To my dear Correspondent,

I am, at present, curled up on the couch under a blanket with a very happy cat nestled at my feet. On the side table there is a cup of tea and a china saucer of ginger cookies. This is, I’m sure you’ll agree, the Best Way to spend a weekend afternoon, and when I finish this letter I am going to have a long bath and read a new book, which is the Best Way to spend any evening at all. Yes, I really know how to live.

This afternoon I meant to go to the library, but after a bit of consideration I became aware that I actually did not want to leave the house at all today. I left the house yesterday and I will have to leave again tomorrow; why shouldn’t I spend one whole day in my lovely home, with all my nice things and my comfy sofa and many cups of tea? It is approaching Spring here, but I find myself holding on to the coziness of Winter.

There is something nice about the natural seclusion that a cold winter offers. You feel very private, spending evening after evening just shoveling snow, puttering around the house, keeping warm. It is almost a shock to go out in public again, suddenly caught in the blinding searchlight path of other people’s gazes. The cold blue glare of ‘being perceived’. I have been drawing further and further back from this, I feel - deleting social media, of course, but also writing less frequently here. I read and read and read and I have no desire to talk. Contemplation, rumination, turning thoughts over and over again. Conclusions never seem to arrive; I simply wonder about things. I ponder.

This year I’ve been following along with Katie James’ monthly literary themes, and as March was ‘art criticism’ month I finally read John Berger’s classic Ways of Seeing. I was particularly struck by his essay on the male gaze in art, and how it is internalized. (This is a universally accepted idea by now, but at the time I think it was fairly groundbreaking.) The argument, basically, is that women can never simply exist; they are always being objectified (by men) and, therefore, constantly monitoring themselves and how they are appearing to the objectifier (men).

I’d been aware of this concept before, of course, but reading Berger’s original piece on the topic was interesting, I think because it was so gendered. In art, especially in oil painting, which he was focusing on, it really is only women who are looked at in this appraising, proprietary way. But culturally, I believe things have changed. The essay got me thinking about how we are all, now, living with more scrutiny than ever before. Everything we click on, look at, or scroll past online and, increasingly, in real life is recorded and studied. It is not just women anymore; we are all being objectified, analyzed, and commodified, all the time. You can feel the eyes on you, following you around. Life has become a never-ending performance for an infinite audience.

Well I’ll tell you, I’m sick of it. I want to exist freely and naturally, without internal or external observation. I do want to keep things to myself, to have my private thoughts and feelings, to retain some kind of essential, unknowable core. In fact, I think it is crucially important to do so.

I don’t know what this means for the newsletter; it may become even less regular than it has been or, maybe, if I put less pressure on it I will feel like writing more. Who can say? I am also contemplating the idea of taking it into print, although that is probably crazy.

A bit of housekeeping is required now as well: for personal and political reasons I have closed my webshop. Zines are still available on a pay-what-you-want basis on my Buy Me A Coffee site. (I am hoping to produce a new zine soon but I will not make any promises.) I have also listed patches and pennants in my eBay storefront for now.

Okay, that it’s from me. Talk to you soon!

Best,

My silence flows mostly from the fact that I don’t feel I have much to say right now, certainly nothing that I want to offer up on the great slag-heap that is the Internet. There are ideas percolating in the back of my mind, and I’m working on a new zine, but I haven’t felt compelled to do any more than that.

Until now, I suppose, because I do want to tell you about the books I read in the last two months of 2025. (Can you believe 2025 is over? I was just getting used to the fact that we’d arrived, and now it’s in the past.) Holiday-season reading can be pretty hit or miss for me - sometimes it’s hard to find books that have just the right tone for reading between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and all depends on whether or not I’m in the mood for escapism or embracing the cold. This year I felt that I read lots of good things, though, which is nice to look back on.

My overall reading goal for 2025 was 52 books, or one per week, and that’s exactly how many books I did read. This felt like a good amount of time to spend on reading in my day-to-day life, and while I haven’t set a formal reading goal for 2026 I think I’ll probably aim for roughly the same number. (Of course, this year’s count doesn’t reflect all the time that I spent reading Anna Karenina and still not finishing it - 2026 will be the year, though, I swear!)

Let’s get right into it.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

November Reads

4:50 from Paddington, by Agatha Christie

You may recall that the last book I read in October was The Scarlet Letter, and it took me two full weeks to read it. As I wrote then, I enjoyed revisiting the book, but it was kind of a commitment, and afterward I needed a palate cleanser: something I could read straight through in a gulp, turning the pages as fast as I could. Obviously, I chose an Agatha Christie. This one was very good, with an excellent central premise and a satisfyingly twisty journey to the conclusion. I wish there was a bit more of Miss Marple in it, though, as she’s my favorite Christie detective. On every train I’ve taken since I read this book, I’ve looked very hard into each train we’ve passed, just in case someone’s being murdered in there. Highly recommend this book, obviously.

Heartburn, by Nora Ephron

This is a book that I’ve read before, and I loved it, but this time I listened to the audiobook because it is read by Meryl Streep and I actually think this was a better experience than reading the book myself. I wish every audiobook was narrated by her, it was incredible. I know she read the audiobook for Tom Lake, so I may have to listen to that one very soon.

Long Island, by Colm Tóibín

This was not something I planned to read, really, but then my friend was talking about reading it, and I had read Brooklyn, and the ebook was available from my library, and I ended up basically devouring this in two days. And I’m still unsure how I feel about it! Tóibín is one of those authors whose books are just better than a lot of other books, I can’t explain why, they just are, but the plot of this and of Brooklyn both made me kind of mad. How can so many things happen and a character still remain in the exact same emotional and mental place that they started from? Except is that what’s genius about it? I don’t know. I still don’t know.

On the Calculation of Volume: Book I, by Solvej Balle

Recently I saw someone say that this book is overhyped and I wanted to physically fight them. I LOVED this novel. I have the second in the series on hold at my library right now. When I was halfway through reading this book, I drank two beers and monologued at my husband about how good it is for a solid twenty minutes. One of the most remarkable books I’ve read in years; I think about it often. I don’t even want to try and describe why I like it, because that would take too many words. I loved it.

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December Reads

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

This is a cute, quick little read but I probably would have DNF’d it if it wasnt so short. One thing I will say, though, is that I deeply appreciated the way the author described what every single character was wearing. Books these days do not have enough descriptions of peoples’ outfits, in my opinion. How am I supposed to know what someone is like if I don’t know what their clothes look like? I really mean this. Tell me what the characters are wearing!

Back After This, by Linda Holmes

When I’m on a long flight, or generally have a long travel day ahead of me, I try to get a kind of light, plotty, romantical-type of book to get me through the journey. I am a longtime fan of Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that Linda Holmes co-hosts for NPR, and I areally enjoyed her first two novels, so when I saw that this eBook was on sale for 1.99 at Barnes & Noble, it was a no-brainer to pick it up for reading on an international flight. I don’t usually read romance but this was cute and good and also had a really interesting take on influencer culture, which was cool? Actually, it was overall much more thought-provoking than I’d expected, and the central relationship was really sweet. Thumbs up.

At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond

My only real goal for 2026 is to go swimming at the Ladies’ Pond - I’ve been meaning to for years. This book was a beautiful testament to what is clearly a very special place, filled with gorgeous essays from a very wide range of writers. I think if you’re not that into wild swimming, this book might not feel so special, but I loved it. (I also read the whole thing in a very hot bath while severely jet-lagged; take from that what you will.)

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons

As I’m sure you know, I love an early-twentieth-century lady writer. Stella Gibbons is one of my favorites, because she captures the everyday details of life so vividly - reading her is like inhabiting the 1930s. (As above, I commend her for describing the clothes!) This is a short-story collection, mostly intent on skewering the upper class, which I found deeply entertaining. The book was a Christmas gift from my husband, so I spent most of Christmas Day sitting next to the fire reading it, which made for an absolutely perfect day. Also, while researching this book I discovered that Gibbons published 22 novels, 3 short story collections and 4 volumes of poetry, all of which I now feel the need to read. A surprising number of these are still available in print, so my new goal of becoming a Stella Gibbons completionist actually seems achievable.

The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir

How beautiful is this cover? Honestly, I swoon. This slim, perfect novel was a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law and I carefully stretched it out over two days, not wanting to read too fast - though alas, it was still over all too soon. I’ve actually never read anything else by de Beauvoir, which is ridiculous, and the loveliness of this book really proves that I need to get my hands on more of her work. As someone who also had a completely consuming, somewhat one-sided friendship in my teens, I found that The Inseparables captured that experience like nothing else I’ve ever read in my life. Just absolutely gorgeous. I’m looking forward to re-reading this one in the summer.

Before I go, I did want to tell you all that I will be back at the Rust Belt Fibershed Symposium this year as a vendor. I absolutely loved this event last year and am very excited to be back in 2026. I will have hand-carded batts of spinning fiber, patches, and vintage sewing patterns for sale, plus free zines, and I highly recommend that you come by if you are in the area! The morning session of the symposium is ticketed, but the shopping session in the afternoon is free and open to the public.

I hope to see you there!

Best

,

October was a beautiful month. I always think it is, possibly because it’s my birthday month, but this October felt especially warm and golden. As I write this, it’s absolutely shitting it down with rain, so perhaps the forceful November weather is making me think back on the previous month with undeserved fondness, but the sunsets this October were truly spectacular. The leaves, in their many beautiful shades of yellow and ochre, are giving the city one last, shining moment before the gloom of early winter and it is, as always, breathtakingly glorious.

I ended up reading a lot of books in the past month, so without any further ado I think we should jump right in.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

What I Read

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

Growing older has taught me that sometimes, you end up doing something that you had previously said you would never do. In my case, this is jogging. (Literally, less than a year ago I was talking about exercise with a friend of mine and said “Well, I would NEVER run” and yet here I am jogging 10km a week.) And because I’ve been running lately, and I had such a bad book hangover from the Cazalet chronicles, and I needed to read something that was the polar opposite of those novels, and I’ve been meaning to read Murakami for years, I borrowed this little book from Libby and absolutely devoured it. I’m not sure why it was so compelling except that it felt like an interesting friend was telling me a good story, and it was actually more of a memoir than a book about exercise. I also found Murakami’s reflections on being a lifelong runner and then aging out of his peak fitness to be very poignant and, frankly, quite educational. Highly recommend this, even if you don’t run.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall

After the success of reading WITAWITAR (lol), I decided to read another book about running, and this one was not nearly as good. My apologies to all of the people on r/running who said that this was their favorite book; this is like having a loud, annoying acquaintance yell a very long, unnecessarily complicated and extremely biased story into your ear at a party. Someone on Storygraph described the tone as extended gonzo journalism and that is exactly correct. The actual subject of the book - it focuses mostly on a tribe of Mexican ultrarunners and a white guy from Colorado who integrated himself with them, plus digressions on ultrarunning in general - is quite interesting, it’s just the way that it’s told that I couldn’t stand. I actually haven’t been able to pick up a book about running since.

