Reading Corner: Swamp Edition

Welp, we are in the home stretch of the summer, and I'm ready for school to start (although our fall activity schedule is a little more chaotic than I would like because Birdie was really set on being in the fall play at school and the boys are running cross country.  Oy).  Honestly, the summer has been okay.  The nasty hot/humid weather really only started last week; there were quite a few days this summer where I had windows open a lot of the day--that never happens!  Although I will say it has been a doozy since last week.  I guess the weather was saving it all until now.  

My kids and husband went to overnight church camp the first week in August and I had seven glorious days all to myself.  I read, watched a bunch of independent films, wrote a bit, and generally kept my own schedule for the first time in years.  It was a bit of a hard reentry when they returned--why do they need feeding so often?--but we'll get there again, I guess.  One possibly fruitful bit of that week was that I think I'm working my way around a writing project, although I'm not sure it will be anything yet.  Considering I thought perhaps I only had two books in me, it is nice to have the sense that there might be more to explore.  But we'll see.  It might fizzle once I figure out what it is I'm working with.  I've had enough false starts since finishing All This Without You to be cautious.

I said in my last post I've been reading a lot this year, and decided it might be time to write about some of it.  So, on to the reading stack!  

From the top down: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman; The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilcrist; Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington; The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer; Clanlands Almanac by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish (not pictured: Way Points by Sam Heughan); Lost in Wonder by Esther DeWaal; The Soviet Century by Karl Schlögel; Dominion by Tom Holland; Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker; The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich; (not pictured) Solovyov and Larionov by Eugene Vodolazkin

There was also a trio of Cold War spy histories by Ben Macintyre on my Kindle; each book read like a novel and was thoroughly enjoyable.  Agent Sonya reminded me a lot of the film Red Joan; both stories cover similar histories over a similar time period, so that shouldn't have surprised me.  I started a fourth one, In the Enemy's House by Howard Blum but haven't been as gripped by it, even through their narrative styles are similar.  I tried to read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (my second attempt!) but gave it up as a bad job about half way through.  I was bored out of my skull and the author was only at 1936!  I just couldn't see reading another 200 pages.  

Unrelated, but we got a lot of raspberries from my garden this year!

The Trueman, McGilcrist, Henrich, and Harrington books all covered similar ground from different perspectives, although I would say the Henrich book really bogged down on specialist material in a lot of places. The book could have been trimmed considerably for a general audience. McGilcrist is a paradigm shifter, and he recently published the two-volume follow up that is twice the length of the first.  My husband is reading that one now but I'm not sure I'm going to tackle it.  The first one was very meaty and good, but I'm not sure how much more I'd get out of the other two volumes.  We'll see.  There are lots of interviews with McGilcrist on his work on YouTube, so if you don't have time for an 800 page book, you can get the Cliffs Notes version there.  

I gave a lecture on Soviet communism to the seniors at my kids' school during the last week of school in June and revisited Yuri Slezkine to prepare for it, so between that and the nearly 900 page Schlögel, it's felt like a whole lotta USSR here the last few months.  I need to set that aside for a while, even if there is a great new Gary Saul Morson book that my husband loved.  It will still be there when I'm ready to tackle it. Tom Holland's Persian Fire was a birthday gift last month so I'm looking forward to reading that one.  Dominion was a great read.  I highly recommend this interview with Paul Kingsnorth if you are interested in the topic.  I read the book on the strength of that chat.

Boo wanted me to read Why We Drive aloud for his night time story this month, so it has been fun to revisit that book.  Matthew B. Crawford is such an amazing thinker and writer and a keen observer of the times we live in.  (He has a Substack now, although I don't have time to read much of it!) I've realized in the past months that I could spend all my time reading excellent Substack authors, but it doesn't feel like a good use of brain space or time.  I think differently through physical books and don't retain information as well when I read on a screen, so it is better for me to be mostly analog.  What writing I've done this month has been long hand as I find that a better way to start the process.

There were a few forgettable novels along the way as well as some fiction re-reads, but it has been a good reading season.  I've got some books on hold at the library that should keep me for the next bit.

Pentecost and the Garden

Hurtling toward the end of the school year, and while summer is never my favorite, I think it will be good to have a break.  Pentecost yesterday, and a nice day overall.  

