Unraveled Wednesday – Week 35 of 2020

Happy Wednesday, friends. Wednesdays are for catching up with Kat at As Kat Knits and sharing my weekly reading and knitting projects. This week I’m sharing three finished books and some exciting knitting progress.

Finished Reading This Week:

Birds of a Feather is the second Maisie Dobbs book. Maisie is hired to find the missing daughter of a very wealthy man, but quickly realizes that her disappearance is related to the deaths of three other women. I’m really enjoying this time period, between the world wars, and Maisie’s forward thinking. I think I’ll probably take a little break from the series for now, but hope to return a little later this year.

LaRose was a heartbreaker! Landreaux Iron attempts to kill a deer but misses and shoots his neighbor’s 5 year old son instead. In an attempt to right his wrong, he gives his own five year old son to his neighbors, the Ravich family. But LaRose is a name passed down through the generations, and each generation of LaRose is special. This LaRose is uniquely wise. Erdrich writes some incredible magical realism as we travel back in time to meet the first LaRose and learn some things about her own brutal journey. This is a very muddled description, I know — but it was a complicated book. It was hard to put down!

If you ever wanted to take a course from Madeleine Albright, here’s your chance! She narrates the audio version of Fascism: A Warning and it was excellent. In it, she outlines the unique characteristics of fascists throughout the world and history. It was fascinating. Of course, her argument is that the current US president exhibits many of the characters of a fascist leader and describes the slippery slope of some of his decisions. If you’re looking for some language and context around your growing fears over what you’re seeing in US politics right now, this is well worth your time.

Knitting

Friends, I’m so close! I steeked the body on Saturday night and was so relieved by the results. For the non-knitters, steeking is when you knit your entire project in the shape of a tube and then CUT up the center to create an opening. It’s how this cardigan was made – it started out being completely connected all the way around, like a pullover. But then I cut up the center to make it a cardigan. I’ve steeked one other sweater before but it was worst case scenario: it unraveled. And that was especially awful because I’d been working on the sweater for 3 years (no lie).

To say that I was nervous about steeking this is an understatement, but I took a deep breath and dove right in. And so far, it’s holding together! I’m now working on the beautiful shawl collar and am loving the shape and the texture. After binding off on the collar, I’ll just need to knit up the loops for the belt and the belt itself – and it will be done! Another snuggly sweater for this fall is almost ready.

I think my next few knitting projects will be quite low key. I’ll probably be knitting up some hats to use up some of the leftover bits of yarn from the last couple of sweaters that I finished.

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I can’t wait to see what all of you have been working on since last Wednesday!