Restingmotion

Not “The Ten Best Books” but simply those that I read in 2025 that really struck me as exceptional, books I would hold onto to read and reread forever. As usual this list is highly subjective and is not based on critical acclaim or merit. It is simply the books I read last year that I most treasured and would most want to hang onto, were strict limits imposed.

Three of my favorite books were cookbooks, perhaps a new record. All of them were excellent reads, all have recipes that work and appeal, and each of them has affected the evolution of my relationship to food and cooking

Made in Taiwan won an IACP award in 2024 but I purchased it, and read it in January. I actually read it, cover to cover, before I began cooking from it. I’ve always loved reading cookbooks, but I had fallen out of the habit. Now, cookbooks almost rival novels for pure reading pleasure. I loved the author’s voice and her exploration of Taiwanese culture, but even more than that, this was the first cookbook I had read in a long, long time where I wanted to cook every single recipe, even the ones I cannot cook due to food allergies. A year later, I still feel the same way about this book. Everything I tried has been excellent. I am nowhere near having cooked everything but I am still cooking. This is a book I can escape into, but also a book I can bring to life in my own kitchen.

The Art of Gluten Free Bread was released in October of last year. I have long followed Aran Goyoaga, both through her blog and her cookbooks. Despite the fact that most GF baking books I have tried have proved to be ultimately disappointing (her previous book is an exception), and I find most gluten-free bread functional but not crave-worthy, I was eager to dive into this book. Yes, I read it first. Yes, I am still baking. So far everything has been a success although some things, like sourdough are more of a process (see my previous posts here and here). I once baked bread regularly. Then bread broke my heart, and I slammed the door. Now that door is open. As I am writing this post, I am eating a homemade roll, a pleasure I had once thought lost forever.

I had owned and cooked from Korean American for a couple of years. I liked it but didn’t really think about it much. Then it became a featured book in my second cookbook club. This time around I actually read the book, and I loved it. Kim is an excellent writer, and he really captures the spirit of family and heritage and the way food binds us together, which I think would resonate even with those who are not of Korean American extraction. His stories reminded me of fishing and cooking with my Mississippi grandfather, and of the many ways each generation interacts with food. Added to all of this, his recipes are fairly straightforward, and mix American and Korean sensibilities in an approachable way.

And now, onto the other books. Most are fiction. One is clearly not. I’ll go clockwise, from the top left, ending in the center.

I read Jumpha Lahiri’s collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, previously, when it was first published, at the close of the 20th century. I loved it then, but didn’t hold onto it. I reread it this year and was amazed at how well it had survived the test of time, how much more deeply the stories resonated with me now, having gained a few years of experience and wisdom (or at least experience). I read it earlier in the year and have dipped into it on multiple occasions since. I was not a lover of short stories as a young woman but that seems to have changed.

Orbital was another reread. I first read it when the the 2024 Booker long list was announced. I read it again after it won. Then I read it last year, for a third time, when it was selected by my book club. With each rereading it revealed more depths. It is a very simple novel, in terms of plot and timeline, if there is indeed a plot, but that is not its strength. It is a fascinating meditation on life and on the earth, the planet that gives us life. I can admit that it is, in many ways very much a reflection on the zeitgeist of this age and the way we view the world around us, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Each time I read it, I fall deeply into the prose. Each time I read it, I am sad when it ends.

Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the only book on this list that is not a reread. It is the only non-fiction book. And it was the most difficult read of the year. And yet I loved it and am happy I read it. It is dense, intense, thought provoking, and often quite disturbingly challenging. Reading the book forced me to analyze my own beliefs and understandings of faith, religion, hope, and my own role in this journey called life. To read this book was not an easy journey, and there were times when I found wrestling with. Bonhoeffer’s words to be downright painful. There were sections of the book where I would spend hours trying to come to terms with an idea only to look up and discover I had only read one or two pages. And yet I can honestly say, that as profoundly difficult as this book was to read, I absolutely loved reading it. I love books that make me think, that force me to adapt and challenge my own assumptions, that rock me out of my own complacent bubble, even if only for a moment, even when that process is painful. I seriously doubt I will reread this entire book. But I will absolutely treasure it, and refer both to my notes and to certain sections again and again. Bonhoeffer and I still have a great deal to say to each other.

