by Kat | 3 days ago | General, Poetry
On Monday, Bonny shared a new-to-me form of poetry… the Zip Ode and with the sharing she also invited those reading to give it a try.
Well, almost instantly an idea began germinating in my brain. Now, I live in the South Hills of Pittsburgh and though my is easy to remember (15243… I mean it is perfect especially if you type it out… the perfect back and forth of a line of numbers… ) However, no “free-spot” zero’s to help at all.
So over the course of Monday… Tuesday… and Wednesday… I played with the awkward word number combinations. A puzzler’s puzzle to be sure!
Is this great poetry? Oh, heavens no! But it was fun and my brain got a most excellent word work out!
Frost!
Winter is battling to win
but Spring
has never been defeated.
Weather games continue.
I thought it might be delightful fun to challenge my brain to do a Zip Ode a week for a bit… let me tell you, it was an excellent distraction from the Shite Show that is life. I may or may not share my future Zip Ode attempts, but I call on all of you to accept Bonny’s invitation and give a Zip Ode a try!
Happy Thursday everyone! See you all back here next week!
Header photo by Ginny-Marie Richter
by Kat | 4 days ago | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unraveler’s!
Who else was glued to the YouTube feed of the Artemis II as they headed around the dark side of the moon on Monday? I unleashed my inner eight year old as I could not turn it off and was glued to every moment of it! It was just as spectacular as the first time I watched All Things Lunar way back in 1968. Anyways, Artemis II has been an unbelievable bright spot in the exploding dumpster fire that describes how I feel about all the other shite that is everything else. (NASA has some pretty amazing images here, if you are interested)
The beading continues each morning… it is a ritual that is perfect for early morning. Unrushed, slow, thoughtful. One length of thread and some beads and my thoughts… I am not certain anything can be better than this! I am nearing completion of this fancy little bandana and I am going to wear the hell out of it! It’s so Bling-y that I bet they would be able to see it from the Artemis II! Ha!
Waffle Pullover-ing has not been happening. That’s right, I have not picked it up once… sigh. However, I am still mosaic knitting… just on a lighter fabric. Yes, I pulled out the floatiest scarf on the planet and have been trying to get a full repeat done whilst watching some television each night. I am so close to the half way point… so, so close!
There was a bit of wild excitement in my backyard late last week… we recently changed the suet cakes (or rather the place we get suet cakes changed what they have) and the birds have liked the change. Last Thursday morning, I was just beading away and I heard the distinctive call of a Pileated Woodpecker!! In my yard!!! I looked out the window by my desk and I could see it clearly on the telephone pole in the back corner of our yard! He tried valiantly, but not successfully, to sample the suet that all the birds were so excited about! IN MY YARD!! So yes, I instantly headed to the Google™ to find a Pileated Woodpecker sized suet feeder! I found one and it arrived on Monday! However… I have been trying to figure out where the heck I can hang it… I mean this is a BIG suet feeder! Big and heavy… so I might need to get a reinforced something to hang it on! Hang in there, my dear Pileated friends… I am working on getting you some Suet Access! Really! I am working on it!
No book finishes this week, but the reading has been so good… I am listening to David Morse read Allen Levi’s Theo of Golden and I am loving it so much… I don’t want to rush through it at all. I have been stitching while listening to it … the perfect pairing!
At night, in the few moments before I turn off the lights, I have been reading the latest and final book in the Cal Hooper Trilogy. It is as good, if not better than the previous two novels! I am just over halfway through and will be sad to see the Cal Hooper story come to an end!
I hope that April is off to a good start for you all!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Apr 1, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unraveler’s and Happy April!
Sweater knitting continues… at least for the moment. But yes… I am running out of momentum, sigh. My thoughts are turning to the approaching warm weather and last fall I put away an in-progress summery top that has been singing a siren song. I will continue to plug away at the Waffle Pullover but I am thinking that I would really like to get back to the Shakerag Top I began last year.
However, morning beading continues… I cut a length of thread and stitch until that thread is “used up” and then I start my day! In class, I really thought that the chop/seed bead fill parts were going to be my least favorite but I am here to tell you… I love it! So much! The seed bead “corner” took me three mornings of stitching and I loved every second of it! I am very close to finishing the “first half” of the bandana and I am so surprised by how much I am enjoying the entire process. I just have the one last rectangle circled.