The Most, by Jessica Anthony

In the middle of October, my husband and I were doing a lot of DIY stuff, such as painting our front porch, which was fairly time-consuming and tedious. I like to be optimistic when I can, so in the spirit of positive re-framing, I chose to view this as an excellent opportunity to listen to audiobooks and went diving into my Libby lists for candidates. I can’t remember where I heard about this book, but it was on my TBR for a very long time and happened to be available when I needed it, so I listened to the whole thing in a straight shot. It was interesting, but ultimately not that memorable. I think this may be a case of a poor description influencing my experience of the book, because this novel has been described as a ‘literary thriller’ and I found it to be neither literary nor thrilling. This would not have bothered me if I had not been expecting a literary thriller. As a short read, though, I liked it well enough and it was good for whiling away an afternoon of porch-painting.

Green Dot, by Madeleine Gray

This book got so much press attention in the UK and Australia, but I feel like it fell flat in the US for some reason. My library actually didn’t even get the e-book, only the audiobook! Harsh treatment, because I liked this one. If you’ve been reading my monthly round-ups for a while, you’ll know that I periodically go through a sort of Australian novel phase, where I only want to read contemporary fiction about young-ish women from Australia. It’s difficult to explain why but I just find them extremely fascinating - and I’ve actually started watching a couple of Australian girls on BookTube now, so this is bleeding into my real life as well. Anyway, this novel is an excellent representative of the genre and I really enjoyed it. Like The Most, this was a straight-through listen for me as I was painting windows for 8 straight hours, and I did not lose interest for even a single second. The main character, Hera, is very much a mess but in an actually lovable way, I felt - usually I hate a dysfunctional MC but I was really rooting for her. I think I might start reading all of my Australian fiction as audiobooks, too, because the accent made it even more enjoyable. Madeleine Gray’s next book just came out and I am really hoping the audiobook becomes available in the US soon, because I am READY to read it!

All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything, by Claire Harman

One of my high school literature assignments was Katherine Mansfield’s iconic short story The Garden Party, and it changed my life. I really consider this to be true. I vividly remember feeling absolutely stricken after I read it; I hadn’t known that just a few pages of prose could hit you like that. I’ve been a Katherine Mansfield fan ever since. This book, which I’ve just realized is only available in the UK, is both biography and literary criticism. It takes 10 Katherine Mansfield stories, organized chronologically from the beginning to the end of her career, analyzes them as literature, and then describes her life at the time that she wrote the story. It’s a fascinating mixture of genres, generous to (and sharply honest about) it’s subject, and extremely illuminating. I’m now reading a collection of Mansfield stories and I will certainly be returning to some of the chapters in this book for reference.

Lolly Willowes: Or, the Loving Huntsman, by Sylvia Townsend Warner

It’s always interesting to me when an old book experiences a little surge of interest and reappears in the literary consciousness. I’m not sure what exactly prompted this, perhaps a reissue, but Lolly Willowes started appearing on people’s TBR lists and BookTube videos earlier this year, and I immediately put it on my own to-read list since early-20th-century books by unconventional female authors are undeniably my cup of tea. In the end, I found this amusing and conceptually interesting, and 100% correct in it’s feminist point of view (which seems very advanced for it’s time), but I also keep forgetting that I read it. That said, it’s a short novel and I do recommend it if your literary taste runs along the same lines as mine.

Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner

Kate Jones alerted me to the existence of this wonderful book some months ago, and I finally got round to reading it in the middle of October. As expected, it is a lovely, contemplative, devastating novel, with far richer depths than it would appear on the surface. (An extra element, for me, was the fact that I have actually stayed in a little village on Lake Geneva that I suspect is very, very close to where the book is set, so that was very fun.) I also learned a new word while I was reading this, which is always satisfying. Hotel du Lac struck me as having similar qualities to Shirley Hazzard’s fiction - ie sharp observations, prose with the precision of a chef’s knife, and quiet scenes that end up hitting you like a gut punch - and I will definitely be looking for more of Brookner’s books.

Frankissstein, Jeanette Winterson

I tried and failed to read this book a few years ago, according to my Libby account, and it must have just not been the right time because I can’t figure out what I could possibly have not liked about it. This time around, I listened to the audiobook (again, porch painting!) and I think that had a lot to do with my enjoyment of it. There are two narrators, and the female part is voiced by Perdita Weeks, who is my favorite audiobook narrator of all time, while the other character is performed brilliantly by John Sackville, who nails every accent and has excellent comic timing. I highly recommend the audiobook, actually. Jeanette Winterson is actually a genius, I think, and here she explores topics such as robots, the nature of humanity, gender identity and body dysmorphia, AI, religion, grief, motherhood, spirituality, and feminism with curiosity, clarity, and generosity, while also weaving in an extended meditation on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I loved it. I thought about it for a long time after and, actually, I’m still thinking about it.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

At times, I get a hankering to read a classic novel. I decided I wanted to revisit a book that I had originally read in high school, and since I remembered really liking The Scarlet Letter when I was 14, I decided to re-read it. This was an interesting experience. At times, the novel is very dull indeed, and at other times, a sentence would absolutely knock me flat with its perfection. The story itself I still find totally engrossing, as I had recalled from the first time I read it. This book has some of the most vivid nature writing I’ve ever read, and as a character study it is perceptive and subtle. I think Hawthorne was really going for something here and, for the most part, he achieves it - though I believe the ending lets the whole rest of the book down with its dusty moralizing. It was fascinating to read this, 175 years on - I still found a lot to chew on in this book, which I suppose is what makes it a classic.

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OK, that was a lot. Truly, so much good reading in October, I feel blessed. Now I’m on to more re-reads for the month of November, which I will tell you all about next time. I’m curious to know: have you ever revisited a classic novel you were assigned to read in school? How did it go? What did you think about it? Was it better or worse, from your adult perspective? Let me know!

Best,

In my childhood, my number-one passion in life was reading. At the library I would carry enormous towers of books to the checkout desk every week, holding the teetering stack in place with my chin. I meticulously worked my way through The Boxcar Children, then Nancy Drew, making sure I was reading every book in chronological order. My dad built a bookshelf for the end of my bed and I carefully arranged every title, organizing my books first by author and then by series. Eventually I even wrote a card catalogue for my little personal library, which I still have to this day.

Most of the books I owned as a child were part of a series - I had almost no standalone novels. I did not see the point of reading a book unless the story continued on in at least two more books, and of course I often didn't really have to worry about this at all because most children's books are written in series. I read them all: the aforementioned Boxcar Children, then the Ramona Quimby books, the Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew (never the Hardy Boys, as those were my older sister's top choice), Little House on the Prairie, The Chronicles of Narnia, Redwall, the Boston Jane books, Artemis Fowl, Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series, Gerald Morris' The Squire's Tales, the Dear America books AND the spinoff Royal Diaries series, The Goose Girl series, Enola Holmes, the Tales of Rowan Hood - the list could go on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting all kinds of series that I read and loved, these are just the ones that I read multiple times. My ultimate favorites, though, were anything written by L.M. Montgomery - but especially Anne of Green Gables.

People online often ask if one is an Anne of Green Gables girl or a Little House on the Prairie girl and while I refuse to accept this dichotomy (I adored both series), I will admit that the Anne is the one that I feel I grew up alongside. I think I was around 10 when I started the series, nearly the same age as the heroine, and I read that first book many, many times. I remember re-reading Anne of Windy Poplars in my teens and feeling that Anne Shirley was the only person in the world who I could really relate to. When I reached my late teens, Anne of Ingleside made me feel like becoming an adult would actually be okay and maybe even a little bit interesting. (I've been meaning to re-read that one, actually, as I think it would hit even harder now that I actually am a grown-up.)

I say all of this so that you understand me when I tell you: the Cazalet Chronicles is to me, now, what Anne of Green Gables was to me, age thirteen. I am so completely, utterly, unbelievably invested in these novels that I don't want to do anything at all except read them. A few Saturday mornings ago I lay in bed for hours finishing Confusion, the third novel in the series, at the end of which I actually gasped out loud and said 'Oh NO!', with such shock/hope/dismay that my husband immediately asked, "What happened?!?" and all I could do was utter a small shriek. I simply do not know how to express how much I love these books.

I first heard about Elizabeth Jane Howard on Sentimental Garbage, one of my favorite podcasts, in (I believe) the episode that Caroline did on the amazing 20th-century novel The Camomile Lawn. I purchased, read, and loved that book, and then kept Howard's name in mind for years, but it wasn't until this summer, at the end of July, that I found copies of The Light Years and Marking Time in a charity shop in Lewes, Sussex. I had been looking for something to read in August, and two fat novels about life in Sussex before and during WWII sounded perfect. At the time I had no tote bag, so I carried the books around in my arms for the rest of the day, and the woman in the next shop we visited was so thrilled to see me with them that I knew I had made the right choice. "I am so happy for you that you get to read them for the first time," she said, and now that I'm halfway through the series, I fully, deeply understand what she meant.

The thing about a series is that you really get to know and care about the characters, which for me is always the most important part of a novel. I love a book that has no plot, just great vibes, and of course you have to have great characters to have great vibes. The Cazalet Chronicles has excellent characters, and they are so fully realized, so complicated and sympathetic and infuriating, that I love all of them, even the ones that I hate. (Also, plenty of queer characters, and the way that they are so matter-of-factly part of the world is really interesting.) The plot is also, actually, excellent, and I'm currently dangling off of the most heartbreaking cliff (as I wait impatiently for my hold to come in at the library). The second book brought me to tears in an airplane over the Atlantic ocean, and I have a feeling the fourth novel will be similarly affecting.

