Yarn is starting to noticeably disappear from the center of my shawl balls, so I imagine I’ll only do one or two more repeats before I hit the 80% mark that signals the next part of the pattern and the decreasing. The prospect of a finished project is exciting.

I started Ashley Herring Blake’s Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World this evening and am finding it charming. Artistic Ivy, age twelve, her teenage sister, her parents, and her twin infant brothers lose their home to a tornado in the second chapter of the novel. This external force will cause repercussions during a time of adolescent stress and runs the risk of disclosing secrets Ivy hasn’t yet fully revealed even to herself.

We’re two chapters from hearing the end of A Conspiracy in Belgravia and I have two dozen short chapters left to listen to in The President Is Missing. I’m excited to hear the resolution to Lady Sherlock’s current woes in the former, and will be pleased to be done with the latter, in which none of the problems have yet to be resolved (but which I have no doubt will occur in quick order).

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As you can see, I’m braving the heat and working on the shawl outside. It’s only true after dark, and this particular coffeehouse sits on a corner near parkland, which means it has a breeze and less of a heat sink than many other outdoor locations I could choose to knit in. (It’s also near my community garden plot, thus the English muffin bag full of harvested vegetables.) While the purple color changes are more subtle (particularly at night), I’m pretty sure you can see that the orange is now turning to yellow.

The pattern calls for you to knit the same thing until you’re 80% done with your yarn. Because I’m me, I’ll eyeball that and move on to the next step when it looks like I’m getting low on magenta.

I’m still reading Spinning Silver, which is overdue. The other night, though, many of you will appreciate that one of the three main protagonists, who has recently been introduced to the magic that is writing, awakes to find that the blanket she’s begun knitting now has a vine pattern in it (two women in two different dimensions are both occupying the same space, unbeknownst to each other). She has never knit such a complicated pattern and begins to unravel it to get a sense of what’s going on. When she realizes that she’s going to have difficulty keeping track of what’s going on, she begins to read the knitting and write down the (30 row) pattern for what she’s seeing.

I’m still listening to The President Is Missing. It’s fine, but nothing special, so I wouldn’t recommend anyone bother with that one.

On September 1st, I began a re-read of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in honor of it being the day we all board the Hogwarts Express. I have the first three Harry Potter books in oversized illustrated versions, which means they are just at-home reading, but which also means I get to look at lots of exquisite drawings of a world I love. Plus, it has the added benefit that the first three books are the ones I have in softcover. The first book in particular is getting a little fragile, so I’m glad to have an alternative to read.

I also started Takashi Hiraide’s The Guest Cat over the weekend, because it was small enough to fit in my bag with my knitting while I was out and about. Hiraide is a poet, which doesn’t surprise me because the language is direct, but evocative. (Kudos, too, to the translator, Eric Selland.)

I’m feeling good about getting some things finished up this coming week. I’m ready to be done with the old and to move onto new projects and books.

Head over to As Kat Knits for more Unraveled posts.

More Posey sock knitting, more Posey sock unraveling (with Jeremiah supervision, as you can see in the above shot). In this case, I accidentally pulled seven stitches off the needle and dropped them. I fixed that in the dark (by the light of a nearby streetlight) while watching the start of Wonder Woman tonight, but missed a row on one stitch, so had to drop it back down to catch it back up. The good news is that I probably only had four rows of dropped stitches originally, so the rest is progress made during the film. I’m nearing the heel, but it’s looking less likely that I’ll get them done by Friday night, which was my goal.

I’m more than a third of the way into Spinning Silver and all three of the girls — Miryem, as the queen of bloodthirsty winter elves; Wanda, on the run with the brother who accidentally killed a man while protecting her; and Irina, the new wife of a tsar she is pretty sure is a warlock — are on the move now.

On audio, I’m listening to The President Is Missing, a political thriller from James Patterson and Bill Clinton. The story is fine, but nothing extraordinary, so far.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see more crafting and reading posts.

