No photo today, but I’ve got several things with me in Connecticut for the holiday weekend. The pumpkin socks did not get finished, but I think I can wrap them up while watching the parade in the morning if I don’t doze off too many times. I also brought my purple and green shawl, which just needs the edging applied. And I brought a skein of yarn for socks and one for a hat, depending on what I feel like starting next. I have a skein of yarn for a hat somewhere at home that I remember buying at Sheep & Wool two (three?) years ago that I really want to knit, but I’ve torn apart the stash twice hunting for it without success.

On the reading front, I brought three books north with me: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, The Unbreakable Code, and A Most Extraordinary Pursuit, so I’m set whether I want middle grade, YA, or an adult mystery.

Head over to Kat’s blog to see what else folks are reading and knitting.

As my socks come to an end (they’re not there yet, but with luck we’ll have an FO post this week!), I’m looking ahead and contemplating future knitting. This is one contender: the blue (it’s only got 135 yards, which makes it a little short on its own for much of anything) with one of the greens.

Speaking of contenders, while my first post-illness read was Jason Reynolds’ latest, Long Way Down (go read it!), I took my readers’ opinions and the length of the holds list at the library into consideration and pulled Exit West by Mohsin Hamid back into the game as well. I’m about two-thirds of the way through and am enjoying its storytelling quite a bit.

I may up the playback speed of The Secret History of Wonder Woman to see if it sounds weird. (I’m more than halfway through and we haven’t yet reached Wonder Woman’s conception; it would have been better titled The Secret History of Wonder Woman’s Creator and the Women He Loved) I’ve still got a week on it from the library, but Ibi Ziboi’s American Street is also checked out to me and I’d like to get going on that. I wonder if Rudi would be interested in listening to that for some of the Thanksgiving weekend drive…

Visit Kat’s blog for what others are reading and knitting.

Obviously this is not one of my better shots, but I just don’t feel like pulling everything back out and setting it up again, so it is what it is.

And what it is is every print book I have out from the library that I’ve started. Two are adult books (A Most Extraordinary Pursuit and Exit West), two are YA (Saints and Misfits and The Reader), and three are middle-grade novels (The Lotterys Plus One, Me and Marvin Gardens, and The Unbreakable Code). On my phone, I’m about halfway through the audio of The Secret History of Wonder Woman. I’m in a bit of a reading funk and keep starting new things in the hopes that it will be the one to grab me, but so far no dice. Mind you, this is only about half of what I have out from the library right now. I need a vacation to get through everything.

Sock #2 of Little Pumpkins is into the gusset decreases, so progress should get faster now that I’m only dealing with one set of cables, rather than four, and have a lot more stockinette. I never understand why some people prefer toe-up socks: all the easy stuff is at the beginning and you’re stuck with lots of detail work the further along you get. Maybe only one more week. But I keep saying that, so clearly it’s meaningless.

You can visit Kat’s blog for links to more Unraveled Wednesday posts.

As you can see, Little Pumpkins did not get finished in time for Halloween. Luckily, winter squash are pretty hardy and pumpkin pie is a staple of Thanksgiving, as well, so I feel like it’s acceptable to still be working on them. Particularly since fall has really only recently arrived in the mid-Atlantic.

My reading is a little bit here, a little bit there. Here we have a sample of historical fiction mysteries (The Secret History of the Pink Carnation mostly takes place just after the French Revolution and A Most Extraordinary Pursuit is set in 1906) and YA/middle-grade contemporaries set in New York City (Clayton Byrd Goes Underground is on the shortlist for the kids’ prize of the National Book Award and Miles Morales is the Spiderman adaptation I’ve been looking forward to reading for ages) that I’m working on. I’ve also just downloaded The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which seemed like a good fit for #NonfictionNovember and to knit while reading (and doing dishes) since Leverage just left Netflix. I’ve got nearly 20 books out from the library right now, which is starting to feel a little overwhelming, so hopefully I can push through some of the shorter ones and get them back this weekend.

This post is part of Kat’s Unraveled Wednesdays and the first post of NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, for which a link-up party is being hosted by Blissful Lemon. (This means I’ll be posting daily for November, so feel free to check in more often.)

Our WiFi is down so this will be a quick post.

As you can see, I’m on the cuff of Little Pumpkin sock #2. Rudi will be working a bunch the next few days, so I expect to get another good chunk done by the weekend. I finished the audiobook of Daniel José Older’s Shadowshaper tonight & highly recommend it if you’re looking for an urban contemporary ghost story for this season.

Up next is another book set in the immigrant communities of NYC: You Bring the Distant Near, which I started last weekend. So far, so good.

Check in on other Unravelings at Kat’s blog.

While away last weekend, I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done, being too busy visiting to curl up with my books. But I’m back home now, which means wrapping up a bunch of things in progress. I just finished listening to The Scam as I was knitting the last of my heel decreases, the latest of the romantic Fox and O’Hare heist series that is ridiculously bad, but still enjoyable. That leaves me with Teraji P. Henson’s memoir checked back out on audio, which came back around again finally, unless I opt to start Shadowshaper before the end of Latino Heritage Month.

The other books I have going are Be Careful What You Witch For, a mass market mystery novel that fits in my bag (and thus only gets read when I’m out); The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a historical fiction mystery/romance which I’m about a third of the way through; and Patina, the second book in the Track series by Jason Reynolds, about four middle-schoolers who join an elite track team.

I’m eager to begin The Fifth Season, the first of a highly regarded fantasy series; Warbringer (about Wonder Woman); and Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales/Spiderman novel. I have several other books out from the library that don’t fall into the supernatural category, but these three are the ones most exciting me at the moment.

As mentioned above, I’m past the heel on the first Little Pumpkins sock, and since I moved the cable around so the pumpkin runs down the front of my foot, I only have to cable every 8 rows. I anticipate finishing the foot this weekend and then quickly moving on to sock #2. After all, one wants to finish before Halloween! I also have picked my Andrea’s Shawl back up after a year of it solely missing a border. I’m about halfway through picking up the stitches for that, and then it’s less than a dozen rows of knitting. I’m looking forward to it being done by the time the cool weather reappears on the East coast.

If you’d like to see what others are knitting and reading, head over to Kat’s Unraveled Wednesday post.