2.19: Unraveled Wednesday

Today I’m joining Kat & the Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday!

KNITTING:

Knitting has been an exercise in fits & starts of late, coupled with indifference & even laziness, which explains why there hasn’t been an Unraveled post since early December! At that time, I was packing up for the trip to Kansas City; I brought the blanket & the gnome (never found my stash of Atlas… I know it’s around here somewhere!), but only worked on the gnome. The lighting was not great at our Airbnb.

I’m starting to make progress with the blanket now, though. Rusty’s panel is attached to Kate’s, and I’ve started attaching hers to Ali’s. So far, so good. It’s going to be pretty unwieldy moving forward, but there are only two other seams. (Then the border.) I’ve been working on it exclusively at Ann’s, where there’s a nice big table on which to spread it all out.

I haven’t finished the gnome, and I’m indifferent. I really shouldn’t be. I love the colors, there were some new-to-me techniques that look cool, I was looking forward to having another “wrecking ball” in my collection… I’m just meh… about pretty much everything.

And I really shouldn’t be. There is SO MUCH happening in my world — good stuff (stuff that I’m not at liberty to share right now) — but still… meh.

Well, I can see right now that this post is going to be a rambler…

Much of that (most) has to do with the state of things in our world. I am not a fan of anything happening in Washington DC right now, and especially not a fan of those in control — elected and NOT.

I’ve had Kym’s Feb 10th Mondays are for Action post marked “unread” in Feedly for over a week and finally took action & made some calls, because nothing contributes more to MEH than doing NOTHING. I loathe making calls like that with the power of 1000 suns, but… if Kym can do it, so can I! (Y’know . . . brush my teeth. Call my member of congress…) I stumbled around with the script a bit (I’m better talking to voicemail), but there was one real person (at one of the Republican offices) who had to listen to me… and when he said, “Thank you for your call, Ms Moses,” I corrected him, and spelled out my last name. I’m still chuckling.

And I will make more calls.

Anyway, back to knitting. I dragged yarn to Charleston and went through the motions, starting a couple of new things, but, y’know… meh. (I was a few repeats in on a shawl that featured k3tbl as the main design feature — with the number of them increasing every repeat — well, that just turned out to be a hard NO.) And the mittens I was excited about… didn’t like the yarn I chose.

Meh.

But I haven’t stopped thinking about Amy Christoffers’ Pressed Flowers Mittens , so I reclaimed some DPNs from a couple of projects (the gnome & a Musselburgh that’s not sparking joy even though the self-striping yarn is GORGEOUS) and cast on last night. It felt good to be knitting again while watching TV! I’m still working the ribbing, and hoping that the mosaic colorwork will be as fun as imagined!

READING:

I finished Stanley Tucci’s What I Ate in One Year and enjoyed it. It’s not setting the world on fire, but it was fun. At the beginning of the book, he was in Italy to film Conclave, which we’ve recently watched. (I need to catch up on some other OSCAR noms!) He drops names a lot in his books, but if I was making a film with Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, and my sister- & brother-in-law were Emily Blunt & John Krasinski, and I was asked to hobnob here & hobnob there, maybe with King Charles… ha. Yeah.

I’d sure like to visit Italy someday, and some of the restaurants he writes about!

I also read/listened to Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens, and I enjoyed that, too. Also not setting the world on fire, but I love her cookbooks & her attitude (use GOOD olive oil; if you don’t want to eat raw eggs, then tiramisu is not the recipe for you), and it was comforting to hear a familiar voice.

UPDATE:

My nephew, Dylan, is doing much better and was released late last week. He will be in the care of his mother for the next few weeks, at least until he can be free of the body cast. There are still unanswered questions, and maybe there will never be definitive answers, but he appears to be well on the road to recovery.

PREVIEW:

As you might know, Kate & I took all four kids to Chicago last weekend…

…and not only did we all survive, we all had an absolutely MARVELOUS time! It was a blast & the kids were SO GREAT — they can’t wait to return (or go to NYC!). haha. The possibilities are endless. More soon.