Better in 2024: April

It's been a very strange month, with much going on at work and at home and with three seasons' worth of weather. But, for a change, April has felt like it was truly a month long, and I was not terribly surprised to find it the last Monday of the month today. As per usual, it's time for my monthly One Little Word check-in, with thanks to Carolyn for hosting our monthly link-ups.

Earlier in the month, I focused on the very physical side of Better -- namely feeling like my normal self after going through cetirizine withdrawal. I knew to expect the extreme itchiness, but I wasn't truly prepared to feel just generally off or for the anxiety that feeling would cause. Once I realized what was going on, though, I felt less stressed and was able to focus on the slight improvements each day brought. And it was a huge relief to wake up last weekend, having slept enough and woken feeling like myself again.

That wasn't the only lesson I got from Better this month. I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog in any detail, but there's been a lot of upheaval at work in the last several months. Late last summer, HR completed a long project of completely reorganizing all the job classifications at the university so that there would be fewer of them overall and so that there'd be wider applicability of a given job classification across many different areas (given the size of the university, you can imagine what a huge job that is). This is a project that has been in the works for years but one that apparently didn't have enough checks and balances worked into it because when I learned my new job classification, I discovered that -- without any input from my, my supervisor, or anyone I work with directly -- I'd essentially been demoted to a job that required total supervision and only a high school diploma, which was even a step below the job description when I was originally hired 18+ years ago. On top of that, at the end of last month, the head of my unit reorganized the entire office, moving my supervisor and me to a different section of it, and issued a mandate that everyone in the office should be there in person an average of two or three days a week. The job classification issue has been top of mind for me for months, and with the full support of my supervisor, we've been working with the powers that be to have it changed. But the in-person mandate was a complete surprise to me, and not a good one. I am much more productive working at home, when I don't have the distractions of the office around and can start early or work late if I need to because I'm already at my computer and can work it in around whatever I'm doing at the house. There's also the matter of being able to pick Mo up from school in the middle of the afternoon, which I couldn't do if I were in the office. So where does Better come up in all of this? Let's just say that this whole situation has made me feel frustrated, unappreciated, and (quite frankly) used by my employer, and thus I've felt a need to be Better about speaking up for myself. Although the benefits of this job are good, the pay has always been, quite bluntly, crap, and while I generally enjoy my job (because I'm darn good at it), there are always other options out there. I know for a fact that my office would get a lot worse off if I wasn't there to catch and correct the mistakes, and there's some power in that. The future is still murky, but I am feeling better about things after having made my opinions known.

And now, speaking of work, I have a ton of it to get to. Hope your week is off to a good start and it's been a good month for your One Little Word!

Did They Sneak In an Extra Day?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like it should have already been Friday a day or two ago -- it's been a long week! In addition to the evening events at the beginning of the week, this week has also seen the final preparations for commencement (which is this weekend) at work, so I am more than ready for the weekend. We have nothing on the schedule this weekend, either, so we'll be able to sleep in and recharge.

I've mainly been focusing on one project the last couple of days, and that's my socks. Last night I finished up the first one except for the heel; I plan to do both heels at the end.

I have already cast on the second sock, too. It won't match, but I'm hoping I can at least get the stripe location to match even if the colors won't.

That's about all I've got in my for today -- if you want an indication of how long this week has been for me, I'll tell you that nearly forgot to make coffee this morning because I hadn't yet had my coffee! If you aren't already aware of it, I did want to mention that tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day, so if you have an indie store near you, you might want to drop in tomorrow and show them some love. I will be back on Monday with my One Little Word update for April. Have a wonderful weekend!

Poetry in April: Poem in My Pocket

We have arrived at the final Thursday in April, so this is my last installment of poetry for this year's observance of National Poetry Month. The theme this week is "Poem in My Pocket" -- in other words, a poem is that is short enough to fit on a small piece of paper in your pocket, just in case you wanted to have it on you to share with someone you meet. When I think of short poems, often the first things that come to mind are haikus and limericks, but I think a free-verse poem that is short is often quite effective, saying something powerful with few words. So that's what I went for with my selection.

