And I never updated my WIP-down over the year.
Of the 23 projects marked as in progress, 12 are completely done with the exception of blocking and/or the admin work. 61 are still listed as hibernating, because SURPRISE I got distracted. Going to see if I can do a bit of admin today, but I keep getting distracted from this post because work and everything else, so we'll see. Speaking of, it's somehow already lunchtime.
Did not TOUCH any of the specific exemptions I had planned to knit. Probably shouldn't talk about the number of WIPs in my car. There are knitters who have fewer WIPs in general than I do in my car. (A sweater that needs sleeves is in there, a colorwork cowl - wait, TWO colorwork cowls, a hibernating scarf/shawl. Possibly more, I don't remember.)
Currently distracted by BOOKITALONG, an -along sparked by the BOOKIT program. Bought a copy of The Cowls Are Not What They Seem at Rhinebeck, decided to knit my way through it. With handspun. Well. Handspun worked for the first three: Audrey, Norma, and Log Lady, but Lucy had a specific recipient in mind before I started, so it was made with milled yarn. And the second pattern in the book - the reason I am knitting them out of order - has a comment on Ravelry saying that the chart doesn't work, so I will probably knit that one with milled yarn, too. Not sure on the others, will probably depend on what handspun I can find.
As always, Zoey is the most helpful helper ever.
Because I am obsessed, I decided that I should finish a WIP between cowls, because I have so many WIPs and there are only 14 cowls, and I've made 4 of them already. Ended 2025 with two cowls because that would mean I had 12 left and there are 12 months in 2026 even if it feels like we're already a decade into the year. And I've made two already, so 10 are left. I think the next will be Harriet, but I really need to finish a non-book cowl first, Nancy has waited long enough!
But because I am a squirrel on speed, I've decided to cast on a handspun sweater because I've had the yarn finished and the pattern in my library since (checks) 2019. And it starts out with a giant stockinette panel, so will be good for lectures and author talks and stuff. And Bob knows I don't have enough WIPs that meet that criteria. Plus the sleeves start with live stitches instead of picked-up ones, which is where I stalled on the sweater that's in my car and the stripey cowl I started over winter break. Okay, caked the first three skeins, I can do something else now.
Did not read nearly as much as I'd hoped, was especially bad with poetry. Didn't capture a few chapbooks I read at the end of the year, but still.
Prose books read in 2025:
01. Big Swiss, Jen Beagin
02. The Mimicking of Known Successes, Malka Older
03. Grey Dog, Elliott Gish
04. Tentacle, Rita Indiana
05. Lone Women, Victor LaValle
06. The Reading List, Sara Nisha Adams
07. Summer Fun, Jeanne Thornton
08. Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater, Peggy Orenstein
09. Shark Heart: A Love Story, Emily Habeck
10. Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net, Jessica Calarco
11. Golem Girl, Riva Lehrer
12. I Cheerfully Refuse, Leif Enger
13. The Story of Art Without Men, Katy Hessel
14. Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, Benjamin Stevenson
15. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett
16. On Immunity: An Inoculation, Eula Biss
17. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley
18. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt
19. All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bringley
20. The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Neko Case
21. Vanishing Daughters, Cynthia Pelayo
22. Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano
23. Greenteeth, Molly O'Neill
24. A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond, As Told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid
25. The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas, Hanne Strager
26. The Inheritance Games, Jennifer Lynn Barnes
27. The Hawthorne Legacy, Jennifer Lynn Barnes
28. The Final Gambit, Jennifer Lynn Barnes
29. Yellowface, R. F. Kuang
30. A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, Timothy Egan
31. In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning, Grace Elizabeth Hale
32. The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, Hisashi Kashiwai
33. The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst
34. The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar
35. Your Brain's Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Life with ADHD, Tamara Rosier, PhD
36. The Secret History of the Rape Kit, Pagan Kennedy
37. I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai
38. The Girl Who Sang, Estelle Nadel and Sammy Savos
39. Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell
40. In Waves, AJ Dungo
41. The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy, Christopher Leonard
42. The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts, Mary Claire Haver, MD
43. If We're Being Honest, Cat Shook
44. Virgil Wander, Leif Enger
45. Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment, and Disability Pride, Nadina LaSpina
46. Moshi Moshi, Banana Yoshimoto
47. Graveyard Shift, M.L. Rio
48. The Night Guest, Hildur Knùtsdóttir
49. The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Steven Sherrill
50. Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine, Uché Blackstock, MD
51. Xenocultivars: Stories of Queer Growth, Isabela Oliveira and Jed Sabin, eds.
52. A Line You Have Traced, Roisin Dunnett
53. More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa
54. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, Edwidge Danticat
55. Come & Get It, Kiley Reid
56. Carrie Soto Is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid
57. Radio Silence, Alice Oseman
58. Loveless, Alice Oseman
59. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
60. Earth to Moon, Moon Unit Zappa
61. Murder By Memory, Olivia Waite
62. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, Zoë Schlanger
63. There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish, Anna Akbari
64. Starling House, Alix E. Harrow
65. Disgraced Return of the Kap's Needle, Renan Bernardo
66. I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman
67. A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, Martin Eilderberg, Nina Gray, Margaret K. Hofer
68. Writers and Their Cats, Alison Nastasi
69. Angelica and the Bear Prince, Trung Le Nguyen
70. Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz
71. Glass Houses, Madeline Ashby
72. Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, Cat Bohannon
73. How I Became Stupid, Martin Page
Poetry books read in 2025:
1. I Hope This Finds You Well, Kate Baer
2. What Kind of Woman, Kate Baer
3. Lord of the Butterflies, Andrea Gibson
4. Animal Unfit, Megan Nichols
And speaking of doing something else now, I should probably do some work. Have a meeting at 7 and absolutely nothing to show for it. Don't particularly want to show up and say that yet again I have failed at accomplishing anything.
Perhaps I'll blog more this year. Comment when you're done laughing.
