Unraveled Wednesday: 5/8/24

I'm happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today, with some stripes on a sock. 

I've only knit with Must Stash yarn once before when I used the bright Vespa for some fingerless mitts for Ryan. 

Initially, I was a little disappointed with the way the sock was turning out because the stripes in the Denali yarn aren't quite as crisply defined as I hoped. The brown and some of the green and blue stripes look "heathery" to me. But it looks a little better if I look at it from farther away and it is beginning to grow on me. Maybe I'm just being too fussy! The pale lavender heel works well, so I'm just going to keep knitting. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I was afraid that I might like this colorway so much that I would have a hard time gifting them to Jess, but that's no longer a worry. They look like Denali colors; I hope to have a Christmas gift done early, and I may make myself a pair of short socks with the leftover pale lavender color. 

I only finished one book this week, but it was great. Goodreads tells me that I've read 41 short story collections, and only one was worthy of five stars. Now that I've read Table for Two there will be two. I was a little wary about reading this volume. I enjoyed The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility but had trouble with A Gentleman in Moscow despite multiple attempts. But no worries, this is simply one of the best books I've read this year.

Short stories almost always suffer from the problems of not being long enough, not providing enough detail, or ending just as the reader begins to enjoy them. Far too often I'm simply left wanting more. That was not the case for any of the stories included here. Towles is a master of language, so each story feels precise and specific. I found details I loved and things that I had thought before myself, expressed far better by the author.

"... what you're probably heading home to are the compromises of marriage. These will govern when, what, and how you eat. They'll govern when, what, and how you watch. So, the canceled flight can create something of a temporal oasis—a twenty-four hour period in which no concessions need to be made to anyone."

 I can't pick a favorite story from this book. If anything, "Eve in Hollywood" is the weakest part of the collection. It's the novella continuing the story of Eve from Rules of Civility. All of the short stories are complete, perfect little glowing jewels, and I very much hope that Towles publishes more short stories.

What are you making and reading this week?