These are proper novels, too - great big books, doorstoppers really, and hard to tote around so you have to commit to reading them in place. I like this. They have a vast narrative scope that I feel one doesn't often encounter these days. The woman at the shop described them as "a whole family saga" and that's exactly what they are, and they are also impeccably written, every single book, which strikes me as such an unbelievably difficult thing to achieve. Each novel opens with a list of characters and a family tree which, as everyone knows, means that you are in for a really good time. There are a lot of books out there that I consider to be much longer than they should be, but with the Cazalet novels I have wished that they were even longer, that I could spend more time with all of these characters, and really live in their world with them.

The first book, in particular, is also a fascinating window into a time period that I don't feel I fully understood until I read it - namely, the summers of 1937-38, just before the Munich Agreement, when all of Britain knew, deep down, that a cataclysmic war was coming but still hoped desperately that it could be avoided. I knew the facts of the situation, of course, but I couldn't comprehend how that would feel; now I have, if only vicariously, experienced the the all-consuming dread, the fierce clinging to optimism, the ultimate, fatalistic acceptance.

Part of the reason that the feelings in this series are so intense, I think, is that the world these books inhabit is so vivid. One of my favorite types of books to read is one that was written, in the past, by someone who cared about material objects (so, usually a woman) and therefore often includes them as part of their scene-setting. Anne of Green Gables is, of course, like this: everyone’s dresses, shoes, hairstyles, houses, carriages, etc. are always carefully reported. For me, this makes a historical era come alive in a way nothing else can do - a contemporaneous novel will always be the most realistic representation of its time, I think, just because of these details. In the Cazalet Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Howard describes some truly crazy 1950s interiors (wall-to-wall bright yellow carpet), catalogues amazing outfits right down to the coordinating gloves and handbags, discusses dinner menus extensively, and drops midcentury name brands (“Aertex shirt”) all over the place. As someone who loves to spend time browsing vintage magazines on Internet Archive, looking at the advertisements, this level of granularity really speaks to me.

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I’ve been writing this newsletter off and on for weeks, so I have now finished the series. It’s hard to know how to sum up my thoughts except to say that I feel extremely grateful to have found the first two novels in that charity shop three months ago. Seldom have I encountered fiction that was so totally engrossing while being, essentially, just an extended meditation on human nature and the ways in which people do and do not change over a lifetime. I feel that I have learned something about being a person in a complicated world from Elizabeth Jane Howard.

These books were also the only books I was reading, for months - I consumed the whole series in one go, and I felt completely bereft when I had finished them. However, it’s extremely comforting to remember that these books exist, and that I can simply drop back into their world whenever I feel like it. Like the 1994 Little Women adaptation, which I re-watch at least once every year, I know I’ll be revisiting the Cazalets.

Best,

Really, it's true. I have produced one tangible item, a tiny embroidery that I worked on sporadically for weeks, but otherwise I spend my free time in ways that leave no traces. I bring blankets and pillows down to an old wooden bench in the garden and read for hours. I bake focaccia. I hang the laundry out on the line. I lie on a pebble beach in the sun and eat salt-and-vinegar chips. I swim. My bangs grow, and I trim them too short with thread scissors. I have been making friendship bracelets with teenagers; one for my ankle, one for my wrist. Last week, we spent the afternoon moseying through woods and fields, picking blackberries, looking at cows, watching a pheasant bebop across the grass.

I feel like I'm ten again, with a baseball cap and a sandal tan, doing whatever I feel like. It's been the summeriest summer I've had in ages.

If July feels like the peak of the year, like standing on top of a mountain looking at the entire landscape around you, August feels like hovering over the hot grass, like almost being home at the end of a dusty hike. It isn't all over, yet, but it will be soon. In this way, it's almost the best part of the summer, because you can really savor it, luxuriate deeply in it, appreciate even the sweat that immediately gathers on your upper lip when you step outside into the heat. (Although that last part is probably just me, actually.)

The produce, of course, is at its absolute best in August. Aside from the blackberries, which are unbelievably abundant this year, I have been reveling in the plums. A few weeks ago I ate a greengage for the first time, and it felt like a gift: such a lovely, tiny, beautiful fruit, incredibly sweet, perfect.

Since the spring, I have been trying to reduce my overall acquisition of material goods by doing a sort of low-buy program that’s really just called I’m Absolutely Not Buying Things I Don’t Need. In a funny way, I think that this is partially why this summer has felt so good - instead of getting things, I just did things. I suppose I could have bought a new beach towel this summer, but then I just took the faded old one I already had to the beach with a packed lunch and a book. In the past, I might have said that I couldn’t go to the beach because I didn’t have a good towel - but not this year. Zero dollars spent on a truly excellent experience, and it reminded me that buying the new towel would not have felt nearly as good as just going and hanging out at the beach did. (Plus I didn’t have to go to a store or pay for shipping.)

When I was a kid, I spent next to no time thinking about things I wanted in the summer, because what I wanted was easily obtained: running around in the woods, playing soccer, riding my bike, eating corn on the cob, reading Dear America library books on a blanket in the backyard. I longed for experiences, not objects. If I did want any material things, they were just that - materials, that I could use to make stuff like decorations for my bike or furniture for my dollhouse. Something I’ve discovered, since becoming an adult with disposable income, is that so often I pay for items instead of experiences, and they simply don’t have the same value. I’m having less fun, accumulating more stuff, and becoming increasingly stressed out about the whole situation (as I wrote previously!).

Obviously, this is not a new concept. People have been talking about what money can’t buy since, probably, the invention of money. (The problem has only worsened since social media started pushing advertising directly into our brain cells every second of every day, and overconsumption became part of having a normal lifestyle.) But what I hadn’t realized before is that buying things on a whim was fundamentally distorting my desires, my taste, and even my sense of self.

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When you want something, especially a material object, and you can’t get it right away, you spend a lot more time experiencing that want. You get to know it. You can describe exactly what it is that you want, and why you want it, and what you expect to gain from obtaining it. You can differentiate it from a need, and you can deeply understand your own desire for it. But when you want something and you can get it right away, none of those things need to be interrogated. You want it, you get it, done. Then, most often, you just move on to wanting something else.

Like many people, I have purchased a lot of things that I ultimately ended up being completely baffled by. Why did I want this? is a question I have often asked myself. Usually, these items are what would be called ‘impulse purchases’ - things that I bought on a passing fancy, things that I actually didn’t, strictly speaking, want in any meaningful way. What I’m realizing now is that doing this too often completely disrupted my relationship with my own desires, to the point where I often found it difficult to understand what or why I wanted anything. I also became out of touch with my own needs, because I could no longer differentiate what I wanted and what I needed.1 Under these circumstances, it’s also nearly impossible to differentiate what you want from what other people want, which completely erodes your individual taste.

So this is what the low-buy summer has really taught me: how to know what I need, and how to know what I actually do want. It turns out I want to watch sunbeams tessellate on the bottom of the public pool when I swim, and to feel absolute contentment when I eat juicy yellow summer tomatoes from the farmer’s market, and to completely lose myself in the extraordinary novel I found at the charity shop. And no store can sell me that.

Best,

I am sorry to see the end of July. It is properly summer in July, at least where we are, and the whole month feels like a Saturday morning - there is time enough that you can freely waste a little bit of it, just hang around, knowing that August is still ahead of you. July is full of potential, without any pressure.

In terms of books, the first half of the month was pretty excellent for me, and then I had one of those reading slumps that arises when you can’t find anything that’s quite as good as the last book that you read, so you end up not reading anything at all for weeks and weeks. My final tally was 4 novels finished in July, but I didn’t read a single thing from the 16th until the first of August. Obviously, this is just how it is sometimes, but it was a little annoying nonetheless. Luckily I seem to have hit on something really incredible for my August reading, so the slump is definitely over now.

What I Read

Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence

Now, this is a novel that I actually started reading back in December, but I’d only been picking it up sporadically and didn’t decide to finally finish reading it until the end of June. And my goodness, what a strange, strange book. This was my first D.H. Lawrence, and maybe it wasn’t the best place to start? Or maybe it was, I’m not sure. In fact I’m not sure if I think this novel was good, or not, or if I even liked it, or not. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I disliked every single character in it. Technically Women in Love is a sequel, so it’s possible that I should have read The Rainbow before this one, but I don’t know if that would have helped. The writing was certainly interesting, and I find Lawrence’s ideas to be fascinating, but the endless philosophical pondering got a bit, well, ponderous - and I felt that the plot was somewhat…unbelievable? I do have Lady Chatterley’s Lover and plan on reading it, but for the moment I’m finding Lawrence a bit incomprehensible. If there are any D.H. Lawrence lovers out there please do get in touch and let me know where I’m going wrong.

Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck

Earlier this summer I went to Berlin for the first time, and I came back mildly obsessed with the GDR. I had visited the DDR Museum, which recreates life in East Germany with incredible detail, and was consumed with a need to learn more about the everyday existence of East Germans. I ended up finding Kairos on Libby and I positively inhaled it in just a few days. This novel won the International Booker Prize in 2024 and honestly I don’t think I need to say any more than that - it was one of the most interesting novels I’ve read in years and I think about it frequently. It actually felt absurdly timely, as well, and made me think differently about the structure of my own world.

The Sea Lady, by Margaret Drabble

Owning a Nook can be like going to a used-book store, in the sense that sometimes you end up buying something really random just because it only cost 99 cents. Buying this book was like that. Mostly I was just curious about Margaret Drabble, since I’ve read (and deeply enjoyed) several books written by her sister, A.S. Byatt, and wanted to compare the two. This novel was good, I think - I certainly liked reading it. In 2006, when this book was published, Ursula K. Le Guin described Drabble’s work as ‘a bit old-fashioned’ and I agree with that, though I also agree with her that this is a compliment. I highly recommend this as a vacation read - it was great company on a plane.

Summer, by Edith Wharton

This book has been on my TBR for a long, long time, and July 2025 was finally the time to read it. This is the novel that kicked off my two-week reading slump, because it was so good and so devastating that nothing could follow it. I’m not sure if modern readers interpret this book the way that Wharton intended it (how are we all feeling about Mr. Royall??), but the story remains deeply moving, and I read it almost compulsively over a few days. As in The House of Mirth, a powerful sense of dread runs throughout the whole novel and at times it almost felt like a horror story. This is one of those classic books that I felt should have been made into a classic film thirty years ago, like A Room with a View, but sadly that appears not to be the case (the 1981 TV movie version, starring Diane Lane(!), seems to have been universally panned). Anyway, I will definitely be looking for a physical copy of this book to have on my shelf and loan to friends, and I am renewing my quest to become a Wharton completionist.

