by Kat | May 14, 2025 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dearest Unravelers!
As I type this I am wondering how on earth we are almost halfway through May?! It makes me sad, I am enjoying these gentle spring days.
I had hopes of starting on sewing my pages together, but with an abundance of rain forecast for this week my garden beds took precedence! I am trying to stay ahead of weeding… we have mulch coming later this month… I think. Sigh. The gentleman who trims the bushes and does the mulch is having some health issues. And yes, that means I don’t have my clothes line yet either. I think I need to begin working on “plan b”…
So you might be wondering what I do have to share with you today! Never fear! I have a little bit of this and that to share with you!
The Swirly Vest is coming along! The fronts are done and I am meandering my way up the back…but I still have a good bit of knitting to accomplish!
I have not picked up The Green Vest since I returned from vacation… it is at the point where I can pick up and begin the front sections but I have not done any picking up yet because see above… I really want to get that Swirly Vest done! Also, I noted this week on IG that the designer of the All Season Vest will soon have a crew neck version out! I might be just a bit excited about that! The All Season Vest has some of the best instructions I have ever come across in a pattern!
My reading has been quite delightful though. I have been utilizing my library and taking advantage of the quick wait times on hardcover books (sometimes, no wait at all!) and have been reading some “new releases!” I finished Roisin O’Donnell’s Nesting, which I told you about last week. I wrote up a bit of a review and have given the book 4.5 stars rounded up. There are some trigger factors… the book has some very realistic exploration of verbal and emotional abuse and the abuse is spread throughout the book. However, I think that O’Donnell has done this very well… I very much felt the pressure that Ciara did. My only issue was that I felt the ending kind of felt slapped together… for me it did not have the same flow the rest of the novel did.
I finished the second book in the Martini Club series by Tess Gerritsen, The Summer Guests. This book was not at all like the first book in the series… and, I “figured” the direction of “who did it” early in the book. However, how that all played out was quite surprising to me. There were lots of “red herrings” spread throughout. Was it a great book? I did not think so, but it was good… and good enough that I will read the next book in the series when, and if, it is published.
And I listened to Geraldine Brooks read me her Memorial Days… a moving listen on how one navigates the unexpected loss of a spouse. I really enjoyed it… and have a reinvigorated love for Geraldine Brooks!
I am not sure if any of you have noted, but Cecelia Campochiaro has a new stitch dictionary out, which I ordered this week from Schoolhouse Press. I love my great reversible, marled scarf that I knit after taking a class with her last summer so I am very excited to get a copy of her new book!
And there you have my brief update for you all… not much making, but at least my garden beds are almost weed free! Ha!
What about you? What is happening in your world today?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below!
by Kat | May 12, 2025 | General, In This Moment
Greetings everyone,
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. The weather was perfect here in my neighborhood… cool mornings that invited one to pull on a sweater easing into warm afternoons… a celebration of perfect spring days!
I let Steve know that we are “opening the porch” next weekend. He was not thrilled!
Now it is Monday and I am contemplating my week (besides opening the porch, lol) I started PT for my bladder issues before we left for vacation and had my second visit last week. I am sort of feeling a bit silly… my therapist has me doing a bit of a yoga routine coupled with some diaphragm breathing exercises. Perhaps if I had just continued with pilates, I might not even be having these issues but I am carving out time each day to do the routine.
I also spent some time contemplating my “Stitch Book” layout. I also tested out raw edged pages and decided that won’t work … or at least I don’t like how it will look, so I will be doing some sewing to assemble the pages together.
And with that, let the week begin! See you all back here on Wednesday!
by Kat | May 9, 2025 | Finds, General
Mother’s Day weekend is one that for many is bittersweet… but this poem struck me as motherhood perfection. I first heard it on the Poetry For All podcast yesterday and after hearing it I immediately purchased the Kindle copy of Dorianne Laux’s Life On Earth: Poems. Dorianne Laux is a new-to-me poet, but this poem resonated deeply with me… and I thought it might with you too.