The sweetest spot of stitching
The reading continues to be so delightful. I am listening to Teyari Jones Kin and enjoying it tremendously. The narration is excellent! I had just one finish this week, Elizabeth Berg’s latest… Life: A Love Story. The story of the last weeks of life of a 92 year old woman, Florence – Flo, who has been recently told by her doctor that she has not long to live. The story is a balance between letter writing and her vicarious interactions with her neighbors. The letter is for Ruthie, a young woman to whom she is leaving her house and its contents. The contents, of course, have stories and how Flo shares those stories is delightful. The interactions are equally delightful… from the neighbor dog to people living around her… one of whom works as a death doula… it is a beautiful ending to a long life and I highly recommend it!
So as April begins, I have a question for you all… is spring/summer making calling to you?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave you link below!
by Kat | Mar 30, 2026 | General, Words
Spring! And Earth is like a child who has learned many poems by heart. For the trouble of that long learning she wins the prize. — Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 21
When I turned the calendar to March I greeted the meteorological arrival of spring. And then on March 20th, I celebrated the Vernal Equinox. I mean, spring is absolutely a season that one should celebrate more than once! Right?!
And though it feels like the month has just raced past… I focused on each day entirely and in doing so I witnessed so many moments of wonder!
A tug of war… sometimes gentle, other times all out war… between winter giving way to spring. It certainly was a month that held all the weather!! Rain, winds, snow, freezing temperatures, warming temperatures… in the winter to spring confusion summer even burst on the scene for one brief day. I think the weather actually helped me stay focused on observing closely the day! There was not a lot of lots of days all the same (sort of like summer!) but instead the weather kept me on my toes!
All this weather chaos has contributed to a very chaotic closet as the month draws to a close and so, of course, I have tidy the closet on my list this week. There is detritus of all the seasons of clothing haphazardly lying about. I’d like to start April without the added chaos of a messy closet!
Each day, I have been reading a bit from Adrian Bell’s A Countryman’s Spring Notebook, which has been absolutely perfect. His journals likewise begin with the meteorological spring and his early March musings are timeless as they seemed very true as I read them this month. In his entry from March 12, 1977 “The Winds of March” he writes of old leaves galloping over new grass… oh yes, there were lots of galloping leaves here this month too! There is something calming in reading how similar things are decades apart… a thread running through, as it were.
I watched a literal explosion of daffodils emerge and bloom this month, as well as tender snow drops being tossed about by the wild winds. Their white flowers reminding me of petticoats as they shook in the winds! I also had the very predictable deer come through and eat to the ground any tulip leaves that dared to emerge… those same deer mowed down most of my grape hyacinths as well. It seems that daffodils are the only thing currently safe from their foraging. I am ending the month with the promise of a bounty with the April blooming daff’s all showing a plethora of buds!
The other most notable thing of all this month is the birdsong! It begins in the early morning with the Robin’s cheerily calling… in a bit of a Round Robin… as one calls, then others answer in turn. They are the first true Singers of Spring though… or maybe they are just the loudest! But the best day… after winter seemed to put an exclamation point on its leaving by depositing more than a dusting of snow… it seemed all of nature was in shock. That morning Frankie and I walked in total silence… as if the birds could not find one good thing to sing about thanks to all that snow! Thankfully, the snow was short-lived and the birds have returned to their raucous singing! I much appreciate their singing to the silence!
All that the teacher has taught her—the many thoughts pressed now into roots and long tough stems” she sings! She sings! — Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 21
And there you have how my entry to spring went! How about you? How did spring show up for you this month?
Header photo by Sarah Craenhals
by Kat | Mar 25, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings gentle Unraveler’s!
Is it just me or did March blow through with a huge gust of wind? Unbelievable as it may seem, we have arrived at the last Wednesday of the month… and the last Wednesday of the first quarter, both of which seem impossible to me!
Just two repeats until I divide the sleeves off, but no more increases!! Wooo!
