Unraveled Wednesday – Week 22 of 2020

Happy Wednesday, friends! Today I’m joining Kat to share my reading and knitting for the last week. If you’re looking for a community of knitters and readers, please go check out today’s linkup! It’s a great group of bloggers to get to know.

I’ve spent the week visiting New York City and Cuba (safely within the covers of books, of course) while working on my Birkin sweater – so it’s been a very good week!

Reading

Finished This Week:

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Save Me the Plums was so much fun. I loved the inside look at the glamorous life of Condé Nast editors, including personal drivers and yearly clothing allowances. Before reading this, I knew nothing about Ruth Reichl or Gourmet magazine, but enjoyed hearing from all of you in the comments of last week’s post – Reichl has quite a fan club! Magazine publishing seems like such a stressful job and there are so many elements needed before getting a magazine to the newsstand – it’s amazing that anything ever gets published.

When We Left Cuba was a perfect summer (and audio) book. We learned more about the Perez family after the Cuban Revolution. This one focused on Beatriz – the fun loving sister who was looking for vengeance after Castro murdered her twin brother. She begins working for the CIA as a spy and works hard to prove her merit with the hopes that she’ll be sent back to Cuba and kill Castro herself.

Currently Reading:

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I started The Splendid and the Vile and am moving very slowly. It’s fascinating, but I have such a hard time with dense nonfiction. I’m trying to tell myself that it’s worthwhile history to know, especially since I read so much WWII fiction. A little hard work never hurt anyone! But I’m not sure I’m going to be able to finish this before it’s due back to the library, and then I’ll have to make the decision about whether I should renew it. Oh! Hard choices!

I started The Glass Hotel to give myself a break from The Splendid and the Vile. Emily St. John Mandel enjoys writing about the Canadian club scene, doesn’t she? It makes me wonder what she was doing in the late ’90s… Anyway – I am really enjoying this novel. I’m less than 50 pages into it, yet the characters have drawn me in and there’s a mystery here that I’m anxious to pick apart.

White Nights is my current audiobook. It’s the second book in the Shetland series and this one feels much creepier than the first – I like it!

Knitting

I shared my misgivings about this sweater on Monday. It’s not going to fit me well and I’m a little bummed about that. But it’s still a beautiful sweater and I’m happy that I knitted it – I was fascinated with that yoke for so long. I felt better after I learned from Sarah that fit was a common complaint about this sweater; I was busy blaming myself but realized that some of the complications could come from the way the pattern was written. I didn’t get as much done this week as I’d hoped, but I want to be finished with this by June 1st, which is when the first clue for the TTL MKAL will drop. My yarn for the project is due to arrive today – I’m so glad it’s getting here before the first of the month!

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How has the week been treating you so far? I hope you have a nice stack of books to read and a lovely crafting project nearby!