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Currently Reading

I actually don’t want to talk about what I’m currently reading, because it’s too good and I’m unwilling to share it with anyone right now. I think sometimes you have to be a bit selfish with your reading, to keep it sacred. So instead, please tell me what you have been reading lately. Any standout books of the summer? What has been your best beach read?

Best,

A few weeks ago I wrote about feeling un-inspired and unmotivated to sew, but I didn’t admit that one of the reasons I haven’t been sewing is because I’ve been exercising instead.

I have a lot of complicated feelings about this, and I have written and discarded over 2,500 words on this topic without being able to express exactly what I mean, so I’ve given up. Jia Tolentino has already excavated and analyzed modern fitness culture better than I ever could, and Pandora Sykes covered the ‘conservatisation of culture’ and the accompanying resurgence of diet culture in her own newsletter recently. This Saba Sams piece for Granta about having the whole concept of physical activity ruined by competitive childhood sports has been on my mind recently, as I find it intensely relatable. Casey Johnston’s amazing newsletter She’s A Beast, which is primarily about weightlifting but also about the cultural experience of exercise generally, has become a weekly must-read for me. But still, I feel conflicted about working out, when what I would really like to do is simply be able to enjoy it.

One thing I will say is that working out is - or can be - a very low-waste way to spend your time. I use an ancient yoga mat and a set of resistance bands to exercise, and I have purchased one item of (secondhand) athletic clothing since I started. Furthermore, all the time I spend huffing and puffing in our living room has resulted in absolutely zero material outputs: the only thing I have to show for it is visibly bigger biceps and a new ability to actually do push-ups. So that part of it feels great (although I think if I was still using Instagram I might struggle to avoid buying cute new workout gear). Also, I flexed my arms in front of my younger brother and he really hyped me up about my triceps, which was awesome.

I’m not surprised that I felt compelled to start exercising this year; in the midst of an enormous societal meltdown that feels overwhelming and inescapable, it is very comforting to bring your focus all the way down to the narrow pinpoint that is yourself and your body and the things you can actually change about it. When I exercise I think about nothing but how I am feeling in that moment, about how hard it is to do one more lat pulldown, how the sweat is beading up on my lip and threatening to fall. When I swim, my brain is truly empty, and I experience nothing but pure sensation, the glide of the water against my own surfaces.

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I do feel a little guilty about finding refuge in such escapism. All of my exercising is done alone: swimming is a deeply solitary activity, and I follow YouTube workouts at home rather than go to fitness classes. Right now, more than ever, it’s crucial for us to come together in real life and yet here I am avoiding everyone. I think this might be why I wanted to talk about it here, even if it just feels like I’m finally coming clean about something; confession can be the first step toward community.

This has been a fairly atypical little interlude for this newsletter, but rest assured I am working on new pieces that are more aligned with my professed subjects of craft, material culture and sustainability. I am hoping to publish quite a bit during the rest of this summer as I’ve got lots of ideas and, crucially, a lot of good books to discuss with you all. I hope you are all having a lovely summer or a cozy winter, whichever applies, and I’ll be back to talk to you soon!

Best,

Hello. Did you read much in June? I didn't, it seems - only four books, one for each week.

I spent a good portion of the month traveling, and these days I don't seem to read much when I'm on vacation. As a kid I always had a book on vacation, but sometimes you end up remembering the book more than the trip - for instance, the time when my family went skiing and I stayed in the lodge obsessively reading Tana French's In The Woods, or the beach trip where all I did was read Hemingway and listen to Neil Young on my baby-blue iPod nano, or the other beach trip where I lay in the sun reading Mansfield Park for so many hours that I truly thought I would never recover from the sunburn. I don't recall any other events from these trips, literally none, only the book I was reading at the time. So now I tend not to bring books when I'm really traveling, in order to avoid being distracted.

That said, I did have a book available for my train journeys, so I ended up reading quite a bit of Edith Wharton as I rumbled and rolled my way through Europe last month. That was an interesting experience and one that I do recommend, especially if reading the specific Wharton novel I was reading (of which more below).

Anyway, let’s get into it.

What I Read

Trick Mirror, by Jia Tolentino

I had zero plans to read this book, but then we all read that piece about how the Internet broke Jia Tolentino's brain, and she was interviewed on a podcast that my husband listens to, and I thought you know, Lauren Oyler was totally right about her, everything does just circle back to herself, I wonder if her book really does suck? The audiobook was available at my library, and I had nothing else to read (aside from Anna Karenina of course), so I borrowed it and, I'm sure you're dying to know this, I did not think it was good but I was surprised by how much I wanted it to be good. Now, I'm no Oyler apologist - honestly, how fucking annoying is she these days - but her basic criticism of Tolentino's essays is correct: instead of taking a personal experience and relating it to something that's happening in the world, she takes something that is happening in the world and explains how it relates to herself only. I found this unbelievably frustrating, because Tolentino is an excellent writer and she often has interesting thoughts, she just always fails, at the end, to make any kind of point except "So, that’s how it was for me." I ended up spending a lot of time complaining to my husband about this book, which I know he found extremely annoying, but I couldn't help it because I wanted so badly for her to actually say something, anything. There is one essay in here, called Always Be Optimizing, that I did think was very, very good and, though it was published 2019, still extremely relevant, but everything else just kind of drove me crazy. I did listen to the whole thing, though, all 9 hours and 45 minutes.

A Reason to See You Again, by Jami Attenberg

Storygraph says that I finished this on June 12. When I checked my account on July 10, to double-check my reading last month, I nearly gasped out loud because I had so completely forgotten that I'd read this book. This is not particularly the fault of this novel, I don't think - a lot of contemporary fiction has been feeling really 'forgettable' to me lately. The protagonists and style of so many books these days are so similar, they’re just different versions of the same book. It's like watching a Netflix Original: nonspecific, generally appealing, not so memorable that you'll recall it when they recycle the concept into another 'new' series 10 months from now. Oddly, though, these books seem often to differ only in plot - rather than same plot-different details, it’s usually different plot-same details. Anyway, this one was enjoyable while I was reading it, if a little depressing at times.

I Hope This Finds You Well, by Natalie Sue

I feel like I saw this novel recommended absolutely everywhere a few months ago and at the time I thought "Mmm, maybe not for me" but then, as is so often the case, I was scrolling through the available books on Libby, saw this one and thought I would go for it. However it turns out my initial suspicions were correct, unforch. This was not terrible, but it WAS a romance novel. I wanted this book to be more in line with Halle Butler's The New Me, and it simply was not. It was fairly entertaining, but I was ultimately disappointed.

The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton

When I have read a series of disappointing books, the best thing to do is go directly to the grand dame of literature and ‘reset’ my reading life with an Edith Wharton novel. She never fails to deliver. I have had this particular book on my radar for a while and, when I needed something long and dense for a series of 6-hour train rides, this was just the ticket - and I think it might actually be the best Wharton novel I've ever read? (I don't know, maybe I'm just saying that because it's currently the freshest in my mind.) This is the story of a wealthy(ish) American woman who devotes her life to social climbing in Gilded Age New York and Paris, and features one of the most unlikeable main characters I have ever read in my life. Yet somehow, or rather because Wharton is a genius, I remained engrossed the whole way through! This novel is an absolutely withering criticism of American consumerism, which is never more biting than when its materialistic heroine rubs up against European values in France. Reading it as an American, while traveling through Europe, made for an interesting experience - and the book's central critique remains, depressingly, exceedingly relevant.

Currently Reading

Right now I am making my way through The Sea Lady, by Margaret Drabble, which I confess I mostly started because I am a big fan of A.S. Byatt and I wanted to see what her sister’s books were like. So far, I am liking this a lot, and will probably try to read more of Drabble’s novels (plus the anthology about Hampstead Ladies’ Ponds that she contributed to).

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Now, obviously everyone is talking about their Summer Reading right now, as summer is the best time for reading, so please do let me know what you've loved so far this season, and what you're planning to read next!

Best

,

The local radio stations have been saying that Memorial Day is the official beginning of summer. I suppose that is true, because the Niagara River beach I like to go to is now open on the weekends - though the water, I'm sure, is far from warm. It's the beginning of 'Outside Season', when we start eating dinner on the balcony and leaving the windows open all night. This is possible because the air right now is perfect, neither too warm nor too cool; it might be the best time of the year, to be honest. In a few weeks it will be too hot for me and I'll be wishing for autumn, but right now, it is actually possible to live completely in the present moment and to really, expansively enjoy it.

Some of the things I like to do at this time of year are: weed the garden, go for long walks, read my book outside, make salads. What I've not been doing is sewing, or writing, or much of anything creative, though I have been knitting away on my current sweater project because somehow I always want to be knitting. I certainly have projects in mind that I would like to make (a pair of black work trousers, a new swimsuit, a big baggy sweatshirt, a curtain for our front door) but when it comes right down to it I just don't ever get started on them. Every weekend I think, maybe I'll do some sewing, and then I do something else.

There are a few reasons for this and at least one of them is for sure seasonal - who wants to be inside ironing fabric yardage when they could be outside strolling through the park with the breeze in their hair? Not me, obviously. There's also the fact of my closet, which has started to feel a little overwhelming. All these clothes, and I still only ever wear the same handful of items, so why hang on to the rest of it? (But what if one day I really need them?) And why do I keep making myself more clothes when I already have so many and I don't really wear most of them? Paralyzing questions. I've been spending a lot of time recently reading about climate change and over-consumption and trying to think about what I can actually, meaningfully, do as a private citizen and 'own less' really seems like the only action that can be taken. Of course, the message is really 'BUY less, starting from this day forward', but the prospect of future minimalism always makes me feel I need to first purge myself of all excess. Purity culture meets consumer culture, I guess.

