Unraveled Wednesday: 9/6/23

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers today with a finished Captain Ahab Hitchhiker. 

I wasn't sure that I liked the dark brown at the end while I was knitting it, but when I look at it overall, I do like the transition from blue to green to brown - very much. I don't know that I would have named it Captain Ahab, and I wish I could ask the dyers at Wollmeise what was on their minds when they dyed this. 

I have the same question about my next Wollmeise roll. This one is called Yoga and is shades of brown to green. I've unraveled it, soaked it, and it's all wound, ready to cast on the next Hitchhiker. I'm going to have plenty of time in the car over the next week and yet another Hitchhiker is perfect for car knitting. I'm not sure I like the brown blobs you can see in the unrolled photo, but the only way to tell is to cast on and see what it looks like knit up. 

We're leaving tomorrow to visit John's sister and her husband again. He and John will work on my BiL's TR4 again, and the four of us will also be heading to Benezette/Saint Mary's to hopefully see some of Pennsylvania's elk herd in person. 

I finished two books last week and both of them were a bit surprising. The Art Thief was about the world's most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser. He is thought to have stolen more than 300 objects and works of art from museums and churches. He managed this by choosing mainly small paintings and items that were easy to carry out, and with the help of his girlfriend as a lookout. Breitwieser didn't steal for financial gain but kept everything in his apartment's attic. He said he appreciated the items more and kept them in better condition than the museums had, and seemed to use this reasoning to justify his lack of impulse control. Breitwieser had no remorse and saw himself as an "art liberator". He got caught when he and his girlfriend returned to wipe away his fingerprints. He stated that he had always meant to return the objects, but magnifying his crimes, his mother threw some of them in a canal and also burned others. He only spent a few years in jail, and this seemed far too little for what was really the loss of far too many works of art. 

The second surprise was The Lost Ticket. Rom-com and chick lit are two of my least favorite genres, so I can't quite explain why I borrowed this one, but the pleasant, uplifting story that wasn't overly saccharine sweet proved to be the perfect read for someone in the depths of dark grumpiness and anger at most humans. It's a story about friendship, hardships, parenthood (what to do and what not to do), growing old, and how not to judge a book (or people) by what's on the outside.

What are you making and reading this week? (I'll be back next week, hopefully with a few elk photos!)