I gave a lecture on Marxism and the Soviets to the 10-12th graders this morning and had a blast throwing apocalyptic millenarianism at them. I just re-read that original post and wished I had referenced it while writing the lecture since it was harder to organize my thoughts several years after reading the original book.  Obviously, I incorporated a lot of other material in my lecture, including several books I read this year, but still.  Hopefully I can do it again (even better) next year!

Strawberries are producing--have gotten quite a few already. The one upside to the construction behind our house is that it seems to be keeping the birds away from the garden, at least for the moment. The raspberry canes are absolutely loaded with immature berries, so we should get quite a crop in a few weeks! Blueberry bush has many green berries too, a vast improvement on last year's four. The dwarf mulberry will probably fruit next year (fingers crossed!)

I'm mostly focused on the berries this year since I don't know how the construction will ultimately affect the light situation on the patio, so I put in only one cucumber plant and a bunch of flowers.  

My hydrangea looks good this year!  It was a little peaky all last summer, but it looks lush and vibrant this year.  

The kids were hoping for another prodigious watermelon vine, but I just don't have room this year with how big the two raspberry bushes are.  

A few weeks ago, I moved the fig tree into the middle of the garden since it wasn't leafing out properly and it seems happier now.  Nothing much else to report about; still knitting away on various things, reading a LOT (I should do a separate post on that soon), trying to think about the rhythms of summer.

Fig is in the big green pot in the center of the picture.

Cypress Laneus in the Pascal Season

Christ is Risen!  Христос Воскресе!  We are nearly to mid-Pentecost (this Wednesday) and our weather is moving into more late spring temperatures.  I was still wearing sweaters all day last week, but it looks like this might be the last gasp of sweater weather, so I thought I better get my newly finished Laneus photographed!  

This was an extremely fast and enjoyable knit.  The pattern is Laneus and is by Teti Lutsak, the same person who wrote the Cinnamomum pattern.  I'm totally enjoying her stuff and love the finished fit.  These are the first yoked sweaters I've made that fit me very well through the shoulders and underarms and don't want to stretch out at the neckline.  My Not A Bláithín sweater is a good fit overall with a good neckline, but the yoke is just a smidge too long so it wants to fold up the excess all the time.  I still wear it a lot, though and highly recommend the yarn, as it wears extremely well.  

The yarn is from my previous Cypress pullover, as I frogged the thing in the fall after being totally annoyed with the fit.  I ended up being one ball short, so had to reorder to finish the hems and cuffs, but for once the different Quince dyelots didn't bite me and it looks pretty seamless.  My only complaint about Chicakdee is that it isn't the best wearing yarn; I had to shave the fuzz off even before I wore it because the original sweater had pilled.  At the price point, I wish it was sturdier, but I'm finding a few other options that seem more robust but still feel nice to wear.

As is probably obvious, I'm into textured work right now.  There was quite a bit of cabling on this yoke and the cuffs and hem, but honestly, it wasn't that bad.  Even though I really enjoy the process of color work, I'm finding I don't wear colorwork sweaters as much as my plain ones.  My next two planned sweaters are the Sarkle and Geo Lace (with a different body shape).  I have the yarn already for both but am working on some smaller accessories right now just for a change of pace.  

I'm not sewing at all right now, except to alter stuff I already have, but I'm probably going to get back to jewelry making soon.  I played around with some designs a week or two ago and it was fun again.  May is always so busy, I try not to make many plans for myself.

Cinnamomum at the end of Lent

С праздником!  It's Palm Sunday for us today, and it feels we are already in the full swing of Holy Week since Annunciation fell on Friday and we've had services every day since Wednesday (including twice on Friday and Saturday!)  We all wore our green today for the feast and it was a lovely service.  I've been sick on and off for most of Lent, including a truly nasty sinus infection that was like having glue in my face for 12 days.  I ended up having to do a course of antibiotics to kick it.  I have another mild cold right now, but I'm hoping I can muscle through the rest of this week and still have enough voice to sing the Pascha service.  Pray for us!

I have a finished object to show today--my Cinnamomum is finished!  I finished it just before the end of March, but it warmed up a bit and I thought I wouldn't get to wear it this season, but it got cold again the past few days, so I happily wore it yesterday for Lazarus Saturday.  

