Unraveled Wednesday: 8/14/24

I'm happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today on this second Unraveled Wednesday in August, with a completed Hitch on the Move. 

When I knit my first HotM, I wished that I had made it larger. This time I made sure it was big enough. 

As soon as it's cool enough for shawl-wearing, this is going to be keeping me warm.

I was a bit nervous during my last row and binding off. This little ball is all I had left of the cobalt yarn, but it worked out perfectly. You can see more details here on Ravelry. Now I'm winding yarn to make a regular old Hitchhiker. It's been a while since I knit one and I've missed it!

I read three books last week. The first was Nonfiction by Julie Myerson. Despite its title, the book is a fictionalized account of a mother's painful experience of her daughter's addiction. I chose this one from the library because of the interesting title and beautiful cover but I was not prepared for the gut-wrenching story within. The writing seemed to lack emotion at times and there were also places where the timeline was confusing because everything is narrated in the present tense. Myerson previously wrote a book The Lost Child: A Mother's Story in which she shared the story of her son's addiction. Critics called it a "moral failure" and a "betrayal not just of love and intimacy, but also of motherhood itself." Nonfiction seems to be more of the same with a different title. For me, the subject matter of addiction wasn't dealt with very well whether this was fiction or nonfiction and I gave it three stars. 

Next was some straightforward nonfiction, Volume Control by David Owen. My sons had been nagging me about getting hearing aids and my husband (who has hearing aids but rarely wears them) had been telling me that I mumble, so after a visit to the audiologist showed a mild-moderate hearing loss, I did get some at Costco. They helped and I wore them for about three weeks, but then I started really listening to what I was hearing. I did not like how it sounded like I was hearing in a cave or at the end of a long tunnel. Thanks to Volume Control and David Owens' excellent chapters on hearing aids, I now know that I object to the occlusion of my hearing aids. I will experiment with some smaller domes and fiddle with the settings on the app, but now I know the correct terminology to use if I need to return to the audiologist.

Aside from addressing a personal issue, Volume Control was a four star book I wish I had read decades ago when I could have used ear protection while mowing and listened to music at a lower level. At least now I understand the importance of ear protection so I can help preserve my remaining hearing. The author also covers deafness, cochlear implants, sign language, tinnitus and the lack of help for that. I wish I had read his chapters on hearing aids before I bought mine. There is valuable information for consumers on the incredibly high markup, along with other options patients might want to explore. Bose is not just a company that makes speakers but they also sell something called a Hearphone. It sounds intriguing and I might have checked into it if I hadn't already spent loads of money on hearing aids. This was an enjoyable and informative book about a subject that people don't think about until it's gone.

Lastly, I enjoyed Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It's been a desperately hot and humid summer here, but that has made it a wonderful time to read about the "cold chain" of refrigerated storage in Frostbite. In this interesting work, Nicola Twilley gives lots of details about refrigeration and how our food arrives in the grocery store. She works in a frozen food warehouse for a while; I've always thought this might be sort of a fun job (I do like the cold) but it turns out to be quite dangerous and not a lot of people can manage more than a day or two. She watches while an engineer and co-founder of an HVAC start-up builds a refrigerator in his garage and I was surprised at how easy it was (as long as you've got the four crucial components). There is a lot about the history of ice, icehouses, storage and transportation before refrigeration in its current state existed. These parts were probably my least favorite, but there are so many facts that I wasn't even aware of that I did enjoy. I knew apples were often picked and stored for a year or more before they were available in the grocery store, but I didn't know that King's Hawaiian Rolls arrived at the cold warehouse warm from the bakery and were cooled gradually to avoid condensation and stored for several months. I was not aware that warehouses exist that are not just cold but also climate-controlled with different atmospheres to selectively ripen produce like bananas and avocados.

The author asks the question, "Has refrigeration made us healthier?", looks at ways that the future may not be refrigerated, and visits the Global seed Vault in Svalbard ("refrigeration's great promise to preserve the future of food"). All in all, this was a four-star, fascinating look at a subject I had simply taken for granted that answered more questions than I had ever imagined.

What are you making and reading this week?