Moby Dick, oh Moby Dick, how do I love thee? I loved the novel when I read it in college; I’ve carted that copy around with me all these decades. But had I read it in the intervening years? No. Am I happy I read it again last year? Most definitely. Rereading the novel, I remembered the beauty of Melville’s sentences, the beauty of the language itself. That is one reason to read the novel, but probably not one that will make it popular with modern readers. Parts of the novel reminded me of Medieval poems and plays with their lists and expositions. In other instances Melville’s observations and expositions felt quite modern, perhaps even disturbingly so to readers at the actual time of publication. Melville taps into the founding myths of America with all of their accompanying grandiosity and poignancy. It rivals any overblown television drama, at least if you, like me prefer to lose yourself in words.

Last, but far from least, is a children’s book written by Gertrude Stein, The World Is Round. It is the story of Rose, who questions everything, and Will, who is always Will. I rediscovered this book this fall. Published in 1938, I seriously wonder if this would be published as a children’s book today, much to our loss. But I am biased and I believe we have oversimplified what children read. I read this as a child and loved it, but then I forgot who wrote it. I just remembered how happy it made me, this little book, and I remembered Rose’s little song:

Why am I a little girl

Where am I a little girl

When am I a little girl

Which little girl am I

Even when I was eleven, that little song resonated and made me smile. Reading the book again as an adult, it still made me happy. It made me smile even though I now see the sadness that is also contained within the story. But you can’t have happiness without sadness. Perhaps that says something about people — those who see this book as sad, and those who see this book as happy. I am a member of the latter cohort. Please do not tell me what that means.

Last fall I purchased Aran Goyoaga’s new book, The Art of Gluten-Free Bread. And of course I started baking from it.

I haven’t shared much of that process with you. There were some initial explorations of yeasted breads — a lovely soft dinner roll, some soft bread twists, using the same base dough. I shared some of those initial explorations here. But then, radio silence.

I didn’t stop baking, but my initial explorations were piecemeal. 2025 is now the past, and there is no point in exploring the reasons I was slow. I can say that my first attempt at creating a sourdough starter failed, probably due to a combination of factors, although my own inattention was one of them.

Around the beginning of the year, however, my baking mojo came together. While I was refreshing my starter and preparing for bread baking, I finally made some of the recipes calling for sourdough discard.

First up was this lemon-poppy seed sourdough pound cake. The texture is somewhere between a traditional pound cake and a quick-bread, leaning more toward cake, but with a delightful texture. The recipe specifies dividing the dough into two sections and adding the poppy seeds to only half, but I just mixed everything together, and frankly I like the result. I am not likely to change it now. The cake is brightly tart, and sweet without being cloyingly so. I’ve already baked this twice and am thinking of making more and keeping at least one of these at the ready in the freezer.

I also made these delightfully chocolaty and intense olive oil brownies. These may now by my favorite, and only brownie recipe, which also means that I need to maintain a steady supply of sourdough discard.

Although I was tentatively excited about the book and about baking, I was also cautious. Now I am all in even though I haven’t yet even begun to explore the bread-baking options. There is only so much bread I can eat, or will allow myself to eat perhaps. Luckily for the solo cook and diner, the freezer is my friend.

I have however made progress on the bread front. Aside from those soft rolls, my only other focus has been on trying to make a sourdough baguette. I’ve got a nice sourdough starter now, and have made several versions of the baguette, each delicious, and each actually better than most of the GF bread I can buy, but each also somehow not quite where I wanted them to be.

Perhaps I am just chasing some illusive memory of bread, something that will never be realized in its gluten-free incarnation. Only time will tell.

This last batch however was a major step forward. I moved from caution to comfort with the process, and excitement at the possibilities. It wasn’t a perfect loaf, it was perhaps not a masterpiece of shaping, but the results were delicious, perhaps the best gluten free bread I have ever eaten.

