
What about you all? What are you making this month? What are you reading? Inquiring minds want to know!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Dec 20, 2023 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings Dearest Unravelers!
Christmas is now Looming Large… I hope that means that you have all the things you wanted to complete… completed. We got a bit of snow here in the ‘Burgh and I love it! YAY! I am feeling all the Christmas Feels with a spot of snow on the ground, a chill in the air, and a nice queue of Christmas movies to amuse me! (Thanks to all of you, by the way, for all your fun suggestions! I added several to my list!)
I am plugging away at my sweater… with my MacGyver Fixes…sigh. When one pays for a pattern one always hopes that it is error free… I realize no one is perfect and I do not expect perfection but what I do expect is some measure of responsiveness. However, here we are on Wednesday and the designer has still not contacted me regarding my question/the error. I could not see any close ups on the button holes (or the pockets) so I did what any knitter would do… I tried figured out what the designer might have wanted and then did what made sense with the pattern I was knitting and the functionality of the garment. However, if you decide to knit this sweater, please note that in size 7 there are some significant errors in the button hole construction and the rejoining of the held stitches to the pocket flap you made. (There are also errors in the sleeve transition from ribbing to the sleeve…but that one was easier to figure out.) Frustrating… yes but none of the mistakes have delayed the knitting… much.
I also figured out… successfully… the perfect necklace for Fancy Gnancy. (who is now hanging on Vivi’s Christmas Tree so I can share with you all!) I used Perle cotton and some “turquoise” beads I had and it worked perfectly. I then tacked the “necklace” down under the brim!
Fancy Gnancy with her pearls!
I am at a bit of a pause on my Mystery Gnome-man… waiting for the arrival of some florists wire to help his arms… well…. be arms! Still no picture… suffice it to say that he has sad, pitiful arms currently but once those arms have some wire threaded through… well, he will be putting Frosty to shame!
What I really should be working on are Temperature Circles… and I will be catch-up-stitching this week and next to get myself close to the finish! (I have much of November and all of December to go… so a good bit of stitching!)
The reading this week has been brilliant… just brilliant! I was lucky to get an email from Netgalley for Tommy Orange’s new book, Wandering Stars. I downloaded it and started reading and really had a very difficult time putting it down! It is beautifully written, heart-breaking at times… and very heart-warming at other times. I highly recommend it!
I also finished the third installment in the Max Tudor series… and delightfully the author led me down a bit of a rabbit hole with this week’s read… I was lucky my library had A Train in Winter available so I began listening to it yesterday.
I also read my last “week” in Poetry Unbound… drawing to close my almost year of Poetry as Meditation. This is a habit I am carrying to 2024 and Bonny asked what I might be selecting as for the year. After some consideration, I have chosen Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems for next year. If any of you want to join me, I’d love the company!
AND!! Tomorrow I am ever so excited for Winter Solstice! Why? Well… that is the day I begin reading (again) The Comfort of Crows.… I will spend the year with Margaret… reading each week and adding my own reflections about my Backyard Year!
Now, a bit of Blog Housekeeping to bring us to the end of the year. I will be here tomorrow with my contribution to A Gathering of Poetry… and I will have a final update for my word on the 26th but there won’t be any Unraveled post next week. The next Unraveled link up will be January 3rd, 2024!
I will spend the first couple of weeks in January doing a bit of a 2023 review… best knits, best reads, etc.
Finally, I wish you and your families a very happy Christmas! I want you all to know how much I appreciate your willingness to share what you are making and reading each week… you all inspire me with your making as well as keeping my reading list full!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
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