A Name

When Eve walked among
the animals and named them --
nightingale, red-shouldered hawk,
fiddler crab, fallow deer --
I wonder if she ever wanted
them to speak back, looked into
their wide wonderful eyes and
whispered, Name me, name me.

"A Name" from The Carrying: Poems, (c) 2018, Milkweed Editions

Thank you for sharing this annual celebration of poetry with us this month! Be sure to visit, Kym, Kat, and Bonny one last time today for their selections!

Unraveled, Week 17/2024

What a week it has been -- and we've only reached the midpoint! I'm happy to report that our Seder went well, even if it was an exhausting night. The little ones all reached their breaking point before we reached the meal portion of the evening, so we were down to a dozen people around the table fairly quickly. Because we had started so early, we had finished dessert and said goodnight by around 8, and by 9 we had finished doing all the dishes and put away the extra tables and chairs. I'm pretty sure we all fell asleep very quickly Monday night. And then last night Mo and my mother went to Seder at my brother and sister-in-law's house (they also hosted their next-door neighbors) while the Mister and I attended an event with Baratunde Thurston hosted by our local PBS station. I'd say we're all looking forward to having a normal evening tonight!

Before I give an update and link up with Kat and the Unravelers, I have to share a photo from last Friday, which I forgot to do on Monday. I mentioned last week that we'd gone dress shopping, in part because Mo had a school dance on Friday, and several of you wanted to see the dress she picked. So here's a photo of the three of us:

Yes, she is wearing heels and I'm in flats, but she's quickly threatening to overtake me in height!

But back to the knitting content! This week, it's a tale of two socks:

On the top is the one using the yarn from String Theory Colorworks that I shared last week. I decided to make things a little more exciting and am doing some faux colorwork by slipping every other stitch on the round when the color changes. I'm also doing a forethought afterthought heel on these (if you look closely, you can see the white waste yarn near my needles) because I didn't want to change the width of the stripes by working a flap and gusset. On the bottom is the sock I started on Saturday for my theater knitting. We got there about an hour before showtime (we've been going early to deal with a ridiculous amount of construction downtown and to ensure we find a parking spot in the closest garage), so we sat on a bench before the house opened and I cast on. I got through a full stripe repeat over the course of the show. The yarn is Knit Picks Felici in the colorway White Russian; it was purchased back in 2022, which I know because I had the foresight to write the date it entered the stash on the ball band. I did rewind the yarn into cakes before casting on because I didn't want to risk the skein getting yanked out of my project bag in the dark in the theater.

My other active project is my design project:

I've been meaning to cast this on for a very long time, and in fact the colorwork pattern is one I've been playing around with for years. I'd originally tried it out in a sock, but stranded work in socks is always a little risky, so I decided to use it in a cowl instead. This is one of those cowls that is knit as a long tube and finished by grafting the two ends together. I've now completed a little more than one repeat of the pattern, and I'm very happy with how this is working up. I'm still deciding just how long to make this, but the beauty of this construction is that you can basically decide to make it as long or as short as you want.

I have only finished one book in the last week, but it was an excellent one!

The memoir How to Say Babylon is the next Read With Us selection, but I actually already had it on hold at the library when it was announced, and finally it was my turn last week. I decided to get the audiobook, read by the author, as I always seem to get more out of memoirs when I hear them in the author's own voice. Safiya Sinclair recounts growing up in poverty in Jamaica in a strict Rastafarian household, with a father who was occasionally abusive and whose beliefs governed what she could wear, what she could eat, and what she could do with her life. Eventually, Sinclair began to question those beliefs and to want a different life for herself, one that would allow her to not only make her own choices but also to pursue a career as a poet. Although this is a memoir and not a poetry collection, you can tell from her prose that she is a poet; even in describing things that are hard to read, her writing is beautiful. It's hard to say that I truly enjoyed all of this book; there were times when I forgot that the events she described had actually happened. But I found her skill as a writer to be astonishing, and I am hoping to find some of her poetry to read soon. I am really looking forward to the RWU discussion! I gave this book 5 stars.