There had been issues with previous batches: the crust did not crisp enough, or brown enough, I needed to bake the bread longer than specified in the recipe, the bottoms were soggy. Once the dough was too wet, once too dry, but I do remember enough about bread baking to know that the weather affects that.

This time I made a few small changes which yielded big improvements.

I realized that my range came with a baking steel for oven. I had never used it as I really hadn’t done much baking. But I found it in the box of “stove accessories” and put it in the oven to preheat.

I also used a linen kitchen towel as a couche for shaping and rising the baguettes. This worked well. I really needed a heavier towel than the one I had, but it was a good starting place. The tricky part was transferring the baguettes from the couche to the hot baking steel. I donated most of my bread and pizza making supplies when I moved away from the Hudson Valley as I had not been baking bread for a few years at that point, and did not foresee a return to bread baking in the immediate future.

The bread felt awkward in my hands. Although the way a bread dough is supposed to feel is coming back to me, I have not regained full bread-making muscle memory. So as I awkwardly handled the bread, I placed it on the hot steel in a not very graceful manner. My baguettes were a little curved and atypical in form.

Shape made no difference in flavor however. The next batch will be even better. I still want to work on perfecting baguettes, but I am also getting ready to push forward into trying more things. No rush.

It is raining outside. I hadn’t decided what I wanted for lunch. A cup of soup appeals, but now that I have been writing about bread, I am thinking that soup and a sandwich would be a fabulous lunch. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually wanted a sandwich for lunch, actually craved a piece of bread. Yeasty excitement ahead.

My grandson picked me up for a drive and viewing of the lights on the evening of January 1st. We knew it was late, but hoped that some of the displays would still be up. There was still plenty to see. There was also little traffic and much opportunity for extended conversations. Really, although the lights were fun, and a great excuse, it was the conversations I was after. I remember riding in the car looking at lights after the Christmas Eve service as a child. My parent’s goal was to lull us back to sleep. Sixty-some years later the goal was conversation, and a tradition neither new nor old but evolving.

I think our late-season outing was special, not just for the conversation, but because sometimes the Christmas season feels like it is all build up, followed by quick disappointment — the door opens, the balloons fall, and the party ends. All around me trees are coming down by Boxing Day, if not Christmas afternoon itself.

Driving around to look at lights, a hot mocha in my hand, while talking about life with my grandson felt like an extension of the season of hope. It was certainly one of the special joys of the holiday season. The conversations shone brighter than even the brightest of lights perhaps.

I’m certainly not immune to the joys of Christmas lights. Not Immune to the joys of Holiday Cheer. Not immune to ritual. It is just that sometimes I feel off-kilter with the world around me. I love the ritual preparation of advent, well, most years anyway. Christmas never seems to start until Christmas Eve and then it feels just as I am waking up to holiday magic, the world around me is folding up and going home. I wish for a full twelve days of celebration, of sharing, of times with friends. I do always manage some of that. I want to bookend my holiday, not with New Year’s, important as it is, but with twelfth night and Epiphany. I want the the three kings. I want to put out my shoes and a touch of hay for the camels. I want to wake up to oranges and chocolate (my own personal family traditions).

Maybe one of these days I’ll go back to Spain for twelfth night, brave the crowds, and see the Cabalgatas de Reyes in Madrid again. But then I would be away for these magical moments with family, with friends, the joy that sneaks in even on the dreariest of days at home. I don’t really need to escape. I need simply to celebrate what is here every day. Going back is pursuing a past that no longer exists. Madrid is no more what it was in the 1960s than Knoxville is, or Dallas is. The world has changed. I have changed. But we still seek out lights and greenery.

Interesting. I started off thinking of lights and blow up ornaments, of conversations with a vibrant nineteen-year-old and the hope and fascination with the world that spans generations, and I ended up here. I ended up thinking of what exactly? Yesterday. Today. My nineteen-year old self still resides in a corner of my sixty-seven year old psyche. Two people, two generations, in a car, talking about the world. Driving around in a different world than the one I drove around in when I was my grandson’s age. And yet the same. Hope in the midst of darkness. Light. Exuberance. Joy.

