by Kat | Feb 18, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unravelers!
I come to you today, fresh out of the Frog Pond… sigh. Yes… that Frog Pond. Last week’s progress on the yoke has all been ripped back… every last row.
My mistake, I think, is the result of a a combination of things… being off on row gauge (significantly) and trusting that the sweater size I picked would work. The short answer is I was wrong on both counts. So the yarn is in a bit of a working time out. And though I have knit the ribbing and the short row section completed again… I am pondering reworking the “increase” section because I am so dramatically off on row gauge, but that is a lot of math figuring. If you can tell that the bloom is off this sweater… you’d be right. Sigh.
Thank goodness I have sock knitting and stitching to occupy my time! I am roughly 2-ish inches from the heel flap! Maybe I can get this sock done this month!
Pages 5 and 6… I am so very happy with my progress thus far!
And I have a couple more pages completed since I last updated you…pages 5 and 6 respectively. This year, Ann Wood is giving us suggestions for pages. Page 5 was “no more than 3 fabrics” and perhaps my mosaic circle does not qualify for that, but I thought it worked well with the circles I had cut out. And the them for page 6 was “bottles” and I had fun doing that as well!
The reading has been a bit of a mixed bag. I finished the RWU selection, Gilead, butI will save my thoughts until discussion. (although, I will tell you that I am not running out to read any of the other books in this series… ) I was delighted by the first book in The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion… and have queued up the second book in the series, which I will settle in with as soon as I have finished Garrett Carr’s The Boy from the Sea, which I began on Monday after it became available after a long hold at the library!
There you have my very sad making this week. What about you… I hope you have not had to rip out any of your knitting!
As always, if you wrote a post to share today… please leave the link to your post below.
by Kat | Feb 13, 2026 | General, In This Moment
And we: spectators always, everywhere,
turned toward it all and never looking out!
Everything overfills us. We put it in order. It falls apart.
We order it again and fall apart ourselves.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, A portion of the Eighth Elegy from the Duino Elegies, translation by Mark S. Burrows
This has absolutely been my world since last November… overwhelmed by everything, trying to make sense of the senseless, and everything, everywhere falling apart. And let me tell you… being immersed into profound grief when the entire world is a shite show… well, there were some moments that I wanted to crawl in a hole and pull the dirt over me and just be done with it all.
From the end of November through all of December and most of January, I barely could keep track of what day of the week it was. And most days I did not keep track at all. I was thankful for the technology that reminded me when to get out of bed, when to take medications, and when to “begin winding down” from the day.
But, somewhere in January I began to notice different things. The sky in the morning was the first thing I really noticed…. it was not really black anymore but a beautiful indigo gradient. I don’t think I ever remember noticing this phenomenon before, although I am certain it has done this for millennia. And each day, despite the unbelievable cold, I was so eager to get outside to see those early morning skies.
Something had an order and it did not require any work from myself at all. I could just be there to experience it.
And then something even more miraculous happened as February inched in… I had what I classify as a “normal” conversation with my son. We talked about everything and nothing and then more nothing. And I felt a huge worry begin to melt… I guess I did not realize that my worry for him was as overwhelming as it was, and I knew it was overwhelming… but wow… once that change happened, I realized how much of a burden that was.
And I am happy to report that I am mostly back to keeping track of the days. The world is still a shit show. Lots of things still don’t make sense. I have filled the hole in and moved past it. But I am less concerned with putting things in order that I cannot control… and as for being a spectator? Well, the shit show continues… but so do those glorious indigo skies and I am betting next week I will have some snowdrops popping up in my yard!
Header photo by HASAN ZAHRA
by Kat | Feb 11, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
I send out greetings today from Yoke Mountain. I am still a long way from Summit of the Great Sleeve Divide and so I just keep knitting.