I ripped the toe out one more time on the first sock of my Posies, still had the same problem with a loose stitch and decided it was time to move on. I’ll tack down that stitch with some extra thread, but essentially the first sock is complete. On to sock #2!

While I took Spinning Silver with me to Delaware, I read Dear Rachel Maddow instead, being utterly captivated by the first few pages. Depending on the forecast, either that or The Summer Before the War goes into my work bag. We’ve had several dousing rains recently, and I don’t want a library work to get sodden.

I finished I’ll See You in the Cosmos on audiobook over the weekend and am looking forward to starting Tess of the Road, a fantasy novel featuring dragons. (Rachel Hartman is the author of Seraphina, which I loved.) The novel was a recommendation from my friend Amani and so I’m eager to read it so I can discuss it with her via email or text.

Check out As Kat Knits for more reading/crafting combo posts.

I started reading Spinning Silver this week. It’s a reimagining of the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, set in Russia and featuring a young Jewish money lender, Miryem; her hired girl, Wanda; and deadly, otherworldly beings, who set her the impossible task of turning silver into gold. I loved author Naomi Novik’s earlier novel, Uprooted, and am finding the start to this novel has the same feeling as the beginning of that one. I’m hoping for good things.

On my phone I’m listening to a middle grade contemporary novel, See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng, and Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon for White America by local professor and minister Michael Eric Dyson. The latter is shaped as a church service and deals with being Black in contemporary America and what white people repeatedly fail to understand about that experience and need to learn.

The former is about a rocket-crazy young boy and his dog, Carl Sagan, who are recording sounds of the world on a Golden iPod in preparation for launching it into space to travel on the heels of Voyager’s Golden Record, put together by human astronomer Carl Sagan in 1977. In the process, he’ll learn what it means and takes to pursue the truth, both personal and universal.

I am still working on my shawl (I had a two-hour conference call to knit through today), but progress is slow and the color changes are slower and I’m impatient for it to be done. So of course, I put it down and picked up my Posey socks. As I was picking up a stitch that had dropped off the edge of the needle while stored in the bag, I noticed some loose stitches earlier in the toe. Since the toe is not one of those places where you can just let that go, I ripped back most of the way to where I’d started the grey yarn and will finish the toe in the morning. Self-striping sock yarn changes colors much more quickly than two gradient shawl balls, so I hope that keeps me moving forward much more quickly.

Should I finish my Posey socks, I’ll have to look at my other sock UFOs from Sock Madness to see which pair is furthest along and/or will take the least effort to finish. This year’s pair, Fee Dragée, may be a contender, since that’s halfway done. Or Slip Stripe Spiral, the pair I went out on two years ago, is already into the leg of the second sock, although I think I messed it up someplace and it’s waiting for me to figure out how to fix it. Or Rainbow Pipes, which was a Sock Madness pair from 4(!) years ago, which are complete except for i-cord that needs to be created for the cuffs and buttons that have to be (found and) sewn on. My oldest unfinished pair of socks is from nine years ago and is color work. One sock is completely done, but I’m betting my tension will be different than it was nearly a decade ago and that a needle adjustment will be necessary.

If you’d like to see what other folks are knitting and reading, head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.

I took my shawl with me to knit during the concert last night, but after volleyball tonight I dug out the two pairs of socks I’d like to finish this month and carried the Into the Wild Wood pair with me to the coffeehouse for some late evening outdoor time. (Because, you know, a volleyball game in the park isn’t enough…)

After my adventure with Joe Biden and Barack Obama, I’m back hanging out with plucky orphan Audacity Jones in 1910 D.C. She’s about to embark upon the mission she was brought here for, but it’s not what she’s been told. Luckily, she has a local boy and his grandfather and her stowaway cat to help her out of any scrapes…

I’m still listening to Murder Games. We’ve finally met Julian, whom I was worried would turn out to be a concoction of the tv show. He has lost his beard for Hollywood, and I’m not convinced certain characters on paper are going to hook up like they have on the small screen, but we’ll see… Either way, it’s been entertaining and I’d listen to another one.

You can see more reading/crafting combos at As Kat Knits.