I also realize I don’t really know what I want, or what I am thinking here. I am remembering specific Christmases. But the Christmas I have now is nice. I want to celebrate, but I also want a week-long hibernation between Christmas and New Year’s, a cozy season of sweats and sweaters, hot chocolate and naps. I want the Christian Christmas story as it has evolved with the wise men. I want the Coca-Cola Christmas story that we in the United States have created over the course of a century. I want A Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Clause and Schroeder playing his piano while Charlie Brown rescues a lonely tree. I want candles, and greenery and whatever makes people happy. Holiday rituals don’t have to be my rituals.

I suppose what I really want is for the world to stop being cruel for 12 days, not because my tradition tells us so, but because all our traditions tell us so, because our better natures tell us kindness is good, but also because we could all use a mid-winter break.

What secret joys, what conversations and connections will appear when I finally stop building igloos around my heart and allow the ice to melt? When the world allows the light to enter the darkest corners?

I intentionally planned for the final week of 2025 to be spent quietly at home.

I’ve been reading Q.E.D by Gertrude Stein, and thoroughly enjoying it. This is Stein’s first, and by far her most “traditional” novel. It was the first novel she wrote, although t is was not published until after her death, as it is also quite autobiographical. In the novel Stein, as Adele, explores her youthful passion and love for May Bookstaver. It is beautifully written and I am quite enjoying it, my first stop in a journey to read and reread the works of Stein in order.

I am going to have to jump ahead and reread the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas when I finish this, probably beginning tomorrow, as it is the book for my book club next week. I always thought that the Autobiography was one of Toklas most accessible works, but I hadn’t read QED until now. I also thought it was her least interesting work from a literary perspective. But that was 20-some-odd-year-old me. We will see what I think now.

Back in November I read Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade, because it was suggested as a “bonus book” for book club and it was available at my local Barnes and Noble. I don’t know that I learned much that was new to me about Stein, or her writing, but I found the sections involving Leon Katz and his relationship to Stein fascinating. I don’t know that the biography changed anything about my perceptions of Stein, but it did prompt the decision to reread Stein’s works.

Katz, however, was pivotal in my own education and I suppose in the person I am now in some ways. He was a visiting professor at Vassar one year (on sabbatical from Yale) and I took two courses from him. One on drama, where we studied Genet, Becket, and Brecht, and another on modern novels, which included works by Stein, Barth and others I do not recall at the moment.

When I signed up for those classes I was mostly interested in older English literature, pre-1800 (and still am) and I thought of modern literature only as entertaining, insignificant, fiction. I wasn’t interested in studying it. But Klein changed my perceptions. I fell in love with the writing of the authors we studied, and I branched out into new to me territory, reading Apollinaire, Verlaine, and Éluard among others. I started going to BAM. This was in the late 70s and early 80s and fabulous things were going on. I became interested in modern music and dance, including modern opera through performances at BAM, and all this was led to the woman I have become. I am now an opera lover, but I came at it backwards, from John Adams and Phillip Glass, among others, back to the composers who are now considered classics in the genre. I still want hear and see new opera; I find I can easily grow bored with the standard repertoire. Much as I do love it, the same things tend to be performed again and again. Much like the classical musioc repertoire I suppose, where I also sometimes grow bored.

I am also reading a cookbook, Mokonuts. This book is not a selection for one of my cookbook clubs. I bought it just out of curiosity, because I saw an online preview and something caught my eye. I’ve never been to the restaurant, and really knew nothing about it until the book came out.

In fact I have a love/hate relationship with chef cookbooks. Sometimes I love them, even if they are books to read more than books to cook from, because the good ones teach me new techniques and new ways to think about and taste food. Those books do change the way I cook, and although I may not cook entire recipes from those books, they are a part of the cook I am today.

Other books are just too — something — not just cheffy, not just pretentious or ambitious; I suppose it is that they just don’t speak to me, don’t make me see the world with some new-to-me insight. This book does that — changes the way I think about food. In that sense, I think it is, in some ways, similar to books by Stein, and literary writers, or composers, or artists in other mediums.