The truth is I actually do truly need another, bigger pullover sweatshirt, so I don't know why I'm beating myself up about that one, but I think I just have an overall negative feeling about the idea of making new stuff right now. So much of my personal identity seems bound up in the idea that I am a 'maker', because I suppose that is what all this sewing, knitting, spinning, and dyeing is, it’s making stuff, and 'maker' is what the Internet calls someone who does that. Hell, I've called myself that. Something about that term feels really tied to productivity, though, which does not really align with the values I want to have around my creative practice. I'm not necessarily making things because I find the production of objects inherently meaningful, or I need to create some kind of output in order to have something to show for my time on this planet. I'm not a machine in a factory.

When I was on Instagram, which I'm not anymore, I felt a lot of pressure to make and share new things all the time and it seems I still need to fully decompress from that. Hence, extended sewing break. I want to - and, I think, really need to - feel good about this process, so I'm working on letting my residual guilty feelings about not-sewing drain away. (Objectively the idea of feeling guilty for not doing a hobby is so ridiculous and yet, here many of us are.)

One of the things I think social media did to my ‘making practice’ was to completely obscure my reason for sewing in the first place, which used to be almost purely practical: if I needed something, and I felt excited about sewing at that moment, then I would make it myself. (Otherwise, I would just go to the thrift.) Sewing was never like knitting, something relaxing that I would do of an evening and really savor at the end of the day, it was almost always need-based. When I started sharing projects on Instagram, though, I started sewing things that I didn’t need, just to have something to post. The difference between what I needed, what I wanted, and what I felt I should be producing became completely blurred.

This is the most insidious part of modern life, I think - the constant advertising and influencing and trends make it so hard to identify what you actually want, and from there it’s even more difficult to isolate the things that you actually need. And further than that, when you don’t know what you want or need and yet continue to acquire more things, it becomes increasingly difficult and, culturally speaking, completely unnecessary to articulate your reasons for wanting or needing those things. Just buy more stuff, you want it, it doesn’t matter why you want it, look how easy it is to get it.

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Of course this, in a nutshell, is the driving force behind the 'slow making' movement, but I feel like I need to do a hard reset on myself in some way and really drop out for a moment. For now, I’ve lost my reason for making clothes and I think it’s OK to sit with that for a while. (This applies only to sewing - I feel much better about how I feel about my knitting.) When I envision my future I don't really imagine myself stitching up a new garment every week, not least because who needs a garment a week?!? Even if it was all for other people, I can't see that kind of an output being really valuable to anyone. Instead, I see sewing as a useful tool that will always be in my repertoire. When I really need something and I can sew it, I will sew it - and if that means I only sew once a month, I think that's fine.

My plan for the rest of the summer is to really pare things back. I have one sweater I want to finish knitting, a pair of trousers that I might sew, and a striped cotton tee I want to knit at some point. Otherwise, I just want to step a little more lightly on this planet, and enjoy the ephemeral things that can’t (and shouldn’t) be commodified. The things I really want to achieve are completely un-tethered from making, producing, or purchasing anything: I want to swim in the sea, eat more watermelon, set out a blanket on the grass and drink iced tea. Because really, what else do I need?

Best,

May is a beautiful month in Buffalo, although this one felt uncommonly rainy. It's when the whole world suddenly turns green, and you can sit outside with just a t-shirt on and feel comfortable, and all the restaurants put out their patios and they fill up immediately with people who are just so happy to see the sun again that they can't bear to be inside. Say what you will about the winters here, but they definitely make you appreciate nice weather.

As a consequence of this, I didn't actually do much reading last month either - I only finished three books, and one of them I read in three days, so there was plenty of time this month where I didn't actually have anything I was actively reading. (This, I assume, will change once we get into real summer because, as I've said before, I like to basically do nothing but read once it gets really hot out.) Part of the reason for this is probably that I had such a good reading month in April, and that kind of pace and quality can't be sustained forever! Anyway, enough chit-chat - let's get into it.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

What I Read

A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler

This is the second book that I have read by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Anne Tyler, and this particular one was nominated (and short-listed) for the Booker Prize in 2015. As with Breathing Lessons, I really couldn't figure out what was so special about this novel that it deserved such accolades. The story of one fairly ordinary family, and two of it's matriarchs in particular, the story literally uses the color blue as a narrative thread, as indicated on the cover (and by the title). A few weeks (months?) ago, I watched Practical Magic for the first time and this book really reminded me of that type of movie - a neat and tidy 90s drama film that ties up all its loose ends in a bow for you. This book also had a slightly microwaved feel to it - not quite as alive as it should have been, like it had been frozen and reheated. All of this feels really mean to say about a book that is really perfectly fine, very readable, enjoyable even - I just think seeing “Short-listed for the Booker Prize” on the cover gives me pretty high expectations that were not met here. That being said, now that I know which genre to put her in, I'll probably read more of Tyler's books as they seem absolutely perfect for taking to the beach. Cozy, comforting, fairly funny, easy to pick up and put down as needed. (Side note: did you know that Judith Jones was Anne Tyler’s editor at Knopf for decades?? Although not when this book was published, fwiw.)

Feel Free, by Zadie Smith

This was altogether a thornier type of read and it took me quite a while to get through it. I really love Zadie Smith's nonfiction; generally, I prefer it to her fiction. She has a particular way of thinking through a problem, of talking herself into and out of and back into ideas again, that I enjoy immensely. She's incredibly smart, self-assured, and deeply pragmatic - her conclusions often seem to be the most useful ones, the kind of thoughts that you can take away and do something with. Not every piece in this work is fabulous, but weeks later I'm still thinking about quite a few of them.

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years, by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Now here is an intelligent, compelling and thought-provoking read. I first learned about this book on the excellent podcast Haptic and Hue, and knew immediately that I wanted to read it. It basically does as the title says: it examines the first 20,000 years of textiles, using them as a means of understanding the ways that women have existed in the world, from Neolithic tribes in Hungary to the Bronze-Age Mycenaeans in Greece. For example, as she studies the use of fine linens as social and actual currency, and infers what this tells us about the status of the women who made and sold these fabrics, Wayland Barber draws fascinating conclusions that certainly made me question what I had been taught about ancient civilizations and the roles of women in their societies. This book is almost compulsively readable, too - I found it very hard to put down and zoomed through the whole thing in one weekend. I don't want to say too much here, as I will probably do a more in-depth review as a standalone piece for the newsletter, but suffice to say: I love this book and you should read it, too.

Currently Reading

At the moment I have two very different books on the go: Virgil's The Georgics, which I've started reading in bed at night, and A Reason to See You Again, by Jami Attenberg. I may not finish either of these reads, to be honest - though I'm finding The Georgics a lot more....entertaining (?) than I expected. It's a very easy read. A Reason to See You Again - I don't know, I'm only 56 e-book pages into but for now it's not really hitting. I also have The Common Reader on my Nook and have been dipping in and out of it over the last few months, and of course, Anna Karenina still looms in the background.

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Okay, what have you been reading over the last month? What are you planning to read this summer? What’s your ideal beach book - something light and frothy, or mysterious and strange? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you!

P.S. Starting in two weeks, I will be closing my online shop for the summer! I’d love to move through some inventory before I do that, so you can use the code SPRING30 to get 30% off your order from now until June 15.

Best,

This is not what I had planned to write to you about, but then the crisis occurred and I figured I might as well bring it up here. Since March, I have been working diligently on a lovely pattern called the Saglan pullover, which I am knitting with fingering-weight yarn and 3 millimeter needles (for those of you who don't knit, this means that my materials are very small and fiddly and this project will take me approximately one hundred years to finish). Oh, and did I tell you that my yarn is black?

This is supposed to be a very basic, go-with-everything, wear-forever kind of sweater, so I'm deeply invested in the finished item turning out well. And I was making very good progress, knitting along at a good clip, enjoying the shoulder construction method immensely (this is an extremely clever pattern and I highly recommend it). A few weekends ago I finished knitting the body of the sweater and decided to give it a little try-on before I started the sleeves. This was something I had known that I should do for a while, and had been dreading it - losing sleep over it, actually - because I had a feeling that the sweater was too small.

Way back at the beginning of the project I decided to knit size 2, instead of size 3, which corresponded more closely with my measurements and, more crucially, my knowledge that I have very broad shoulders. Why I decided to knit the smaller size I can't really say, except that the idea occurred to me and I committed to it in the space of just a few moments: I was sitting on the couch, ready to cast on, when I thought to myself "Why not do the second size?" and the devil on my shoulder said "You know, that's an excellent idea!" and I went ahead and did it. I really should have known better, because when I tried it on, I was right: the sweater was too small.

Some of the best advice I've ever heard in my life came to me second-hand, from a friend who heard it from an organic farmer in Maine. It was this: If you are going to bail, bail early. Waiting to give up will just bring you more pain and waste more effort, so you might as well do it as early as you possibly can. I love this philosophy - it is the ultimate resistance to the sunk-cost fallacy, and it also reminds me of something I once said to a younger sibling while we were sledding: you can tell right from the beginning of your run if you're going in the right direction or not - and if you're not, it's better to just throw yourself off the sled and wipeout at the top of the hill, when you're still going slow, than to wait until you reach the bottom and are a) going much faster and b) may have trees to contend with.

Usually, when you find that you have to rip out many hours worth of knitting because you screwed it up somewhere along the way, it is far from a surprise. When I decided to bite the bullet and undo a month and a half's progress on my sweater, I was simply admitting, at long last, something that I'd known pretty much the whole time. If I'd just been honest with myself, I could have started over on this project a lot earlier, instead of wasting all of that time knitting a sweater that was never going to fit.

This has often been true of other things in my life as well (jobs, most frequently). So often, you feel that little twinge - and just ignore it, telling yourself this is a good thing, you just have to get used to it, etc, until finally months or years later you admit that it was never going to work and you should have known from the beginning. And of course, you did know from the beginning, you just weren’t brave enough to acknowledge it. Bail early, my friends.

Now, this is also the thing that I love the most about knitting: it doesn't matter how far along in the project you are, or how much time you've sunk into it, it is literally never too late to start over and pretend that it never happened. Simply unravel it and begin again! You cannot do this with anything else - not with sewing, or cooking, or painting. There is always some point of no return (you can't un-boil a potato) or evidence of the change (a sneaky X-ray will reveal the crappy painting under the better, later version). In knitting there is only one irreversible change - steeking - and most projects don't use this technique; in almost all circumstances you can completely erase all evidence of your errors. Once, I unraveled a sweater that I had been wearing for ten years and reknitted the yarn into something else: further proof that it is never too late to start over, when it comes to knitting. It’s like re-spawning in a video game, just go back to the beginning and try again.

