crossing the finish line

{part i} the yarn

I made it!

I thought I’d finish in the wee hours last Thursday. (Thanksgiving being my self-imposed deadline.) (Without one, I knew I’d delay putting pieces together.)

And I was close!

But at the hour you see on that clock (a.m.)…and likely because of that ridiculous hour!…I made an oversight sewing in Sleeve 1. Which meant…take it out. Start again.

Not a big deal. It’s easy stuff. And I was on my third wind, after all. But. It pushed the envelope of What’s Reasonable.

So I removed the sleeve, did a ‘lazy block’ (spritzed with water, pressed with towels, then went to bed. Over coffee and the parade, I chipped away at the sleeves; I finished the side seams by dinner. Linc tried it on one more time before bed so I could fiddle with the neck. (I’d worried about the neck. Because if I was going to blow it, that’s where I was going to blow it.)

This was his deal — picture but no head. So that’s that.

And just because Duke’s cute. (He LOVES snow.)

Lincoln (16) had two requests when we searched for a pattern: no band/hem at the waist. And no wide neck.

The neck on this pattern (and most that we saw) was a little wider than he wanted — but I thought working up a wider neckband would solve that. And while I knew it would help, I could tell it wasn’t gonna cut it, completely. So I improved by decreasing on the neck edge of the shoulder seam (circled).

turned inside out

My worry was that resulting nubby lump. That it’d look and/or feel bumpy on the shoulder. But it settled fine enough (and he says he can’t feel it).

And? He loves it! And wears it. Which is all that matters.

(I tried it on for myself Thanksgiving night. It’s cozy, warm, and I like the color he picked. With 2+ skeins left over, I may order a contrasting color and make some striped for myself!)

---

{part ii} the yarns

Especially in comparison to last week, the reading for me was just average this week:

{one} I downloaded The Retreat by Sarah Pearse for late-night-stitching-while-listening. (Which made for a few moments of What do I hear?! Who’s on the stairs?!, since it’s a thriller, after all.)

From the publisher: Detective Elin Warner is called to the retreat when a young woman’s body is found on the rocks below the yoga pavilion in what seems to be a tragic fall. But the victim wasn’t a guest—she wasn’t meant to be on the island at all. When a guest drowns in a diving incident the following day, Elin starts to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the guests, and who else is in danger?

If you read The Santatorium, you may find the second Elin Warner detective story all-too familiar.(Forested island off the cost of England…dark + stormy weather…people dropping like flies.) It’d have bugged me, had I read them back to back — but lucky for me, I read Sanatorium three years ago. I hardly remembered! (Looking back, I can say I liked Retreat much more.)

It was entertaining. Easy listening. I’ve learned, with this genre, not to get hung up on the likelihood of actions or reactions, what would ‘really happen’ — or not. I just let someone tell a story.

---

{two} From Goodreads: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. [The collection features] four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.

This quick, well narrated audio consistently averages > 4-star ratings, and while it wasn’t quite that for me, it was vivid, passionate storytelling, and there are characters among the nine stories who I won’t soon forget. What made it a little less for me: the shortest stories here were too intense to be so short — their abruptness was disappointing. And at times, the sexual drive of the characters dominated to their detriment; I wanted to look through other windows, experience more ways of seeing them.

Have you read this? I’d love to hear more readers’ thoughts.

---

{three} From NPR: Collected over two years that saw Li hospitalized for depression and suicidal ideations, Dear Friend is a memoir, albeit an unusual one. She does not attempt to follow the plot of her life – which is as dramatic as any of her invented characters’ lives – as much as she allows herself to drift from memory to memory, letting her thoughts extend like far reaching spokes that span both literary references and personal memories.

Li was born and raised in China. She earned a BS in biology at the Univ. of Peking before moving to the US, where she earned an MS in immunology and, five years later, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her depth of experience and knowledge is vast; her personal life, wrought with grief and loss.

I recently read her novel, The Book of Goose, and liked her thoughtful, efficient prose with no wasted words. Her voice is steady, measured, detached, thoughtful. I looked forward to reading her memoir (described by one reviewer as ‘Fraught And Unusual’).

I gave it 50 pages. Li’s voice came across flat — too flat to sustain me for 225 pages. At times, I was intrigued by her objectivity and acceptance. But more often than not, the best way I can describe it is that it was like I was sitting too far back in a chilly theater trying to watch a play that couldn’t hold my attention. So. I returned it to my library, and now Julia Alvarez is my bedtime reading.

It’s entirely possible that if I’d read this fully caffeinated, I’d have been a more engaged reader. Timing, as we know, is everything!

---

Big thanks to Kat for the chance to link up!

And what are you digging in to this week?