Singer
by Dorianne Laux
If I could go back to the living room window
of my childhood house, look again
through the pane, it would be a telescope lens
through which I might see the first woman
I ever met, my mother at her sewing machine,
rewinding the bobbin, little spool with holes
like an old movie reel our tiny lives
spun inside of. I might see
her long piano fingers touch the balance wheel,
the throat plate, the presser bar, one bare foot
working the treadle, her heel revealing
only the first three letters in black latticed metal:
SIN. My mother was what some called
a sinful woman: divorced, pregnant
without a husband, a baby boy given up
for adoption, remarried, another baby
born of another man, a one night stand,
while her husband was away at war.
She drank too much, thought too much,
laughed with her head thrown back, danced
with anyone. Too pretty, too brainy,
too tall, her black hair a snare
that hooked men in. But right now
she’s fully visible, stretching the fabric
for a kitchen curtain, a child’s dress,
swatches she salvaged from the deep
sale bins, using the selvedge for a hem
thereby cutting her handwork by half,
the black oiled mechanism banging out
dress after dress, tablecloths and runners,
nothing she couldn’t cobble together
from the waste of others. She was
a very particular, peculiar mother
and by now you can see why
we loved her. She was a lit fuse
in the rain. She turned from her work
and set those same fingers
on the piano keys and pulled
music through the air. Making something
from nothing was what she was good at:
love, children, pants and skirts
to dress them in, a table covered
with cherries on which the beautiful food
appeared, roses from her front yard garden
in an old cracked vase, her long arms
around our shoulders saying Sit still. Eat.
Try not to spill anything.
Singer, published in Life on Earth © 2024 by Dorianne Laux.
You can learn more about Dorianne here and here.
If you are celebrating Mother’s Day, I wish you a very happy day.
See you all back here on Monday.
Header photo by igovar igovar
by Kat | May 7, 2025 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings and Happy Wednesday Gentle Unraveler’s!
It feels like it’s been forever since we all gathered together to share what we are making and reading!
I want to thank you all for your kind thoughts about our power being out. The fact is, this is a frustration but not a hardship. We can easily go replace every single thing that has been lost. What it has done is refocused my attention on the many for whom this will be an insurmountable hurdle. I will be doing an extra shop this week and adding to a free refrigerator that is available in Carnegie as well as dropping some bags of non-perishable things at a local pantry.
My neighborhood lost some stately old trees in that storm and it breaks my heart. The landscape looks wounded and raw, I will be grieving the loss of those trees for a long time. The rainstorms have kept coming as well… our power has been … fragile … in the days since it returned, sigh. It was one thing to worry about our power whilst in a very comfortable Airbnb versus this constant off and on thing the power is doing right now… well, it is just Not Fun!
But enough of my power woes… how about a bit of what I have completed… both in making and reading! Plus there is a bonus update on a newly started project!
April Stitching in all her glory!
First, April stitching was so delightful! I noted my daff’s blooming there, Easter with a stitched Easter egg, and the first dandelion going to seed! I also took some inspiration from Mirjam Gielen and the fun IG post she shared this month. It is a “riff” on the feather stitch and I had fun giving this a go. I then took it a different way with my dandelion going to seed. April saw the “finish” of the top row of my whole cloth stitching and as you can see, May has been begun!
The “top row” completed!
I also have 20 pages completed for my 100 Day Stitch Book. I am contemplating assembly and how I want to do that… I am toying with exposed edges… but I want to experiment a bit to see how that will look in the finished product. Stay tuned!
100 Days of Stitching all ready to become a book!
On vacation I did not pick up the striped sock at all. Instead, I indulged in a bit of casting on a “new” thing… yes, I started another vest and managed to get the back completed while watching Season One of The Pitt! The yarn is repurposed yarn from a sweater that did not wear well (i.e. I could not keep it on and was always adjusting it when I wore it) … I think this vest will be a much better use of it! It is yarn spun from a unique sheep, Clun Forest.