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(The speed of destruction can be somewhat unsettling, however. I was a little dismayed to see that hours and hours of knitting could be unraveled in a mere 45 minutes; it is shockingly easy to go from something to nothing. It's like anything else though, I guess - anyone who has remodeled a bathroom can vouch for how quickly it is possible to destroy something that took weeks, months, maybe even years to create.)

We don’t like to admit this, but in all areas of life mistakes are bound to happen. We all make them at some point or another - especially when you decide inexplicably to abandon all reason and set forth on a whim. What is rarer is the opportunity to immediately rectify that mistake and, in doing so, completely obliterate the memory of it. I have already begun re-knitting the sweater and, comfortingly, version 2.0 is turning out infinitely better. If I hadn’t told you about version 1, it would have been like it never existed at all. Perhaps I put too much stock in this, but as a person who has regrets, has made errors that I can never rectify, it is comforting to know that there is at least one field of human endeavor in which do-overs really can happen.

I have had a fair few new subscribers around here (Welcome! I’m glad to have ya) so I wanted to quickly mention that I do have an online shop with making-related gifts and supplies - if you’re interested, find pennants, patches, and plant-dyed spinning fiber at worthdrygoods.com. I’ll be back soon with more digressions on creative life.

Best,

I have not written much this past month (clearly), but I have been reading some excellent books. Because of my ongoing commitment to Anna Karenina, I have been mostly choosing to read nonfiction and poetry when I'm not involved with the Russian novel, though I did allow myself one brief, shining interlude with a contemporary novel in April. Pleasantly, a couple of these were actual physical copies, too, which is nice - I've been trying to prioritize reading my actual TBR shelf and it's good to see I'm making some kind of progress.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

What I Read

At the Existentialist Cafe, by Sarah Bakewell

In March, I read Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing, which was an incredibly thought-provoking book, and also contained some tantalizing little paragraphs about philosophy. After finishing it I was in the mood to read more about philosophy, and I've always been fond of the existentialists, so I borrowed this on Libby and loved it so much that I then ordered a physical copy off Thriftbooks. Part intro to existentialism, part biography, and part memoir, this book defies categorization but is completely absorbing. I had trouble putting it down. Bakewell does an excellent job of diving right into the details of 'The Existentialists' lives, including all of the juicy (and, in some cases, really horrible) stuff, which she analyzes with a critical eye but ultimately refrains from passing definitive judgement on. It's also a considered look at how existentialism is thought of today, and what we may find useful in it as we try to make sense of our isolating, overbearing world. This is one of those books that kind of feels like it was written for me, I loved it that much. It also introduced me to the absolutely incredible, eerily-accurate 1909 short story The Machine Stops (link to PDF from UC Davis), by E.M.Forster, which I highly recommend reading.

Greta & Valdin, by Rebecca K. Reilly

After reading a few dense nonfiction books and making a concerted effort with the Russian, I decided that I needed something a little lighter and borrowed this fun little book from my library, on the recommendation of Cameron from Slaggy Book Club (a very fun BookTube podcast). It seems that every year around this time I get the urge to read something Antipodean and this zippy, sparklingly hilarious novel about two siblings in New Zealand was just the ticket. I absolutely inhaled this - I started reading on a Thursday afternoon and finished it the next day. There is something about Southern Hemisphere humor that I completely adore, and if anyone is looking for contemporary/literary queer fiction right now, I highly recommend this.

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, by Judith Jones

After reading the Judith Jones biography last month, I immediately requested her memoir from the library and read it in two days. While this covers a lot of the same material as the biography, and doesn't add much that's new, it was lovely to read Jones' own words - her passion for her work, and for food, comes through on every page and I admire her dedication to her authors. I hadn't realized that this book contains a couple dozen pages of recipes in the back, which is quite fun, and Jones thoughtfully presents some really nice-sounding recipes for one or two people that I will definitely be trying out. If you are a lover of food memoirs, as I am, this one will hit the spot.

The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon

I picked this up from a local bookstore a few months ago, after seeing it recommended by Amy Bornman, and I made time early in April to read a poem or two before bed and first thing in the morning. What a beautiful collection - I found myself thinking about many of these poems long after I'd read them. The opening stanza of Happiness has echoed in my thoughts for weeks.

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma, by Claire Dederer

This was on my TBR on Libby for a while, and when I saw that it was available just before I was headed on a trip, I borrowed it. I read almost the whole thing on the flight(s), unwilling and unable to put it down. A lot of people seemed to be reading this book when it came out in 2023, and in many ways it was worth the hype - thought-provoking, open-ended, and bold. In the end though I'm not sure exactly what to take from this. The questions at the center of the book form, essentially, a thought exercise, and Dederer, staunch in her resistance to simplistic conclusions, admits that the answers will always be personal ones - therefore, the book loses a bit of steam at the end. That said, there are some very interesting sections in here and a discussion of 'criticism' as an art form that I found enlightening. This is the kind of book that I have mixed feelings about but will probably, as a result, end up thinking about a lot.

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Currently Reading

At the moment I do have a contemporary novel going, one that I purchased for the traveling-home day of my vacation. I bought a copy of Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread at a thrift store before my flight and read a solid 60% of the novel before I got home. I am enjoying it, but the only way I can describe it is to say that it feels like reading a 90s movie, and I'm not sure what to think of that. Perhaps I will resolve my feelings when I finish it. I am also currently reading Zadie Smith’s 2018 essay collection, Feel Free, which is excellent.

Otherwise, I am still dedicating part of every weekend to Anna Karenina and will presumably be doing so for the rest of my life. What are you reading this spring? Anything particularly good that you’d like to recommend? Let me know, please!

Best,

Do I look more like me now? It’s hard to say, because it seems I don’t really know what me looks like these days. Is anyone feeling like themselves right now? I think my sense of myself as an individual remains, but the landscape around me has changed so much that my self-image has been destabilized. Yes, I knew what I liked/wanted/needed in the world before, but what about here?

Questions, questions. Is it a blessing or a curse to say, “May you live in interesting times”? I look around and hardly recognize the world. What was it that I wanted to do in this place? Who did I want to be, and why? The Dada manifesto resonates more and more every day.

In 2016, the artist Marisol Escobar left her estate to my local art museum, the Buffalo AKG, and in 2024 they put on a retrospective of her work. This was an exhibition that I loved so much, I went to see it multiple times (and was given the catalogue and a poster for Christmas).

Marisol is often considered a Pop artist, and during her career she worked across multiple media: sculpture, drawing, photography. All of her work is startling and humorous, but it’s the sculptures I love the most, for the way that they create a very off-kilter point of view within the person who is looking at them. Often, as I studied these pieces, I would realize that they had been made in such a way that I had to see the subject the way that Marisol did - which is almost always from a surprising, and very pointed, perspective.

This perspective is in itself a commentary, and I particularly like the way it is deployed in her large, multi-part piece The Party, which groups together 15 life-size statues and three framing wall panels. Many of the figures have Marisol’s own face, in varying levels of ridiculousness; in one, the face protrudes from the rest of the sculpted wooden figure like a projectile, while another wears a carved headdress resembling a spiky, dangerous wedding cake. The statues are glamorously dressed, and one bears an enormous tray of drinks glasses. Arranged facing outward, none of the people at this party interact with each other - they are there to be seen. Well, of course they are, because this is a sculpture, but you can feel how boring this party must be; how self-involved and preening these guests are. One of them has a TV for a head.

The first of Marisol’s works to be acquired by a museum was The Generals, which was bought by the AKG (then known as the Albright-Knox) in 1962. It depicts two Napoleonic-looking generals astride a single, barrel-bodied horse on wheels, and a zippy military tune plays faintly from somewhere as you look at the sculpture. It is, in my opinion, hilariously delightful. The detail is incredible, as I discovered on my second visit when I realized that the slightly-open mouth of the horse reveals a row of gold teeth. Many of Marisol’s sculptures are literal block-heads, with faces at multiple angles painted onto square wooden blocks, and they’re exceptionally effective here - as are the tense, awkward hands of these nervous generals as they perch on their toy horse. I won’t venture to comment on the intent behind this piece, but I find it compellingly mocking.

The piece that I actually like the most, the one I eagerly returned to on my second trip to the exhibition, and the one that I think about the most frequently since then, is called Shoe. A painted ceramic piece from 1982, it is a human foot elevated on a 3- or 4-inch block heel. The shoe-heel is merged with the foot-heel in such a way that the whole foot becomes the shoe, as the title suggests. I felt viscerally uncomfortable when I first saw this - I could somehow feel what it would be like to be this piece.

It was also so completely unexpected that I gasped out loud when I first saw it; this shoe is truly something I would never have dreamed of seeing. Most of Marisol’s work hits me like this, actually - I’ve been to a few shows at the AKG recently and this was the first exhibition I’d seen in a long time that felt so completely original, with fresh ideas and unexpected viewpoints around every corner.

I am not the first to complain of this, but the world at large feels increasingly homogenous these days, and I think this may be the source of my ennui. Everyone is cooking the same trendy recipes, wearing the same trendy shoe, and choosing from a select few political and cultural opinions that they dispense if necessary but prefer not to focus on. (Of course, part of my frustration with this comes from a place of insecurity: no longer a history-obsessed homeschooled weirdo, now I too have an office job, drive a VW Jetta, and wear loafers to work like basically every other 30-year-old woman in my city.)

It’s not necessarily that I’m looking for things that are weird for weird’s sake, but I am desperate for singularity. Hence, the cutting of the bangs. It feels difficult to develop an individual point of view when I’ve been absorbed into some kind of massive cultural POV; instead of being me, the single unit that is the unique human being I am, I feel like I’m in a singularity, hovering in a dense gray fog before being sucked into a black hole forever. Obviously, I’m being dramatic, but also, this is kind of how I feel.

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Marisol has singularity. I recently re-watched the iconic (to some people) 2010 film Submarine, Richard Ayoade’s directorial debut, and though there are clear references and stylistic influences, that too felt singular, felt like something that could only be created by Ayoade, because it was so specific to his sensibility. What I’m asking for is experiences that are unmediated by social media algorithms, things that are not designed to be universal and therefore have more individual, and more deeply-felt, appeal. I long to be shaken up by something that is so different, so out-of-left-field that my own perspective is shifted forever.