On my to-do list for today is finishing Long Island Compromise (my Kindle app tells me I have about an hour of reading left), and I have about 100 pages remaining in When I Lived in Modern Times.

What are you making and reading this week?

Totally Different

Remember last week, when I told you I'd finished my sweater but that the weather had gotten so warm that I didn't think I'd have a chance to wear it until the fall? I think the universe must have heard me, because we had a frost advisory this weekend, and yesterday it was chilly enough that I could actually wear my sweater without overheating. I took the opportunity to have my Official Photographer take some glamour shots.

Pattern: Bereket (Ravelry link) by Ainur Berkimbayeva, size 1 (to fit 35 in. bust)
Yarn: my handspun Rambouillet, spun back in the summer of 2020! -- I used approximately 958 yards
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm)

Started/Completed: March 9/April 17

Mods: lengthened the body

This sweater was unlike any I have knit before, and I'm really not sure why I was so drawn to the pattern, but once I saw it on Instagram on Ainur's feed, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And though I'd originally intended to use this yarn in something else, I quickly realized that it was perfect for this sweater. Although I spun the yarn back in 2020, it actually first came into my stash in the form of half a fleece way back in 2012. At some point I'd sent it to a mill to be processed and got it back as roving, so it became a great excuse to get better at my long draw. And it has a fuzzy, nubby texture that I think works really well with the texture of the stitch patterns.

This sweater is knit side to side, from one sleeve cuff to the other. The stockinette portions of the sleeves are knit in the round, and then once you start the textured sections, you're working back and forth. Those textured sections include garter stitch, eyelets, and what Ainur calls bobbles but what I'd call welts -- working back and forth over a small number of stitches, then creating a sort of pleat by picking up a loop on the wrong side of the work at the base of the tab of fabric and knitting it together with the stitch on the needle to join. The triangular sections in the middle use a lot of short rows; I ended up using German short rows because I didn't like the look of the traditional wrap and turn. Once the second cuff is finished, you pick up stitches for both the neckline and the hem and work twisted ribbing. 

As far as level of difficulty goes, I think most of it lies in the unusual construction. But the pattern is great for leading you through. In addition to having line-by-line instructions, Ainur has schematics all through the pattern that show you exactly what part you're working on that look like this:

This shows you that you're working on the textured front section (what's in the darker brown), and the lighter brown shading shows you've what you've completed. This is the first time I've seen something like this in a pattern, and I think it's a brilliant way to make things extremely clear for the knitter, even when the construction is more conventional.

My only modification to this pattern was to add more ribbing to the body. Ainur calls for about an inch of twisted ribbing on the lower hem before the bind off, but that was just too cropped for me. I think this is likely because I was working a size smaller than what was recommended, so my sweater ended up smaller overall. She intended it to be an oversized cropped pullover, and each size in the pattern is specified for a range of bust sizes. For my full bust, I should have knit the second size, but I didn't want this to be that big on me, so I knit the smallest size. This was partially because I thought I was going to be cutting it close on my yarn, but I ended up using much, much less than specified, so I had plenty to add some length. I've got about 4.5 inches of twisted ribbing on the bottom, and it hits me right at my hip (the t-shirt I'm wearing underneath in the photos is a bit big on me). This sizing choice is also why the sleeves end a lot higher on me than on others you'll see if you look at projects on Ravelry. But I'm totally happy with how this fits, and it's actually just right for a cool (but not cold) early spring day. All the same, I'll be happy to not wear this again until fall!

