Unraveled Wednesday: 11/1/23

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers on this first day of November. I'm still plugging away on my Woolly Waffle Shawl but I got a little distracted by something new and shiny over the weekend. I saw this yarn being knit into a hat on Instagram, said, "Ooh, shiny!" and set about looking for some. I couldn't find it at Joann's or Michael's online, but Amazon was happy to send me three skeins. I received it within about 12 hours of ordering it, so I took that as a sign that I should cast on immediately. 

I had Jess (Justin's girlfriend) in mind for this yarn but I've knit her two hats as Christmas gifts that I've never seen her wear, so I thought maybe she would like something else better. I perused ravelry and settled on the Gap-tastic cowl. I didn't knit one several years ago when the pattern was so popular because of the endless seed stitch. While I still don't like seed stitch (especially on size 13 needles), I do like sparkly yarn and Jess, so here is my sparkly cowl so far. 

I hurt my left hand over the weekend because I used it to push a big knife through two butternut squash. I roasted the squash in the oven with some blood orange olive oil and cinnamon, and it was quite good, but there may be a lesson here. I've never injured myself while opening fun-size Snickers, so be careful while cutting vegetables. My squash-related injury has limited my knitting time, but hopefully, it will feel better in a couple of days and I can get back to seed stitch, sparkly yarn, and size 13 needles. 

When I was much younger I was an avid reader of Stephen King; the scarier the better.  'Salem's Lot scared me so much that I imagined vampires outside of my second-floor apartment windows, put the book in the freezer, and called my sister at 2:00 am so she could reassure me that vampires weren't real (despite what I was seeing). I remembered Cujo and  Pet Sematary as being equally frightening books.

Now that I'm much older and real life can often be quite scary in itself, I thought it was time to reread some of my Stephen King favorites. Pet Sematary was as horror-filled as I remembered it, and maybe even more so than when I read it in my 20s. Now that four decades have passed, I've had two children and also experienced the loss of my parents and many other family members and friends. I understand the idea of wanting to do anything to keep your children safe, imagining losing them as the worst thing possible, along with how deep and terrifying grief can be. I have a new appreciation for Stephen King's ability to write horror in more ways than just what will scare you when something goes bump in the dark. The details he seems to effortlessly include make what seems like an illogical premise much easier to understand.

After finishing Pet Sematary last week and finding it quite disturbing, I decided I didn't need to reread the other two. Now I'm going back to my normal non-horror reading.

What are you making and reading this week?