Of course, there is no way to redefine the world on my own terms, so I’ve decided that it’s me that needs to change. I’ve been looking through the same window as everyone else, and I’m tired of the view. It’s time to see from a different angle, explore new possibilities. Maybe I need to find a different window, or maybe I just need to dance down the hallway, unbothered by what the world thinks I should see.

Best,

Spring has definitely arrived, and by 'spring' I don't mean flower buds and sunny days but rather the moody, changeable weather that we get as winter fights to keep its grip. Two days ago it was 60 degrees; now it's forty and dropping. We might get snow this week, and I switch between coats (puffer or macintosh) by the hour. An umbrella is always to hand. I'm resisting the urge to plant seeds in the garden, as we'll almost certainly get another frost before the cold weather is through, and although I'm grateful not to be sliding down the sidewalk on a sheet of ice anymore, I'll admit that I wasn't quite ready for winter to be over. It's nice sitting in the house, reading and knitting and sipping tea while the snow piles up outside, and I always feel a little sad when I realize I've done that for the last time this season.

Anyway, if it hasn't been snowy, it's certainly been rainy, and what better excuse is there to sit inside with a book than a rainy day? I'm still plugging away at Anna Karenina (officially halfway through now!) but I also managed to squeeze several nonfiction books and volumes of poetry in during the month of March.

I'm curious to know how everyone else reads poetry, because it's something that causes me infinite stress: do you read one poem at a time, reading slowly and then pondering it for an hour or two, or do you breeze through them, reading one after the other, and then going back over them all a second (or third) time? Or do you have some other method? I'm never sure what to do - I want to make sure that the poems are really sinking in, but it also seems ridiculous to parcel them out like vitamins. Then again, it also seems a little unfair to the author, who must have labored over the poems for weeks, months, if not years, for the reader (me) to zip through them all in forty-five minutes. It's one of those dilemmas that I know is really ridiculous, but it also stops me from reading poetry sometimes, because I worry about it too much.

This month, however, I managed to set these anxieties aside and read TWO books of poetry, plus a few other interesting things that I'm excited to talk about, so let's get right into it.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

What I Read

Faithful + Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück

Louise Glück is one of those poets whose work I'd encountered in bits and pieces, here and there in magazines or online, but I'd never picked up one of her collections before this. Some of the imagery in this book will stay with me for a long time, I think, and I screenshotted a few lines here and there (I read this digitally, on the Libby app). Visitors from Abroad, in particular, is wonderful.

Also A Poet, by Ada Calhoun

I remember when this book came out a few years ago - I'd intended to read it and then completely forgot about it. Until I was browsing for another nonfiction book on Libby and saw that this was currently available from my library. Friends, I inhaled this book. Ultimately, it is less about Frank O'Hara than about the author's father, the late art critic Peter Schjeldahl, and her relationship with him. I found this compelling, fascinating, funny, and compulsively readable. It made me want to write poems, and read more poems, and look at art and think about art, and I've been making more collages since I finished it.

The Rain in Portgual, by Billy Collins

I like Billy Collins, but I can totally see why some people find him a bit facile. Many of the poems in this collection are very funny, definitely worthy of reading aloud to friends and loved ones - classic Collins, really. What reading this really reminded me of is how much I love this video of him reading Litany, a hilarious poem from 2002 that my husband and I have taken to quoting to each other recently - a completely random "you are still the bread and the knife" will never not make me laugh.

Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino

Sometimes, when I’ve listened to all the available episodes of my favorite podcast, I then have to cast about on Libby for an audiobook that seems interesting, which is how I found this one. A supremely odd and endearing book about an ostensible alien’s observations from earth, this was both funny and thought-provoking. At the time I had also just listened to Childhood’s End on the BBC, so I had a little science-fiction interlude at the beginning of this month which seemed appropriate for such a transitional season. The narrator of this book was excellent; I’ll probably try to read more from this author too.

The Year of Less, by Cait Flanders

At times, I am susceptible to a self-help book. This one was good to read though, because it actually did help me commit to a shopping ban that is, so far, going quite well. Not just a recounting of Flanders’ yearlong shopping ban, this delves into the reasons why we shop and what we might gain from rethinking our relationship with acquisition. A quick read, and an enjoyably useful one.

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Stitching the Self, edited by Johanna Amos and Lisa Binkley

I already wrote about this at length in last week’s newsletter, so I won’t add more here. But suffice to say, I recommend this one! It is hard to find, though - my local library system ended up having a copy.

How to Do Nothing, by Jenny Odell

Maybe it is just because this is my most-recently-finished book, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the past few days. I remember when this first came out and it seemed that everyone was reading it - I’m not sure why it took me so long to get around to it but I’m glad I finally did. Odell’s assessment of our current ‘attention economy’ is illuminating and sharp, and I felt that it was actually when she discussed philosophy that this book was at it’s best. (There’s a very good ‘intro to existentialism’ book I read in college that this reminded me of.) Odell urges a kind of mental re-positioning of ourselves within the world - both the digital and physical world - that I found fascinating, and there were many ideas that felt both relevant and resonant. This book was published in 2019, though, and I wonder what her verdict on Facebook is now.

Currently Reading

Right now, I’ve just started The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, and I’m enjoying it but also, sort of, still on the lookout for something else. I’d actually love a biography recommendation if anyone has one - I want to read something compelling and interesting about a real person.

OK, I think I’ll stop there for today. What have you been reading this month? Have you read any of the titles on my list - and if so, what did you think of them?

That’s it from me this week! Talk to you soon and take care.

Best

,

In Stitching the Self, a collection edited by Johanna Amos and Lisa Binkley, this same idea is examined in ten different chapters, written by art historians and researchers, focused on needlework as an expression of identity and selfhood. In the lengthy introduction, the authors describe the book as an exploration of “the multiple ways in which stitching - whether worked by the embroiderer, knitter, quilter, or dressmaker - enabled individuals and communities to remake themselves and the world around them.”

The text is divided into three sections: Emerging Identity: Reconsidering the Narratives of the Needle, which analyzes four different textile artists and the way in which they used their work to expand and define their ideas about themselves. In part 2, Elaborating Identity: Expressing Ideology, Crafting Community, the authors examine three specific textile pieces and what they tell us about the societal circumstances and cultural traditions that influenced their creation. The last section, Recovering Identity: Locating the Self Through Needlework, explores the different meanings of the physical act of stitching, and how that may change over time.

I picked this book up (or rather, requested it from my local library system) specifically because I wanted to read the chapter on Bloomsbury needlework, and ended up finding the whole work to be thoroughly fascinating. Material culture in general is something I’m deeply interested in, and doubly so when the focus is on textiles. I was pleased to find pieces in here on Jane Morris and Elizabeth Zimmermann, an analysis of a twentieth-century suffragist banner, and an essay about the Bayeux Tapestry. Ideas on ‘self-definition through needlework’ and ‘stitch[ing] an alternate self’ abound throughout the text, and I ended up taking detailed notes on most of the chapters - though unfortunately some of them are unreadable as I wrote them while experiencing mild turbulence on an airplane.

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Jane Morris used her skill as an embroiderer and dressmaker to both contribute materially to the artistic movement that was pioneered by her husband, William Morris, and to express her own unique vision of herself as a quasi-medieval artist, a queenly figure in dramatic, robe-like gowns that differed greatly from popular fashions. Elizabeth Zimmermann, in her quietly revolutionary way, “emphasized knitters as independent craftspeople responsible for their own material and design choices, in opposition to the popular knitting industry’s definition of knitters as uncritical pattern-followers.” I like that, to some degree, these essays both discuss matters of wardrobe. Both of these stitchers, through different mediums and in different time periods, used their abilities to produce clothing that presented them to the world in the way that they wanted to be seen. If they did not use stitching to define themselves, at the very least they used it to visually express their personalities.

Similarly, a little vogue for knitting in the Bloomsbury Group, around the time of WWI, was as much an exploration of gender roles and performative femininity as it was a patriotic wartime task. Virginia Woolf stitched because of its “therapeutic role in times of stress”, while Adrian Stephen and Lytton Strachey used their knitting to signal “sexual non-conformity, as needlework and femininity were so intertwined.” Interestingly, this piece also analyzes Bloomsbury needlework projects as a whole in terms of their relationship to Victorian textile traditions. Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant designed many needlework patterns, most of which were stitched into life by his mother, and these pieces (among others) can be seen as a kind of subversion or re-invention of traditional needlework. The author of this chapter, Joseph McBrinn, writes that “analysis of Bloomsbury needlework reveals a closer correspondence between Victorian culture and modern art than has generally been acknowledged in canonical histories of modernism.” Heady stuff indeed, if you are me!

The use of needlework to stake a claim, to stamp one’s name upon the world, is most evident in the chapter on a suffragette banner from 1910. This banner, created by an instructor and her students at the Glasgow School of Art, was made for the Women’s Social and Political Union and it contains the embroidered names of 80 women who were imprisoned at protests for women’s voting rights. The women hand-stitched their own names on rectangles of linen, and these pieces were then assembled into an enormous, strikingly minimalist banner that was exhibited in a gallery and used in voting rights processions. It is an imposing textile, both because of its size and its stark message about the lengths women were (are) willing to go to in order to achieve their goals - many of the names on the banner belong to women who had participated in hunger strikes.

I’ve described here only a few of my favorite pieces in the book, but there is much more valuable material to be found. The second-to-last chapter includes a wonderful quote from the artist Louise Bourgeois: “When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I’ve always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness.” I like this perspective on the stitch as a point of connection which, I think is part of the point being made here: needlework can be used to put some part of yourself out there, into the universe, where it might make contact with part of someone else.

Reading academic works as a non-academic is always an interesting exercise. My educational background is in science, so I’m used to reading long, rather dry, technical papers on laboratory research, literature reviews, and public policy. Encountering this same type of dense, scholarly work in relation to textiles, crafts, and material culture, however - subjects I’m interested in for mostly personal reasons - often feels a little jarring. The first chapter in this book was actually rather difficult to get through - true academic word-salad. The rest of the book, however, is well-written, engaging, and thought-provoking. I might make long-form reviews of craft- and textile-related books a regular feature on the newsletter, so please let me know if you’ve enjoyed reading this or if you’d rather hear something else from me.