* * * * *

This week is going to be a busy one, especially the first couple of days. Passover starts tonight, and we are hosting Seder for 19 (including the baby nephews). I'm going to do my best to keep up with my usual blog schedule, including Thursday's poetry post, but please bear with me if my posts are shorter than usual and/or if it takes me a bit longer than usual to reply to comments!

Looking for Normal

Happy Friday, friends. It's been a very long week. All week I've been feeling off -- slightly spacey, more tired than usual -- and then feeling more anxious because of it. First I thought it was just because I haven't been sleeping well (because of snoring, then noise from having the windows open, then an unexpected iPad alarm in the middle of the night), and that's certainly adding to it, but I think part of it is also allergies. I mentioned earlier in the week that I've been getting off of allergy medication; I had been taking cetirizine (Zyrtec) for a long time and had tried to get off it twice before, but each time I failed because I suffered from intense, full-body itching. It was so bad that I ended up with bruises all over my body just from scratching. So for months now I've been tapering off my dose, and after taking a quarter of a pill (just 2.5 mg!), I went off entirely last week. I had the itching again this time around, and the bruising, but I've made it through this time. It's now been more than a week since I had any of this drug in my system, and while I'm still a little itchy from time to time, it's much more manageable. But -- not taking an allergy pill daily, after taking it for several years, means that the allergies have come back in full force, on top of which it seems to be a particularly bad year of pollen. So I suppose it's not surprising that I'm feeling weird! I think getting a bit caught up on sleep will help, and I hope that will happen this weekend.

Sorry if all that is TMI! I am happy to report that my sweater is done and has been blocked, but you'll have to wait until Monday to see it modeled. In the meantime, I've started two new projects -- a pair of socks and a colorwork cowl that's a new design -- and have made a bit of progress on both.

I didn't intentionally choose yarns that had some colors in common, but it's always a happy coincidence when that happens. I may need to cast on something else because Mo and I have tickets to see Company tomorrow and neither of these projects can be worked on without looking (I'm slipping every other stitch on the first round of the color change on the socks for a little fun, but that requires being able to see the color change).

Before I can get to any of that, though, I've got to get through a day of work and a pile of laundry. Here's hoping everyone has a restful weekend!

Poetry in April: About Color

Today is the third Thursday of the National Poetry Month, and this week we're sharing poems about color. When I think about color right now, I think about all the spring flowers that are blooming and the trees and shrubs pushing out new growth. The colors of spring are always the treat that makes getting through the gray months of winter worth it. So I found this poem, which made me think of what I have seen growing in my neighborhood and also about how Mother Nature is the most talented artist of all.

Iris
by Sujata Bhatt

Her hand sweeps over the rough grained paper,

then, with a wet sponge, again.

A drop of black is washed grey,

cloudy as warm breath fogging cool glass.

She feels she must make the best of it,

She must get the colour of the stone wall,

of the mist settling around twisted birch trees.

Her eye doesn't miss the rabbit crouched,

a tuft of fog in the tall grass.

Nothing to stop the grey sky from merging into stones,

or the stone walls from tailing off into sky.

But closer, a single iris stands fully opened:

dark wrinkled petals, rain-moist,

the tall slender stalk sways, her hand follows.

Today, even the green is tinged with grey,

the stone's shadow lies heavy over the curling petals

but there's time enough, she'll wait,

study the lopsided shape.

The outer green sepals once enclosing the bud

lie shrivelled: empty shells spiralling

right beneath the petals.

As she stares the sun comes out.

And the largest petal flushes

deep deep violet.

A violet so intense it's almost black.

The other tremble indigo, reveal

paler blue undersides.

Thin red veins running into yellow orange rills,

yellow flows down the green stem.

Her hand moves swiftly from palette to paper,

paper to palette, the delicate brush

swoops down, sweeps up,

move the way a bird builds its nest.

An instant and the sun is gone.

You can learn more about this poet here. Be sure to visit Kym, Bonny, and Kat today to read their selections!