This book does speak to me. I am reading as if it is a good novel, and already, even though I haven’t actually cooked anything from this book yet, it has changed the way I look at the food in my refrigerator when I open the door, the way I both think about and prepare the food I intend to eat. I have altered a technique here or there, and I am thinking about the ways I can use this book, thinking about the foods I buy, and grow, and cook,

There are cookbooks, rare actually, that so inspire me that I want to cook absolutely everything in the book, where everything seems full of potential and I feel like a kid in a candy shop when I open their covers. This is not one of those books, but it is very close. There is something I want to make, some technique I want to try on nearly every page. Some refinement. Some new insight. This book makes me want to run to the kitchen and play, but it also makes me want to sit back and savor flavors, to ruminate, to taste, and yes, to dream. I will not be making the recipes in this book in exactly the way they are presented. Those are recipes for this restaurant, not for my home. And yet, I will cook. I will also read. I will savor the words and the flavors as they drift through my head.

A new year. is dawning. A new idea is forming in my head. I am not the woman I was yesterday. I am not yet the woman I will be tomorrow. What ideas will take fruit?

Somehow December got away from me. No, this entire autumn got away from me, and although it is not the goal of this blog to vent and moan and carry on about the unfairness of life, it is also not my intention to pretend like everything is always hunky dory.

Of course, Thanksgiving was late this year, and although Advent is always the same number of days, the holiday season itself seemed compressed. Maybe that was just because I was still recovering from my fall in October, and various residual back and leg issues. The simple truth is I never fully recovered from the stress of trying to save this blog when typepad ceased hosting, and as you can tell, I never finished setting up this blog. I just hopped along from one mini-crisis to the next — stress, injury, a mid-December trip to Texas — all contributed to an Advent that felt not so much eagerly anticipatory but rather anxious and overwhelming. I used to avoid going to Texas in December, something I now see as wise.

And then there was Christmas itself, which brought a reversal of my mood. Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, joy sparkled in the air, sparkled in my heart even though I was still a little too tired to let that joy trickle all the way down to my toes. Christmas always does this to me, even a tired and overwhelmed me, the symbolism of hope made real in the world around me. The world itself may not change but my perception of the world changes, always and consistently, year after year. And of course that is what the “spirit of Christmas” is all about whether you are religious or not, Christian or not. There is a reason that ritual surrounds the winter solstice; a reason we need a turning from darkness to light, the bright star of hope.

I rediscovered some misplaced aspect of myself this fall, although the process of digging through the rubble was indeed tedious. I missed my normal springtime bout of inner angst and growth, often correlating with lent and Easter, and got served a double dose for Advent. Although I can honestly call it an act of preparation, not an act of penance.

I am still behind on everything. Four months circling the slough will do that to a person. But it is not so much a burden at the moment as an organizational project. I always have loved me a good project.

I’m not going to make resolutions. I probably won’t even do a year in review post, although I may go back and catch up on some reading or cooking. What I do know is that whatever comes next cannot be worse than what came before, if only because I am no longer willing to allow despair to shape the terms of engagement. Yes things go wrong. No one was ever promised ease, or comfort, or safety. Accepting that truth slams the door on denial and opens the door to joy.

This is my week for sleep and rest, not just sleep as recovery, but sleep as healing, as strengthening. I choose to live with joy and I am stronger than I would have said I was a few short months ago. I choose forward motion. But in the meantime I am ready for another nap.

I’ve been skirting the edges of the slough of despond, dirtying the. tips of my shoes, but not quite falling in. I felt like my body had risen up against me again, and had become a battlefield of opposing wills. Things are getting better, but some days progress does not seem fast enough.

Sometimes however just getting out and doing something is a step in the right direction. The December concert for the Knoxville Symphony’s Q Series features the brass quintet. There is nothing like a little brass to brighten the holidays and chase away the blues.

The first half of the concert featured standards of the brass repertoire and the premier of a new work by Kevin Day, “Sing to the Moon”. This work was softer, and far more contemplative than I expected. It was both questioning, almost melancholic in places, and yet also uplifting. Perhaps just what I needed to listen to on that particular day.

