Unraveled Wednesday | Week 8 of 2025

It’s Wednesday again! Thank you all for your responses on Friday about Matthew’s car accident. It’s something neither of us has ever experienced so we’ve been learning a lot about the whole process. The latest news is that Matthew was able to come home with a new (to us) vehicle yesterday so we have two options now! It was challenging to figure things out over the last week but could have been much worse if I had a full-time job or if the kids had lots of extracurricular activities to get to. So all in all — we’ve had the best outcomes possible after the accident. Thank you for all of the well wishes!

I’m here today to share my knitting and reading from the last week. My brain really shut down on Wednesday afternoon after the accident and I tried to rest in all of my spare moments, but I did manage a little knitting and to finish two books. So let’s chat!

Knitting:

I’ve started the third repeat of the body for my Moon Mint sweater. I think I’m going to start calling this my Moon Lettuce sweater from here on out. This pattern looks complicated but I promise that it’s not. It makes a ton of sense once you’ve knit it a few times and you’re only ever using one color per row thanks to the mosaic knitting. So it’s been great to pick up in my more brain dead moments over the last week! The pattern calls for 5 repeats of this pattern and I’m considering adding a sixth just to make sure there’s enough length for my taste. I will figure that out when I get there, I suppose.

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Reading:

The Rest is Memory by Lily Tuck
This is a fictional tale about a very real event. 14 year old Czeslawa and basically her entire Polish village gets sent to various concentration and work camps simply because Germany wanted Poland for Germans. It didn’t matter that most of the villagers were Catholic and were in no way interested or invested in the war, but were simply trying to survive the challenges of life at the time.

Tuck’s fascinating research gave life to Czeslawa’s story in a powerful way. This book is short and absolutely worth the time. It’s an important reminder that Hitler had the ability to convince everyday citizens to do atrocious things and those strategies can be replicated by others.

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Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson
I was intimidated by this book because its written in verse and translated from Swedish, which was a totally new pairing for me. But to my delight, I was completely enthralled and captivated by the story this author told.

Ædnan is a multigenerational story of two families of the Sámi people, the Indigenous people of Scandinavia who traveled with the reindeer herds. Much of this story reminded me of the truth we’re learning about the Indigenous people of the Americas – how the dominant population tried to control and indoctrinate them. I was so interested in the little ways the characters held on to their identities over time and how the youngest generations worked to reclaim the rights of their people. Such a beautiful and fascinating piece of writing!

Also – the book looks long but there is a ton of white space on every page. You will get through it much more quickly than you think.

(Ædnan counts towards my Translated Works goal for 2025. My goal is to read 12 Translated Works this year and this is number 5.)

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And that has been my week of knitting and reading! I’m hoping to find a way to click my brain back in and get back to reading in every spare moment but am not rushing it. I’m still 1,000+ pages ahead on my reading goal for this year so I have a nice buffer to work with. And even if I burn through those pages on this brain break, there’s always a chance to catch back up when things shift again.

I hope to be back on Friday with another update, but please don’t worry if I don’t make it. We are all doing okay! I hope the end of your week goes well and that you find time for the things you need. Take good care.

Oops! I forgot to link to Kat and the other Unravelers. Go visit her blog and the other participants in the link up for a ton of inspiration!