Friends… I knit a lot over the weekend… foregoing any spinning to just keep knitting on this never-ending yoke. And I still have 24 rounds to go before I finish the increases… and probably a couple more rounds to get to the depth needed to divide off the sleeves. This yoke is not for the faint of heart… it is a knitting work out! And don’t drop a stitch… really, DON’T DO IT… because that required me to tink back several rounds to get back on track.
However, look at how lovely it is!!! I don’t need to talk myself into continuing… the fabric is just yummy and I love these little aubergine blips that shows off the simple beauty of mosaic knitting. And Jane is so lovely to knit with. While it is not tightly plied, it is not at all what I’d call “splity” yarn… those two strands like being together! And, this yarn blooms like mad and has such a nice hand. I think this will be a sweater I want to knit again… so I better like Yoke Mountain! HA!
All that being said… I think that my chances of getting to the point of dividing off the sleeves by Friday is highly unlikely. Sigh. Instead I will be intently watching Lorilee’s class and taking very good notes! She is absolutely one of the best teachers around… her ability to break down challenging techniques is unmatched.
The slow reading continues for me… and this pace of reading is really perfect. I had two finishes this week… two finishes with very mixed results. I think anything that followed Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things would be a let down… and Alix E. Harrow’s The Everlasting was exactly that… a huge let down. I wanted to like it, but there was so much of it that just did not work for me. I gave it 2 stars… however, ymmv.
Fortunately, Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit was everything The Everlasting was not. It moved me, I wanted to know what happens next, I cared about the characters, and the telling of this story was just really devastatingly beautiful (the writing is very good!) and it made me stop and think about how the tragedy of ancestral history can impact a person in the present. It is a book I will be thinking about for a very, very long time. I highly recommend it (and thank you Carole for putting this book on my radar!)
And with that… I am back to the yoke knitting… what is challenging you this week?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Feb 9, 2026 | General, In This Moment
Whew, after a very mild start…we plunged into the deep end of winter. Yes, it has been cold and wintry here in the south hills of Pittsburgh! But as we inch past the half way point, I am finding some uplifting things to bolster my days! Daylight being the best and brightest of all the things!
My early outings with Frankie (not really walks as it has been much too cold to do that, but we do amble about a bit) have a sky that is now a deep indigo rather than being black as night! And this past week, the hints at the coming sunrise have been gorgeous despite the bitterly cold air temps. Now, these have not been wildly colorful sunrises, but beautiful pale pinks and oranges… almost like a watercolor painting in their translucence. And yet they are so fleeting… a moment there and the next gone. A good reminder that though this weather is here today… it too will soon be gone and so I am savoring these wintry days.
And yes, these bitterly cold days have been accompanied by loads of bright sunshine and I love every bit of that! The angle of the sun is perfection right now, it streams in the windows brightening every single room! It is the best thing about this time of year and I will take these cold sunny days over cloudy milder days.
My thoughts were filled this past week with all the bulbs that are tucked away beneath the snowy blanket. At this time last year… (and for most previous years as well) I had snowdrops blooming. We are supposed to have a big warm up this week and I have been thinking that it might be fun to have snowdrops sprouting up with a bit of snow still on the ground!
And speaking of the weather, I have had an idea rambling around in my head for a long time and I think this might be the year for it to step beyond the thinking stage and into reality. So I have been doing some “prep work” since January… charting temperature highs and lows and jotting a note or two about the days weather. A couple of years ago Jo Avery (who is all kinds of inspiring when it comes to temperature textiles) created a book of the temps and weather. I like the idea of making it really just as simple as she did… a small square reflecting the high temp, a circle reflecting the low temp and a few stitches to indicate the weather. Right now I am working on figuring out fabrics… unlike hers (which is measured in Celsius) I will need to have “ranges of temps” in the Fahrenheit scale. Believe me, I have contemplated using Celsius, which would make things much simpler however my expansive knowledge of temperatures on the Celsius scale is limited to 0°C and 100°C. Anyways, I am closer to gathering all the bits… and I hope to begin this shortly after I finish The Great February Bang Out a Sweater-a-thon! (I knit a lot over the weekend and still have miles to go before I get to the sleeve divide but more on that on Wednesday!)