In the introduction to the piece we were told that Kevin Day would have an opera premiering at the Cincinnati Opera next year. I liked this piece so much that I looked it up. The Opera, Lalovavi, will be performed next summer. The music is by Kevin Day and the Libretto by Tifara Brown, a poet whose work I also admire. I am seriously considering going. The picture above is from the CIncinatti Opera website and the link to the opera is here. I can hear the classic repertoire anytime, but opportunities to hear and see something new are special and I am intrigued to venture off into the unknown.

After the break the musicians returned in their Christmas Sweaters and the holiday music began. My spirits lifted higher and higher. I will admit however that I wanted to merengue around the room to Feliz Navidad.

Rather than dancing, I started writing Christmas cards, a kind of dance with words I suppose. I hadn’t written holiday cards, or letters in a decade or so. I lost the will after George died, and yet this year that spark was kindled.

I also laid out an embroidery project. I spent a good bit of time on Thursday working on that, and will work on it again today. I can’t show you newer pictures though.

And, in case all I really needed was to make some forward progress on one front or another, I finally got past the point in my mohair sweater where I had ripped back all the yarn. I have about two more inches on the body to knit. I am not sure I will have enough of the solid color yarn to knit the sleeves, but I will finish the body first, weigh the remaining yarn and then figure out my options.

But once again I am determined, and the slough is behind me now, fading into the distance.

I love the way the rosy tones of sunrise glisten off the fallen leaves, shades of orange and gold, colors that remind me of toast wrapped in a thin glaze of jam. Contrasted of course with the thin frost on the lambs ears and grass. It is all so delightful. Almost like a promise of Christmas glitter and bonbons to come.

I’ve been waiting for the cool weather to arrive. Temperatures in the 70s just don’t feel like autumn to me. Of course I know it is all relative, and each place has its own season, but this extended Indian Summer has been one of the hardest thing to adapt to since moving south, still a struggle after more than a decade.

I always want to cry out the we need repose. We need the dying of the light, the browning of the leaves, the starkness of winter. It is darkness, sleep, and rest that feeds all life, that gives us the strength to burst forth anew again and again.

It is the morning after Thanksgiving. I am having a doppio and a slice of pumpkin pie as I gaze out at the rising sun. I am wrapped in my heavy fleece robe because I forgot to turn on the heat last night and the house was a chilly 58 degrees when I awoke. I like a cool house, but that is a little chill, even for me.

I like cold weather. I do not like being cold. But I like being hot even less. I like a cool house because I like knitting and wearing sweaters. I love being cozily wrapped up as I absorb the stark grays and browns around me. But I do not want to be so chill that I need gloves while typing on my laptop.

Not that I am complaining, because I am not. I am rejoicing. And, with apologies to Ezra Pound, I think it is a good thing. I am almost as excited as if the spring flowers were beginning to burst forth. But then, without this quiet period, there would be no glorious spring to come.

Winter is acummin in…….

And I am filled with joy.

I do hope all of you who are celebrating the American Thanksgiving holiday are all having a wonderful day, whether relatively quiet or filled with raucous crowds and/or wild and rambunctious children.

I am not hosting, and only doing minor cooking: a side, a pie (the expected things) and some rolls, which I am making because I am thrilled to be exploring bread-baking again.

Otherwise, despite the fact that I grumble about the annoying stumbling blocks life keeps throwing in my plans, I have much to be thankful for:

Friends

A roof over my head, granted a very special one. My home provides a sanctuary from the world. But so should every home. I could wish that everyone has a place that they call home, and that their home can also be their sanctuary. These itself is a luxury beyond anything I can imagine.

Garbo

Food security

Relative health.

A morning walk in the cool brisk air, kicking the fallen leaves.

So many bright and happy things. The simple truth is that I am surrounded by beauty, grace, and joy. Always have been, and always will be, even as the world might possibly fall apart around me. Because these things — beauty, grace, joy — have nothing to do with life on this earth as it occurs around me, but exist as much as I am willing to see them and embrace them.

