Greetings gentle Unravelers and Happy Wednesday!
Also, Happy birthday to my Heidi… yes, 35 years ago she joined our lives! These days, she has her plate full to overflowing… but she likes it that way. I sent her a box of fun her way… and the postal service says it is supposed to arrive today, I do hope they are correct because they originally told me it would arrive yesterday! (The fun things I got for her were from IKEA… all sorts of spooky, halloween things!)
First up, I have two blankets… freshly laundered and dried in the washer and dryer! I worried for nothing… this yarn is a work horse! The blankets are soft and so thick! I wove in all the ends pre-washing but left a bit of a tail to make sure said ends would stay put. They did and now I just need to snip off those extras. The blanket on the right is knit in the Purl Soho suggested color order… the one on the left is my reordered version. There is a lovely minty green that I felt sort of disappeared in the original ordering… it shines in the reordered version. These will be on their way to Wisconsin later today.
My color order on the left, Purl Soho’s on the right.
I am closing in on a finish on the second baby sweater… but I am not finished yet. Confession… I don’t like to knit two sleeves at once. But I am persevering with the technique because it makes doing the increases so much easier! My goal is to have this sweater done pronto so I can begin the one for Heidi’s soon-to-arrive baby and then it’s onward to her blanket!
However, I am planning a bit of an “emergency cast on” later this week. I am so happy that I managed to snag a kit from Gudrun Johnston for her latest pattern, the Hairst Hap Hood! The KAL starts the 13th and I am eager to cast on! I love the color of the yarn and the pattern… I think it will be incredibly useful as fall crisps up! I have been regularly watching her video podcast and love that she is talking about perimenopause along with a good bit of sewing!
One thing that has been much on my mind recently has been how to support businesses that I want to support especially since the tariff de minimus exemption has been eliminated. I very much like living in a global economy where I am free to spend my dollars where I feel best but I am not sure how… or if… that will work going forward. I think that when the WaPo writes about knitters, yarn and tariffs you know it’s not a good thing. (I have provided a gift link to the WaPo article.) Currently I have seen no work arounds for this and I read that since the de minimus exemption was eliminated, parcels coming in to the postal service are down a whopping 80%.
The reading has been a bit of a mixed bag. I finished Ragnar Jónasson’s soon-to-be published The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer. I was thoroughly engaged throughout this twisty novel… and then came the ending. I have read books that have a bit of a “cliff hanger” ending but this is the most abrupt cliff hanger I have ever read. It soured the entire novel for me… badly. Currently, I am a bit angry and Mr. Jónasson and have no interest in “finding out what happened” in the next book.
Fortunately, I read other books that did not stir up any angst for the author… I have had on my Book Radar for some time now Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed stories. I finished the first one, The Parable of the Sower and I loved it. It happens in the future-that-is-now… (Butler wrote it in 1993) and her level of precognition is astounding. I listened to it and struggled to stop listening. Lynne Thigpen is the narrator and she was brilliant! I am eager to settle in with the second book in this series, The Parable of the Talents… but I had a bit of a book-avalanche from the library.
I also finished The Place of Tides by James Rebanks and I loved it. His writing is magnificent and I am so glad he took us all along with him on the summer he spent in the Vega Archipelago (or Vegaøyan) with Anna, Ingrid, and the Eider Ducks. I could almost feel the wind off the ocean and smell the seaweed his writing is so evocative! I highly recommend it!
Two more books in the library stack to get through… Robert Macfarlane’s Is A River Alive and Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Hunter’s Heart Ridge… ahhh, September reading FTW!
There you have my making and reading update… what about you? What’s on your needles this week?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
Happy Birthday to Heidi and Happy Heidi’s Birthday to you! The blankets are beautiful and I am sending good postal wishes as they wing their way to Wisconsin. I’m not sure why I didn’t have Hunter’s Heart Ridge on hold since I enjoyed the first one, but I’ll do that momentarily. I will also look for Parable of the Sower. I recently tried to read 1984 and found it was kind of awful. Maybe I just can’t face a dystopian novel because we are living it, but I thank you for the recommendations.
I had forgotten that Heidi and I share a birthday! Happy Birthday to Heidi!! Your blankets turned out beautifully Kat – so cozy looking and nice and squishy. The Gudrun pattern looks like fun – looking forward to seeing that take shape. Isn’t it funny how books suddenly come in waves? I just finished Hunter’s Heart Ridge the other night. The Octavia Butler books look quite interesting. Thanks, too, for the gift article – I’ll check that out later today or tomorrow.
The afghans are just marvelous, Kat! Perfect in every way. (And isn’t it funny how colors pop in diffferent ways when they sit next to each other?) I think you were a trooper to try the 2-sleeves-at-once thing, but I know in advance . . . that technique would make me bonkers! I really hate fussing with multiple skeins and keeping everything “ordered.” It just takes the relaxing enjoyment right out of knitting for me. You deserve extra credit for giving it a go! Can’t wait to see the sweaters! XO
Happy birthday to Heidi and happy birth day to you! The blankets look incredibly squishy. I predict they will be loved until they fall apart! I also do not love knitting two sleeves at once (I almost find it slower than knitting each one on its own), but sometimes it makes sense to make sure they’re identical. My library doesn’t yet have The Place of Tides, but I’ve got it on my Notify Me list; I’ve heard a lot of good reviews.
Happy Birthday, Heidi! And Happy Birthday, Mama!
I love your color sequencing! The colors all seem to shine a bit better.
Happy Birthday to Heidi and her Momma. And woo-hoo for finished Baby Blankets. They look great and it’s good to know the yarn comes recommended. How fun to use the same colors in a slightly different order. I know – how do we support the small businesses we love? I would love to read The Place of Tides.
Gorgeous blankets, so unusual too. Happy Birthday to Heidi. How time flies.
Those blankets are fabulous in both layouts and it must feel wonderful to get them shipped off. Two sleeves at once sounds terrible but having them done at the same time and matching does sound great. This tariff situation is yet another terrible thing about the timeline we are in.
Your daughter is the same age as mine! Happy birthday to her!!! I love the first photo and that sweet tote bag. The blankets turned out beautifully. knitting for two is twice the fun!!