This sweater was a thoroughly enjoyable knit. The provisional cast-on in the middle meant that the fun and engaging part of the yoke was first, but the hem chart provided some interest after working the body down from the yoke. I made the fourth size (43") because I wanted some ease, and I'm very happy with the fit.  I'm still working out the sweet spot on fit in yoked sweaters.

I added the hem chart (with a slight mod) to the sleeves because I liked the symmetry and the stitch count worked out well. I added more stitches to the sleeve underarm cast on (18, I think) and decreased every 8 rows 13 times to 48 stitches, which gave me the right number of stitches for the hem chart on the cuff.  

I did end up knitting one of the sleeves twice, as I forgot to size up a needle and the sleeve came out too tight.  (Pro tip: when knitting small circumferences, tension tends to get tighter, so go up!)  I also had to frog the yoke once as I got a third of the way in and realized my stitches had gotten twisted somehow and I couldn't fix it without starting over.  (Blerg!)

Thankfully it was on an enjoyable part of the sweater.  I also frogged the top part of the yoke once as I forgot to twist the rib stitches and it bugged me enough to tink back and fix it.  Looks like this year is the year of "never say never," since I am finding cabling interesting and engaging now--maybe I'll do a complicated gansey or fisherman's style at some point!  I still enjoy charted lace and stranded knitting, so it is nice to have an array of techniques to move amongst.

I liked this designer's work so much, I immediately cast on another of her patterns, the Laneus pullover, using the yarn from my frogged Cypress sweater.  It too is a thoroughly enjoyable knit.  I like her Javelin pattern too (and bought it!) but I'm finding DK weight sweaters work better for me overall right now and that one is written for worsted.  Although maybe I can fudge the gauge somehow and make it DK weight anyway?  

That said, I want to make a light weight sweater for this time of year (and the corresponding shoulder season in the fall) and I have this beautiful heathered lilac colored yarn that I want to use for it.  It is the same line as my Lightweight Pullover from earlier this winter and I've gotten a ton of wear out of it.  My plan is to cast on the Geo Lace pullover, but I had to remath most of the pattern because the yoke and body stitch counts didn't match--why?!?  I buy patterns so I don't have to math them.  My plan is to do a provisional cast on and knit the yoke first like with this sweater since I like how it allowed me to adjust the yoke depth before doing the body.  The yoke as written seems a little on the shallow side to me; a provisional cast on means I don't have to tink back the whole yoke to fix it in the middle.

And for those of you whose eyes glazed over at all the technical knitting stuff, whew, I'm finished! I'm not sewing much at all right now; mostly just altering stuff I already have to fit better. 

My garden is full of spring flowers. The daffodils and crocuses and are nearly done, but the tulips and grape hyacinth are just flowering now.  The raspberries are leafing out nicely and it looks like the blueberry bush is getting some flowers.  The dwarf mulberry probably won't fruit this year, but I'll be happy if it leafs out nicely.  The strawberries and hydrangea weathered the winter pretty well.  I bought some pansies at the hardware store and put them into some of the big pots.  The building behind us (the brick wall you see in the photos) is undergoing a major renovation, including adding a third story, so I'm not sure how much that will affect our light situation here.  The new story is set back from the roof line a bit, so it may not impact us much.  There is also a new condo unit going up next to it, but it isn't supposed to be any taller than the other houses around us, so hopefully that won't impact our light either.  I'm making no firm planting plans at the moment.  Maybe some lettuces soon.

Onward into Holy Week!

What a Lightweight

Drumroll, please....another finished object!  I've been working on this sweater since the late summer/early fall, and while it is an easy pattern, it is also kind of boring.  

Miles and miles of stockinette in the round, with thin yarn on small needles.  It felt like the never-ending sweater.  

The sleeves went quicker than I expected (helped immeasurably by knitting through a few exciting basketball games at my kids' school!) and this baby is off needles and blocked.  It was quite cold the day I wore it, and while I had silk long underwear underneath, I wouldn't say it was the warmest thing for that day, but I think it will do nicely for the slightly-warmer-but-still-cold days ahead.