Header photo by Ylanite Koppens and though it has been too cold for any snowman making in my neighborhood, I am hopeful that this week’s warm up will provide the requisite moisture for the snow to hold together and some snowpeople begin popping up!
by Kat | Feb 4, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings gentle Unravelers and Happy Wednesday!
In a week of what looks like ADD making… I have stitching, I have page making, I have knitting (both sock knitting and BAD ASS Short Row Knitting) and yes, I even have SPINNING!!
January Stitching… I am really very happy with it!
While January stitching might have had a slow start, I have finished the month strong. I have returned to stitching zen and pull out my stitching first thing in the morning. A dozen or so (sew?) minutes later and I have my square filled, I have dipped into my creativity well and I feel so very accomplished! If I get nothing else done during the day… I have my square finished! However, on Monday I waited until after the mail to stitch thanks to Margene (really, she is Saint Margene… the saint of stitching!) who sent me a package (an IMMENSE package!!) of carefully rolled spools of silk thread. I sang the praises of Saint Margene as I stitched on Monday… the silk is so soft and the colors are so rich! February’s stitching, in the quiet of winter, will have an amazing vibrancy thanks to this amazing gift!
February beginnings and a sampling of Margene’s silks!
Page making continues… that sock is unraveling and being added to the pages. Page three, holds the Hope of Spring… I practiced fly stitching and I love the rhythm of the stitch pattern. I have page four well underway and will begin page five tomorrow! As you can see, the hole-y heel is getting some love… and some mosaic stitching!
Page three, on the left, and page four, on the right, is moving right along!
Sock knitting continues… I am so grateful to have this pick up and put down project. Sock knitting allows my mind to wander… and as you can see above, a wandering mind is a very good thing!
I have been working on the BOAS sweater (I need to get to The Sleeve Divide by class next week and I’d like to be close!) However, I spent some time marveling at the stunning ingenuity that is Amy Christoffer’s mind… the short row section in this mosaic pattern is quite daunting when one thinks about it. However, if you don’t think about it and just knit each direction as Amy lays them out turn by turn, increase by increase… you end with this brilliant bit of shaping on the back of the neck. I bow to her brilliance! And now, as I work through her measured raglan increases (sometimes at both sleeve and body sometimes at body only) I continue to be awed by this masterful construction! It also feels great to be knitting in company with Kym and Carole as well.
And yes… there has been spinning! I spent some time Saturday and Sunday spinning some little bits of fiber. Working to help myself remember what my hands need to do, how much to draft, what thickness I want. I am happy to say the rudimentary skills are a bit like bicycle riding… however, drafting thin enough is going to need some work. I want to end up with a 3-ply DK weight yarn… and I am a long way off from that currently. Despite how rusty I am, it felt very good to do some spinning. I also like the alliteration of Spinning Saturday’s and Sunday’s so I will likely keep to those days. At least until the weather gets nicer and I can be outdoors more!
Some tiny bits of spinning… it just needs a bit of a bath!
The reading has been good. I finished Lousie Penny’s latest Gamache installment, The Black Wolf. It was a 4-star read for me that probably should have been a 3-star but I feel like that would be a slap in dear Armand’s face. It was not a typical Armand story… which troubled me. It felt too chaotic. And for the second time in reading a Gamache story, I wondered if the stories have run their course. Perhaps. Although, Penny has revealed the title for the next book in the Gamache series, Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, which is supposed to have Three Pines as the central location of the story… that really is my preferred location!
I also finished Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things… and I really liked it! Beautiful writing… truly gorgeous writing. An engaging story, characters I loved, and I really loved the insertion of “Americana” to the story. It was brilliant! If you are looking for a story you can get lost in (and who doesn’t these days?) this might be the perfect book for you!
What about you? What are you hoping to accomplish this month?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