We in the United States have been fortunate enough to believe we have built a protective fortress that grants us immunity to the ills of the world, and it is shocking to learn that we were wrong. Suffering is constant. Pain exists and we are not immune. Anything we see or read could indeed be us. That sounds like a strange statement about thanks.

But those things only defeat human kindness, grace, and beauty if we allow them to steal our worth and our joy from us. Every life is an intense joy that should be treasured, and for this we should give thanks. I should give thanks.

I cannot change the universe or the world. I cannot defeat evil alone. I cannot make any universe, even the tiny one surrounding me, bow to my will and desires. But I can embrace life, treasure life, give thanks for life. I hope I can be kind.

I hope everyone, everywhere, finds some joy today.

It has been a while since I updated you concerning my adventures with yarn and knitting. I have a project, but my progress at the moment is mostly in the negative direction.

I am knitting a V-neck mohair pullover, from the pattern “Cumulus Blouse” by PetitKnits. I am using two lace-weight mohairs held together — Mod Yarns Loopy de Loop and ArtYarns Silk Mohair. I’ve dubbed the project “Lavender Clouds” on my Ravelry Page.

It is a rather fun and simple knit. I didn’t have any trouble with the directions, or at least I didn’t believe I did when I started. I had, in fact, made a critical error which, which I compounded later due to simple lack of attention on my part. I might claim extenuating circumstances as it has not been the easiest of autumns, but that is just a copout.

Anyway, I struggled at the beginning of the sweater, not because the instructions were difficult but because I didn’t like making the increases using these two fine yarns with my relatively blunt KnitPro needles. I have Signature needles, which have pretty sharp tips, but couldn’t find the right size in my needle storage case, which means they are probably tied up in another project. (or at least I hope that is the case). So I soldiered on, but I really hated making the increases, enough so that I apparently skipped quite a few.

I did order some Hiya Hiya needles in the appropriate size, but by the time they arrived I was pretty much done with the increases. or so I thought. Did I try on the sweater to check? No.

Foolishly, I did not try on the sweater until I was fairly well along in the body length, and I was checking to see how much further I should have knit. As you can see, I have an asymmetrical v-neck, and a funny bulge over the right breast where the shoulder-shaping is badly misplaced. I like the idea of an asymmetrical neckline, but I don’t need room for a third breast.

I did finally admit to myself that I had known the sweater was wrong all along, but I was just pretending not to know, because I wanted to knit and not think. Always dangerous territory that. You would think I would know better by now, but the human capacity for self deception seems to be quite high. Or at least my capacity for such is pretty high if it means continuing along with something I enjoy as opposed to facing something I’d rather avoid.

I took the project with me to Chicago, where I ripped it all out and started over.

Luckily I started with sharp-tipped knitting needles on the second go-round, and therefore I have not struggled with the increases. I am also paying more attention. I have no excuse for that, am merely happy that my brain has returned to the fold after its brief wander.

This time around the sweater is progressing exactly as it should, and I am trying it on as I go. I have one more round of increases before I join the yoke and begin working in the round. I could stop here, but after fiddling with the sweater on my shoulders a bit, I do think I want just that little bit of extra depth at the v-neckline..

Anyway, I am really enjoying knitting this. It could have been done by now if I didn’t mess up. But I’d much rather rip and reknit than waste my time on something doomed to be a failure. The ArtYarns mohair is really nice; the quality of the Loopy de loop not nearly as fine, but I do love the fabric that the two yarns are making.

I feel like feel like I am making faster progress; perhaps I am just making happier progress. I am not knitting much, so I am not whipping this out. There are too many other distractions. It will be done in plenty of time to wear it this winter, especially given that winter really hasn’t even settled in yet. It has never been about speed for me anyway. Eventually I will have the sweater I want, and I will have enjoyed the process of creating it.

Last week I was in Chicago. This week? Well who knows what has happened to this week; it has been busy enough although I’m not sure I could actually tell you why. Not that the why is ever really important. Time flies. Life Happens.

My trip was not as ambitious as I might have preferred, but I was happy to be able to go at all. That first day, what with airports and travel and getting settled in the hotel, I overdid it a bit and my right ankle was swollen. Ice and elevation was my plan of action for Thursday morning.