But back in my “slow making” bubble… I have been persevering on my journey to The Great Sleeve Divide and, dear reader, I am almost there! Yesterday, I put stitches on two needles so I could do a bit of a try on and I could not be happier! The maths worked exactly as I mathed them!! (I love when this happens!! Hahaha!) All that is left is a half an inch for the recommended length from the back of the neck (which I worked on during last night’s RWU Zoom) and I later today I will be returning to Lorilee’s lesson on things to remember at the sleeve divide and then I will be forging ahead with the body of the sweater. I know she knit sleeves next, but after some thinking, I am not going to follow in her suggested order. I have not worked out exactly how I will be working sleeve decreases and I need to puzzle over that a bit longer.
When the maths math perfectly!!
My morning slow stitching continues a pace… although I did have a bit of unraveling there as well. That first bit of sequin stitching had been sort of yelling at me saying, Hey Lady!! We look kind of sloppy while everything else looks so precise. I listened and snipped the sequins off that very first section and began again. I am much happier with the result. I also picked up some Scotch™ Double-Sided tape which has been life changing in the beading process.
The reading has been so very good! I finished Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night. This book is a gathering of oral histories, some memoir, and Indigenous survival… all done brilliantly! At times it was a gut punch, other times heart breaking, and other times very uplifting. But my favorite bits included the stories that began, “This is a true story…” and I can’t help but wonder if the listeners had heard and believed that as the histories were shared, might things be different? I highly recommend this book… I listened to the author read it, and I think that helped draw me even deeper into the story.
I have also been reading the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer and loving it so much, I searched out a copy of The Blue House for myself. I will be working my way through it as the year progresses.
And with that, I hear my sweater calling… what about you? What is calling to you this week?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Mar 18, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings gentle Unraveler’s and Happy Wednesday!
I have been knitting a round or four each day on the Waffle Pullover, but it does not look much different from last week, so no picture. Honestly, this is The Slog of knitting… the rounds are long… I am still a long way from dividing the sleeves and so I knit on knowing that each bit gets me that much closer to that milestone!
In another realm of slow making but one that might be the tiniest bit more fun! I have completed all the reverse appliqué and backstitch quilting for the Alabama Chanin scarf and I have begun beading! Curiously, the beading actually seems to go a bit faster… or at least it is faster than threading the beading needle! I have worked out a bit of a “help” for me… I apply some beeswax to just the end of the thread and then ever so carefully coax the thread through the minuscule eye. Once I have it threaded, I cut off the bit with the beeswax… and I am off and running stitching! I have decided that it would be smartest to bead one half first and as you can see, I began with sequins, which are backstitched down… it seemed the logical choice since all the previous stitching was backstitch. Then I moved on to bugle beads and my beloved running stitch… this stitch for me is stitch nirvana and it is no less fun with a bead included! The AC “stitch map” has quite a few sections of what they call “armor beading” and I will be channeling Vicki as I work through those bits. As you can see, I have begun! And… the fussiest (at least to me) bits are the random sections with chop and seed beads… when I practiced on this in class, this was the slowest going and I am hoping that my proficiency in the techniques will improve as I progress. Proficiency and some double sided tape… this was a suggestion from the class with Natalie Chanin… put a bit of double stick tape on the back of your hand and put some beads on the tape and stitch away.
The start of armor beading and I am enjoying it!
On the reading front, I finished a most curious “mystery” book, The Story of Marceau Miller… written by Marceau Miller. The opening pages are the murder of Marceau… and the story that follows is one insanely twisty mystery. There is a cast of characters that are highly unlikable… truly a wretched bunch of people. And, as the story unfolds, you discover some fairly unsavory things about Marceau as well. For me, this story dragged a bit in the middle… imo, it needed a bit of editing. Nor was the ending at all a surprise to me (after all, at about the midpoint I decided that any one of the characters could have done it) but the ending seemed a bit rushed and unlikely to happen as written. This was a Netgalley ARC and was published March 3, 2026.
I have not finished Frederik Backman’s My Friends… I am just over halfway and still deeply loving this story. I have also been slowly working my way through The Blue House – Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry and loving it… so much. I am profoundly grateful for people who translate… Patty Crane did a spectacular job in her translations and in doing so has introduced me to a poet that I am enjoying tremendously!
How are you all doing as we have passed the midpoint of March?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
Page 1 of 40012345...102030...»Last »
