by Kat | 6 days ago | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings gentle Unraveler’s and welcome!
I have made another week with no unraveling… and I am making good progress on try two of the Waffle Pullover yoke… and my maths are good!! (which might be the best part of all my progress!) My adjustments for my row gauge are working as I’d hoped!
I am ready for a longer cable needle, but the increases are going beautifully!
In my “schedule shake up” I am still stitching each morning, but I am spending the stitching time working on my AC bandana, which is an entirely different sort of stitching. It is measured, even, precise. The entire process… threading my needle, loving my thread, and settling in to the stitching rhythm is really addictive. But it is not fast… and that might be the best thing of the entire thing! It is the penultimate slow-fashion. I have four more backstitch bits to go and then I can begin the beading! I am going to continue this practice in the morning and I am looking forward to beginning the beading process.
The reading has been equally good… stunningly so. I listened to Vigil, the latest Saunders book, and loved it! It was as good as the audio of Lincoln on the Bardo, and maybe even a bit better! If you are on the fence about this book, I’d really encourage you to listen to it, the cast is brilliant.
I am currently listening to Fredrik Backman’s My Friends… oof. It is so good and I am slowly listening at a measured pace. I am not far into it but there have already been tears. Backman’s ability to draw deeply profound characters is amazing. I don’t want to race through it, there is so much to think about!
And, I have been introducing myself to a new-to-me poet, Tomas Tranströmer. The Poet’s Corner had a craft talk with Patty Crane who translated his entire works. I have been enjoying reading through his works. Her book, The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Transtömer includes the original Swedish… I like that in a translation. I am so fortunate that my library system has a copy of this book. And as you can see, I am flagging quite a few poems!
And there you have my update… what does your knitting and reading look like this week?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Mar 4, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dearest Unraveler’s!
March… yes, yes, yes! It rained yesterday… such soft, tender rain. It was delightful! This week we are leaping into temps in the 70’s… which is insane to me… just insane. My poor snowdrops will soon be over at these temps… sigh. But…
My DAFFS are going to have A YEAR!
Yes, those 10 Colossal Daffodil bulbs I planted a mere 3 years ago have a whopping 30 buds emerging! I am over the moon with this… and I would like to thank Carole for showing her braided daffodil greens last year. I did that and if that is the reason behind this bloom-athon, you can bet that I’ll be doing that again this year! But, this is not a gardening post… so let’s get to the making!
It is moving along. I actually let my second attempt at the Waffle Sweater sit quietly since I finished those short rows… partly because I was having a bit of disgust with it… partly so I could just let my maths simmer in my brain for a bit. I am happy to report that I picked it up again on Monday night and I think my increase plan is absolutely the right work around! That helps remove all traces of that disgust and I am back in knit mode to finish this sweater! I know that there will be plenty of days to wear this before it needs to be packed away for the summer!
I also started a sock… from a Miss Babs Sock Blank. I have never knit anything from sock blanks but I have to tell you, unraveling that blank, dividing the two strands, and winding two balls of yarn in increments was not a task that was… easy. However, it worked well to sit down and do this whilst watching a very moving movie on Netflix. (I highly recommend the movie I watched, The Swedish Connection. It was so, so, so good!) But despite the slowness of all that unraveling and winding… sock one is off to the races and I love everything about it! I went back to a much loved pattern, Carole’s Picot Edge Socks, which is exactly what this yarn needed to show the beauty of the dye… say hello to my Sakura Socks!
Cherry Blossom Socks!
The reading this week… mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! So good! I finished Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven… and have a new love for corvids and wish I saw ravens in my corner of the world. If you are a birder, I think you’d love this in-depth look at ravens. I listened.
Next, a new release by Allegra Goodman… This is Not About Us. I loved it. Really, really, loved it. It is a story about people, in particular an extended family and their relationships with each other. It starts with the death of one family member, and slowly evolves from there. These are not perfect people… they have problems, issues, opinions, struggles, desires… and this book really highlights how sometimes the messiest life is the best thing ever. It felt so good to be nestled in amongst these very real people. (One might say that I fit in perfectly, lol!) Anyways, I did not want the book to end… at all and I highly recommend it.
On a side note, I am phasing out my use of Goodreads. I have merged over, almost completely, to The Storygraph. It is really a nice interface and I love supporting something other than the dude from Amazon.
And with that, there you have my making and reading highlights for the week! What about you? What does your March making and reading look like?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Feb 25, 2026 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings gentle Unraveler’s and welcome to the last Wednesday of February!
I am happy to say there has been no unraveling this week, whew! (right?) However, I have not picked up the yoke since we last checked in… so it is safe to say that in my neighborhood, at least, the “bang out” phase of urgency has passed. I am reminding myself that knitting is not a race and that this sweater will be a welcome addition to my sweater drawer whenever it is finished!
I do, however, have an almost completed pair of socks! And I am very happy about that. I have about 10 more rounds of toe decreases to go and I predict that these socks will be done and in the “wearing rotation” before I need to put all the socks away for the year! (In fact, you can count them done by the time you are reading this!)
I mentioned on Monday that I took the MDK class on beading with Natalie Chanin… I am channeling Vicki as I am slowly working on my bandana. I am not to the point of beading the bandana yet, I opted to get all the backstitch reverse patches done first but I will soon be full on immersed in beading this small project, which I am stunned at how quickly it goes… or should I say that I am stunned at how quickly I lose track of time when beading? This beaded piece is a huge step outside my “clothing comfort zone” but I will be the chicest dog walker in all of Pittsburgh! Ha!
Slowly finding a rhythm with backstitch… I am really enjoying the basics of stitching!
Yesterday, I finished the seventh page of my twenty-page, 100 Day stitch journey. We have a phenomena in the sky on Friday, which was my inspiration… behold the Planet Parade!
I am still finding ways to use that sock… Yarn as Rings of Saturn, FTW!
The reading has been very good… I finished a newly released book by Sadeqa Johnson, Keeper of Lost Children. It is a story I was not aware of but I really appreciated how Sadeqa brought the story to life by telling it through the characters… each with a different perspective. It is about babies born to German Mothers after WWII. The hiccup was that the babies fathers were Black American servicemen. It was the work of one woman to bring a group of these babies to the United States to be adopted… the story is told from a German Mother’s perspective, the American serviceman’s perspective, the adopted child’s perspective, as well as the struggles the woman who worked tirelessly to bring these babies home faced. It was well done and is quite moving.
I am almost done reading Allegra Goodman’s latest novel, This is Not About Us. I am enjoying this book as well… but it is entirely different from Sadeqa’s book but not in a bad way. It is a bit of an extended family story… beginning with the death of one aunt. I almost don’t want it to end… but I will be finished with it soon.
During the day I am listening to Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven and I am LOVING it! Vera has sang the praises of Bernd’s writing for some time now and I see more of his books in my reading future!
How is your February winding down? Are you trying to finish something up? Or are you contemplating a springtime make?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
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 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 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!
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