Still, the first day was low-key but fun. Liana and I found a new to us restaurant near our hotel, The Gage, where we had a lovely midday-cocktail and lunch.

I had a sensational cauliflower cream soup made with coconut milk. The coconut flavor was not very prevalent, but the soup itself was subtly complex and satisfying, lovey intense and rich with the essence of cauliflower . I followed that with a salad of some sort, I recall it included sliced steak, but I took no further photographic evidence. Afterward, we took a meandering walk back to our hotel and I followed up with a mid-afternoon nap. We had both been on early morning flights, so I felt it was well deserved.

I was not ambitious that evening, so we had cocktails and shrimp in the hotel bar and called it a day. I had a simple Amaro spritz; the lovely pink cocktail was Liana’s.

We went our separate ways Thursday morning and met at Eataly for lunch. As mentioned previously, I had a hot date with a bag of ice.

I had a simple plate of carbonara on gluten-free pasta and a glass of Nebbiolo. I had arrived a little ahead of Liana, and had a lovely time wandering around the store perusing charcuterie and cheeses and foods I cannot get easily in Knoxville. I also sat and had an espresso and a piece of chocolate while I waited. I cannot think of a much happier way to while away a leisurely morning.

Suitably fortified for the rigors of shopping, we headed out to Salma’s fabrics, a place that was new to both of us. There was a wonderful collection of silks and cottons and trims.

We each purchased a couple of pieces and will happily return. I’m already thinking about my next trip to Salma’s. The initial visit was a little overwhelming and I had not known quite what to expect. I am very happy I went. Now I think there were things that deserved a more detailed perusal.

We ended the day with a burger. The burger looked and tasted delicious. Unfortunately we were both up in the middle of the night with a bit of food poisoning. It must have been the burger, because that was the only thing we both ate. Well, we both had an Amaro Spritz as well, but that seems an unlikely source of our distress, unless there was problem with the ice.

The burger was lovely, and deceptively delicious. When I saved this photo the next morning, I named it “death trap”. Perhaps a little extreme. Our third day in Chicago was perhaps a little more low key than it might have been.

We had made lunch reservations at Le Colonial (photo from Le Colonial’s website) so we gamely kept our reservation. We had a fabulous lunch, and I was thrilled to notice that Nicole Routhier created the menus and is the food coordinator for the restaurants. Nicole Routhier wrote the first Vietnamese cookbook I ever purchased; it still resides on my shelves and I was fondly thinking of my introduction to, and history of, eating Vietnamese food, as we enjoyed our time there,

We both had the green cocktail, which I had also enjoyed the last time I visited Chicago and dined and Le Colonial. Then we spent the afternoon wandering through boutiques and snoop shopping.

The evening ended with a trip to the symphony, the original impetus for our trip. We heard Vivaldi’s Four Seasons led by the symphony’s concertmaster, Robert Chen (photo from the CSO website). The musicians played beautifully, with elegant harmony and a quality that was both musically entrancing and conversational. This was the best chamber orchestra performance I have heard in a long long time.

The Vivaldi was also refreshingly luminous. I tend to think I know The Four Seasons, and I do; it is almost ubiquitous, but this performance brought new light to the piece. From the brightly chirping notes of “Spring” through the languor of summer and Chen’s brilliant playing in “Winter”, this was a fabulous concert, not soon to be forgotten.

We also heard Mahler’s orchestration of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F minor, Op 95, “Serioso” which I thought was fabulous and enlightening in many ways. I don’t believe I’d ever heard this version of the quartet before and I found it fascinating, thrilling both my heart and my head. It struck me how timely this was as merely a few weeks previously I had heard another Beethoven quartet in Knoxville, the performance of which also had me thinking about chamber music with new understandings. Here, in Chicago, I was once again revising long held presumptions and biases, coming to new a new appreciation of both Beethoven and Mahler, and the way that not only I, but we, in this historical and cultural moment, listen to music.

All in all a fabulous evening, and a grand finale to a fabulous adventure.