I used the Cloudborn fingering weight yarn for this one, even though it was lighter than the pattern called for, but I wanted something quite light.  I like the little cowl on it, as it is just a little something around the neck, but not stifling or constricting.  Maybe I'm just reliving the late 1990s or something, but I've been digging turtlenecks again this winter, as they give me a light layer around my neck for warmth, but don't put me in hot-flash danger like a full on scarf.

Nothing much to note, as I've made this pattern before.  I made the body shorter than the pattern calls for, but less short than my last iteration.  ~12" seems to be a sweet spot for me at the moment.  Long enough for skirts, but still short enough to look good with dresses.  I think it probably looks better tucked in, but I prefer it untucked, so whatever.  It's fine, everything's fine.

In other news, I started an Alpenglow, restarted the thing three times because I wasn't getting the yoke increases right (the LL1 increase is so confusing at first!  I get it now, but man...annoying). 

But on the third go, at the third yoke increases, I decided to frog the thing as I wasn't liking the color combo.  The gray/pink/cranberry worked well but that darker pink just seemed off to me.  It's a pretty intense sweater color-wise, so I knew if I didn't like it at this point, it wasn't going to improve with further knitting.  My original plan for the cranberry yarn was a plain sweater anyway.  So I decided to go for a monochrome sweater with texture instead.  I'm two rows into the chart and it's going pretty well.

Nothing much else to note!  I did the first of my Russia presentations in the 4th grade last week, and it went well.  Ponchik's class is very spirited, so I was a little concerned about how it would go, but they were very attentive and asked mostly good questions at the end.  I served them tea, Russian style, and Ponchik declared that she would always have her tea with jam in it from now on.

I've got two kiddos home today who were sick all weekend, although I think they will both go back to school tomorrow.  I'm a little congested myself, but I'm hoping it will pass quickly.  Somehow I have All The Things stacked up this week and don't have time to be sick!

Cascade Weekender

Holy knitting needles Batman, it's a finished object!  

So I made another Weekender.  You'll perhaps remember that this is my second go at this pattern, my first attempt in 2021 ended badly for me but well for Ponchik, who fit the finished sweater well and wore it happily until this past fall when it got a bit too short.  (I have a ball of yarn left and am debating whether to unravel and knit longer or just call it quits, since she is happily wearing my pink Everyday Sweater these days.  I never was happy with the fit on the pink one, so I'm glad she's wearing it!  Waste not, want not).

But about this Weekender.  I'm starting to wonder if the sizing on Andrea's patterns is a little...um...off.  I know like 12,000 people have made this pattern, and that many people can't be wrong, but seriously, I've got gauge twice on this pattern, sized up on this version, went up a needle size, and still didn't quite get the iteration I was expecting.  And I've noticed that many of her round yoke necklines end up really wide on folks like me with narrow shoulders but beefy upper arms.  But maybe that's a knitting math/sizing issue on my part, I dunno.  (That's why I buy patterns, though!  Because I don't want to do all that math!)  

That said, I do like this sweater and will happily wear it.  

Details: I bought some Cascade 220 worsted on sale last spring with this pattern in mind.  I've never worked with Cascade before, even though I've heard all sorts of things about it, good and bad.  I would buy it again--it has a nice feeling in the hands while knitting, and it blocked out very nicely.  The color is more complex than it looks like in the photos, with flecks of blue throughout.  It has also been cloudy and rainy this week, so the light hasn't been the best for photos.  Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here.

For sizing.  I got gauge on a size 7 needle, but ended up knitting the body on a size 8 because I was so nervous about the size.  I knit a size 44, hoping that with the 8 needle, it would come out around 46" for about 8" of positive ease.  Slightly less than recommended, but I generally find less volume on top is better for me.  It's a good thing I went with the 8, because this came out exactly at 44, but that's fine.  I made the body 12" from the underarm, so shorter than the pattern length, but longer than my usual; I'm finding this year that 11-12" is a happier spot for me, particularly on a boxy thing like the Weekender.

