Unraveled Wednesday: 7/27/22

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with a Baby Surprise Jacket in progress. 

The third time was definitely the charm with this one. With much-appreciated help from Janelle, a useful tip from Sarah to make sure to mark the right side, and some fairly extensive googling, my brain finally grasped the concept. I had read the pattern multiple times, cast on twice, and then got overly confused with moving my markers for the decreases. I simply didn't understand where I should be moving the markers and thought I needed to advance them by a couple of stitches to account for the decreases. On that third cast-on, I took a look at what I was actually knitting and it clicked; I needed to be moving the markers up my knitting so they would always be marking the center stitch of the double decrease. This may be quite obvious to many knitters, but some of us are slower than others and this knitter clouded the picture with overthinking, obfuscation, and frustration. I'm knitting along happily now, at least until I get to the "Center 90". (I shall persevere.)

While the heat and lack of rain continue (no rain on Monday despite a 90% chance of precipitation by the lying weather forecasters), I find it helpful to immerse myself in a good book. This week I finished four of them. Field Study by Helen Humphries is the perfect mix of memoir and field study while Humphreys spent a year at Fowler's Herbarium in Canada. Arranged by season, she writes about each plant section in the herbarium, describing pines, lichens, grasses, trees, chicory, algae, fungi, roses, and more (including spurges and worts!) It's much more interesting than I've made it sound, and the author also writes about past figures who have contributed to the field of botany. 

After seeing a five-star recommendation from Kat I decided to request Blaze Me a Sun from NetGalley myself. I don't read mysteries very often, and the last Scandinavian author I read was Stieg Larsson more than a decade ago, but I have been missing out. In 1986, Sven Jorgensson, a small town police officer, gets a call from a man who says he has raped a woman and claims he will do it again. I won't recount the rest of the plot, but this book is a page-turner and thoughtful at the same time. Christoffer Carlsson subtitled this A Novel About a Crime, and it is that but also so much more. There are layers with well-developed characters, decades of police work, the tolls it takes on some of the families involved, and one of the best fictional endings I've read in a long time.

I also finished another NetGalley pre-publication copy of The Lindbergh Nanny. Because I live in Flemington, NJ where Bruno Hauptmann was tried for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby, The Lindbergh Nanny appealed to me. The Lindberghs are still kind of a big deal around here, with theatrical recreations of the trial in the old courthouse, Lone Eagle Brewery, and a protracted fight about how historic the Union Hotel really is and how much of it should be saved. I read several nonfiction books about the kidnapping when we first moved here 30 years ago, but Mariah Fredericks' historical fiction novel made for much more interesting reading. She places real-life Betty Gow (Charlie Lindbergh's nurse/nanny) at the center of the novel and tells the story of the Lindberghs, the kidnapping, Betty's own story, and the conclusions she reaches. Despite knowing that the kidnapping was coming and how it would end, this was still a compelling read. It seemed well-researched but the author doesn't just recount 90-year-old facts; she treats all the characters as fallible humans who felt real emotions and how so many of their lives were changed or even ruined by the kidnapping. I especially appreciated the author's additions of "The Real Betty Gow" and the extensive "The Lindbergh Nanny: Fact vs. Fiction" at the end of the book. 

The final one is the delightful collection of short stories entitled Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer. I was excited when I saw that Debbie had read this and immediately searched my library for a copy.  I read Hearts and In the Palomar Arms by the same author sometime back in the 1980s but hadn't searched out anything else from the author since then. Even the title of this collection delights me, and the first entry in the book tells the tale of the poor woman in the supermarket. With covid, I have often felt I might someday be that woman that goes mad and it will probably happen in the supermarket. I hope that I am treated kindly by fellow shoppers. The last story, "The Great Escape" is especially poignant because it's true-to-life and Ms. Wolitzer wrote it in 2020.

Some of these stories show their age, but that is to be expected since they were originally published in the 1960s and 70s. Despite being written more than 50 years ago, they are still relevant and contain the extraordinary. As Elizabeth Strout writes in the foreword, "Hilma Wolitzer once told an interviewer, "I don't believe there's such a thing as ordinary life. I think all life is extraordinary." This collection of short stories shows how true that is.

What are you making and reading this week?