Upon my return home, I picked up my Swirly Vest and made some great progress on the “flat knitting” portion. Yes, I am knitting it flat and figured out a way to work the color work while maintaining gauge… I can purl with the yarn in my “non-dominant” hand but my tension is absolutely horrible. But yarn dominance is important in the project, so I am purling back across throwing (as is my preferred way of knitting) and dropping one yarn and picking up the next… and I am keeping the dark color “above” the variegated lighter color. It is working and my gauge is staying spot on! Woo! I am almost done with the front and will be ready to get the back going soon! There are some upcoming construction techniques that are new to me so I am excited to try them!
The reading has been delightful. I have some finishes to share with you all (and some reviews to write – which I hope to get to this week!) My finishes include two Netgalley books that have just been published: Lili Taylor’s Turning to Birds (published 4.29.25) and Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent (also published 4.29.25) I loved both of these books so much. Taylor’s book felt a bit like an epistolary novel… but really it is a collection of short stories about her life as a birder. Evans’ book is an epistolary novel and it was just delightful! I fell deeply in love with dear Sybil. The idea of an “unsent, in progress letter” is a fascinating one. I also contemplated (with Sybil) forgiveness. It is a beautifully written story. I also finished the next RWU book, Nesting. I have not yet rated this book and am still chewing on the story. Of course, the writing is just so good (I mean are there any better writers on the planet than an Irish writer?!) and the story is one that is layered and “chewy.”
I also finished listening to Thomas Perry’s The Old Man (of the tv show fame.) I had watched the show and enjoyed it, but had never read the book. In the interim between hold availability it was “ready now” from the library so I gave it a go. Okay, first up… I really enjoyed the show, but the book was so much better! And this is despite not having a fantastic narrator for the audio book (the mediocre narrator was Peter Berkrot) I really enjoyed the complete differences between the show and the book! It made it seem like two totally different things… if you like a good ex-CIA mystery, this one is so very good!
And there you have my not very brief update for you all… I am eager to see what you all have been making and reading as April ended and May has begun!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | May 5, 2025 | General, Looking Back
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
This quote sums up completely the vacation to Erie last week. It was a study in contrasts.
Did calm ever settle in? Oh, hell no. The stress levels were high and remained so… for the duration. I figured it would be stressful at the start, but I also figured that after a few days hiking around Erie that stress would… diminish … but thanks to a giant storm that crushed Pittsburgh last week the stress never diminished and the end result was that we headed back early from vacation to clean out refrigerators and the freezer after 48+ hours of no power. Fortunately, we had little exterior damage but my neighborhood lost so many trees.
I, somehow, managed to stitch and paint a little each day (I finished the last painting after we got home… it was a good break from the Major Appliance Clean Out!) And I even managed to get Steve to sit down to watch the first episode of The Pitt (and believe me the only reason he agreed was because it was “in Pittsburgh” so a huge thank you to the producers of The Pitt for that initial opening to the show highlighting Pittsburgh!) Thankfully, he liked it so I wrangled 15 hours of “watching time” so I could get another vest started!
For me, the walks in Presque Isle were my salvation. I found new trails and I met the “Ambassador of Presque Isle” who clued me in to some rare sights in the park! Thank you, Mr. Berchtold for sharing your “spots” with me! I have never seen Sandhill Cranes in “the wild” and seeing a nesting pair on Presque Isle was a treat beyond measure! As was seeing an Eastern Screech Owl nesting! I was astounded by the number of active Osprey nests on the peninsula as well… a good half a dozen that I saw! I must have been channeling Vera because I saw so many turtles!! Frankie found all the people extremely stressful, so he only went along on walks a few times… I knew this going in… he does not like “random” people but he learned a new thing while we were there… barking! Sigh.
Walkies? Yes, please! I can practice my Newly Discovered Barking Skillz!
I did not take many photos but that is okay… I channeled the part of Yutori about being still and being present in the surroundings! That stillness helped me “find” 10 new-to-me birds!
Now it is a “normal” Monday and I am happy to be back to it! I will see you all back here on Wednesday!