For the sleeves, I ended up knitting one three times before I got what I wanted.  The first iteration was far too small, the second looked weird, and the third was golden.  Between sleeves 2-3 I decided to wet block the body to make the stitch pick up easier, and also on the recommendation of another knitter who noted that this style of sweater is harder to gauge sleeve length without blocking.  Absolutely the right call!  I cast on 64 stitches instead of 60 and am quite happy with the sleeve fit at the head, so that was also the right call.  My decreases were different: 2 stitches every 12 rows x 7, then 2 stitches every 6 rows x 3, then one row, and then ribbing.  Ribbing done on a size 6.  (Although on the tubular cast on for the hem, I did the tubular on a size 6, the rest of the ribbing on a 7, and switched to 8 at the body).  

I kitchenered the front neckline as directed, but just did a cast off in rib pattern for the back.  Not sure which one I prefer, although the front neckline was a bit of a pain.  I also did the knitting equivalent of a forward shoulder adjustement, since so many of my sewn blouses of this type have benefitted from it.  I knit the front 1/2" shorter and the back 1/2" longer, and that seems about right.  I possibly could have done short rows on the front neckline to shape it slightly, but this works.  

Okay, so that's it!  I finally finished the body on my blue Lightweight Pullover and am working on the sleeves (oh, Sleeve Island...) but since the end is in sight, I'm determined to soldier on.  The color is hard to capture--it's a pretty teal-y kind of blue.

I've got an Alpenglow all swatched and ready to go but have told myself I can't cast it on until the blue one is done.  And yes, I realize that knitting another of Andrea's patterns when I'm a little iffy on the sizing is maybe the height of insanity, but I love the pattern and want to try mosaic knitting, so hopefully it works!  

I went through all my yarn a few weeks ago to wind skeins and organize it again after almost a year of shoving the unusued balls from various projects into the bins.  I'm glad I did it, as it helped me map out the next few sweaters I want to make.  I also frogged my Cypress pullover as I've gained weight in the past year and it just didn't fit right.  I was never happy with the neckline anyway.  So much yarn, so little time!

Marking Time

Philip would have been 16 this year, and I find that the way I hold his memory has changed these past few years.  At first, I held my grief so tightly in my fist, afraid to let it go lest I forget somehow.  That letting it go would mean letting him go.  And then there was grieving a lot of other things in my life that felt hard to move away from.  I suppose the past couple of years have been about prising my fist open and letting in light and air, and finding that I don't need to keep it clenched like that to hold Philip near.  I still miss him, and wonder what might have been if he had lived, and I'll always love him, but it doesn't suck the air out of me the way it used to.  At least not most of the time.  Maybe that is acceptance.  

The Christmas season has just begun here, as we celebrate on the Julian calendar, so we are only three days in.  It's a busy time, with a birthday, two namesdays, and two major church feasts, plus another namesday coming close on the heels of it all, so we've got a lot on this month.  I'm trying to pace myself as best I can, which is one reason why I didn't do my annual year-end post.  Another reason is that I continue to pull back from online engagement of most types, as I find it doesn't serve me well.  A blogger I've read for a number of years who is at a similar age and stage to me wrote recently that much more of her middle-aged processing is internal and she finds she has less she wants to share.  That resonated with me. 

Maybe I'm just tired of the "move fast and break things" mindset of our age. I prefer "be still and mend things." With that in mind, my making is much slower these days. After the veritable flood of stress-sewing in 2021 and early 2022, I find I can hardly persuade myself to get my machine out to do even minor repairs lately. I've been using needle and thread whenever I can just to avoid it. And there are the inevitable body changes of middle age that have pushed my closet into flux. Again. I'm working hard to be okay with it all. So it goes. At least there's ThredUp and Ebay for thrifting. And my knitting needles are always occupied.

I'm supposed to give a few lectures on communism and the Soviets to the seniors at my kids' school in a few weeks and have been poking away at what I want to say since late summer.  And there's the two-part presentation I gave to the 4th graders on Russia last year that the teacher has asked me to give again this year sometime.  I gave a lecture to the 6th graders on medieval sacred music up to about 800 AD in the fall, and plan to do a second part on polyphonal medieval music sometime this spring, God-willing.  The first part covered the development of music in the Western and Eastern Christian churches, so I had to cover quite a bit of ground in 40 minutes' time.  Maybe I'll post the broad outlines of the music lectures here some time.  

So, my apologies for being somewhat AWOL here for a while.  I'm not really sure how many people still care to read what I have to say, but I'm glad for those of you who are still along for the ride.  Happy Christmas and New Year!