That’s it from me this week! Talk to you soon and take care.

Best,

This morning I made my coffee and got back into bed and simply sat there, sipping, thinking. Mostly I was pondering A Complete Unknown, which my husband and I saw last night, and deciding what sets I would do at the pool today. It was nice. Normally, at that time, I write my morning pages or scroll on my phone, but today it felt better just to sit with my thoughts for a while.

An hour or so later, I was swimming laps, which also leaves one with plenty of time for musing. I can’t really tell you what I think about when I’m in the pool though, because I don’t quite know what it is. Mostly I focus on my breathing, and not hitting the lane line, and sometimes I even get a little bored, which feels nice.

Last year, right around this time, I wrote a piece about trying to be on my phone less, and engage my brain more. It’s hard to say whether I was successful at this in 2024 or not, since every day I still think I should delete all the apps off my phone and treat it like a (very expensive) landline, but I do feel that now I am more conscious of how I spend my time, at least. On Substack right now it seems that everyone is talking about deleting their Instagram account, and breaking up with their phones, so I’m far from this first to say this, but I kind of hate the Internet right now and I want to spend much less of my life online.

I wrote the first part of this piece a few weeks ago, meaning to come back to it much sooner than this. A few days after I expressed my desire to reform my Internet habits, I sorted all of the apps on my phone into folders, set the background to a plain light purple, and deleted Instagram (the app itself, not my account). I said, on Instagram, that I was deleting it 'for a while or maybe forever' and while I still haven't decided what the duration will be, I have a feeling that it will turn into 'forever'. Because I feel so much better without it.

I know I'm late to this particular party - everyone on Substack is deleting Instagram right now, and two of my favorite newsletter writers, Cody Cook-Parrott and Ani Lee, have been off the app for years. But because I own a small (micro) business, it felt like I had to be on there. I put up with it for a while, trying to participate, but mostly just spending hours and hours and hours scrolling (and guiltily ignoring direct messages). My screen time went up; my feelings of well-being and my capacity for creativity went down.

After announcing my departure and deleting the app, I immediately felt relief. And then I felt nothing. I didn't immediately start sewing a bunch of garments or knitting 300 rows or making a collage every day, though I did read more books on my phone than I had been before. It seems that I had to go through some kind of de-programming process, because it's only in the last week or so that I've started to feel more space in my brain, like I've purged whatever it was about social media that was taking up so much real estate. It's only now that I've started sewing a little more, writing poems, thinking about collages I want to make.

What I've realized over the past weeks is that not only did I feel relief when I deleted Instagram, I felt I'd been relieved of something, like it was a burden I'd been carrying around without even knowing it. It had been feeling like an obligation for a while, but I don't think I'd realized just how draining it was. As a late adopter of social media (I joined both Facebook and Instagram much later than all of my friends did), I started wondering why I hadn't just stuck to my guns all those years ago, and refused to join at all?

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The thing is, I'm very introverted. There is nothing better, in my opinion, than a day spent in silence and the comfort of my own home. And I think I might be too introverted for social media. Far from it being a nice way to connect with others, I actually find being on an app like Instagram to be just as socially depleting as going to a big party would be. Without it, I have more energy to actually see and connect with my friends in real life. I hadn't realized how much effort I was expending on an app that was giving me very little in return, and the perspective I’ve gained from a few weeks without it feels invaluable.

I joke about being a Luddite all the time, but part of me really does hate technology (and, of course, the tech bros who own all of these apps - last month I canceled my Spotify account, too). Doing a cost-benefit analysis on my iPhone always makes me feel that I’m overpaying enormously just to be able to go on Wikipedia whenever I want. While switching to a dumbphone is tempting, that’s a big leap to make - so who knows where I will go from here, though I have to say I can’t really see myself logging back into Instagram any time soon. I am curious to know if any other introverts (there must be quite a few of us here on Substack, yes?) feel similarly overwhelmed by social media, and what your solution is.

You know, I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve been more creative recently but I feel that the potential is there. I’ve had more ideas in the past couple of weeks than I have in the last few months (I think). Perhaps it’s just the prospect of spring approaching, of soon being able to stop on the sidewalk and look at a flower growing up out of a crack in the pavement. The plants will start doing things and that always makes me feel like doing things too.

Best,

The problem with reading a very long book, such as Anna Karenina, is that it takes a long time. Though I have now read 294 pages, I am still only about one-third of the way through, and by my calculations if I continue at this pace I will finish sometime in June. So that's less than exciting to hear about, I'm sure. However, I am still having a good time with Tolstoy; I'm particularly fond of Konstantin Levin and his delight in manual labor. Having gone into this fairly blind, I've been surprised by how readable and, dare I say, gossipy the novel is - I never feel like I am plodding along, or at least I haven't thus far (perhaps I'll feel differently on page 694). Not sure how much of this is down to the translation, but I'm happy to be enjoying myself regardless.

At the moment I am trying to avoid reading any thinkpieces about Anna Karenina or even Tolstoy generally - one of the most fun things about reading classics, I think, is forming your own opinion of them and I try to remain uninfluenced while I'm reading. It's too early for me to have an official 'take' but I'm looking forward to digesting this novel; I imagine that I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Because Anna Karenina is so big, it lives next to my bed and I mostly read it in bed, on the weekends. (This is the one fault of the novel, so far - it is too large to stay open on it's own, so I cannot knit and read at the same time. A tragedy!) At other times though I have been reading other books, mostly ones that I mentally place in a very different category than 'Russian Novel', such as biographies and volumes of poetry. I believe in having a variety of books on the go at once; it keeps the mind engaged. In addition to this I listened to a fantastic adaptation of Behind the Scenes At the Museum, which is not technically a book but I am going to recommend it as a literary listen. Anyway, let's jump in.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

What I Read

Crudo, by Olivia Laing

I genuinely forgot that I read this until I looked up my February finished books in Storygraph, so you can surmise that I did not love it. It was interesting though, and I was not unhappy while I was reading it. This is a short and, as I said, unusual novel, fairly experimental it seems, based on the life of a real artist but also somewhat autofictional? The structure is a little confusing and I found it difficult to orient myself within the story. This book was written - hurriedly, it feels - in 2017 and explicitly mentions the first Trump presidency, a certain British PM, all of that. It's a real fly-in-amber look at how people were thinking and feeling then and I found it pretty depressing, actually, when comparing it to the vibe today. We're all so grim-faced and accepting now. Things have got so much worse, and yet somehow we've just gotten used to it. A fascinating read, if only for that bit of perspective.

Dish: How Gossip Became the News and the News Became Just Another Show, by Jeanette Walls

In the mood for non-fiction as a break from the Russian epic, I borrowed this because a) it was available and b) I love Jeanette Walls. This was an extremely fascinating look at how gossip reporting, once a clearly-defined and separate area of journalism, has bled into the mainstream news over the last 100 years. Walls is detailed and unsparing, and the implications of the tabloid-ification of news certainly give one pause. As I reached the end, I found myself wishing that Walls would write an updated version - as this book was published in 2000, I would love to see it expanded to cover social media and it's effect on 'the news' and journalism in general.

Men Have Called Her Crazy, by Anna Marie Tendler

Now, what to say about this. A compelling read, for sure - I read it in two days - but not necessarily, I would say, good. All of the 'mixed' reviews on BookMarks basically sum up this book: well-written but ultimately seeming to lack substance. I can relate to Tendler's man-hating perspective and wanted to like this memoir, but was left feeling that her main problem is, well, herself. So that's a bummer. Also, I would have liked to read more about the lampshades!

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The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America, by Sara B. Franklin

I suspected that I would love this book, and my goodness did I - what a fascinating read. Judith Jones really was a legendary editor: the list of authors that she edited, including names such as John Updike, Julia Child (of course), Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Marcella Hazan, Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Bowen(!), Langston Hughes, and Marion Cunningham, is dazzling. She herself was an incredibly interesting woman, spending years in postwar Paris before returning home to New York City to work at Knopf, where she remained for over 50 years. I thought this was an excellent biography - comprehensive, respectful, enthusiastic. Highly recommend it.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson - BBC version

Now, this is not a book, per se - it’s a BBC adaptation of the novel, which I read a few years ago, and it is fabulous. Hilarious, heart-wrenching, and just really, really well-dramatized. I loved the book when I read it and highly recommend this version of it.

Currently Reading

At the moment I don’t have much on - Also A Poet, by Ada Calhoun, which I haven’t technically started yet, and Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück. A few library holds have also just come in, including Stitching the Self: Identity and the Needle Arts, which I am very excited to dive into. For the most part, though, I’m still just reading Anna Karenina and plan to keep it that way for a while.

However, last weekend I did have a major score at the thrift store and found five pristine Yearling editions from the Paddington series - yes, my household is Paddington-obsessed! Most of my evenings last week were spent sitting by the fire reading a Paddington book, and I honestly cannot recommend this enough. I’d forgotten just how endearing and entertaining the series is (and if you can find the audio versions, read by Hugh Bonneville, so much the better). A highly enjoyable way to relax after work.

All right, that’s it from me this week. Please tell me what you have been reading this month - and if you’ve read any of the titles on my February list, let me know what you thought of them!

Best,

Well February is flying by, isn't it? I've been a bit AWOL this month, trying to write and failing to come up with anything I feel is good enough to publish here. Sometimes that happens, and I try not to worry about it too much. (I did worry about it this time, though, felt that all good ideas were gone forever, got trapped in my own panic, wrote less than ever.)

The truth is it's been cold and windy, the snow is piling up, and all I want to do is stay inside knitting and listening to Hugh Bonneville reading Sherlock Holmes stories for the BBC. So this is, mostly, what I am doing. I have not been writing, and I've not been sewing, though I did bake a cake the other day. My mending pile grows, and the pieces of a shirt sit in the attic, waiting to be stitched together.

We walked through the falling snow to the movie theater on the weekend, arriving soaked through with melted snowflakes. My pink knitted hat dripped onto the touchscreen as I bought our tickets to the matinee showing of Paddington in Peru. (Yes, my husband and I took ourselves to go see a children's movie on a Saturday afternoon and yes, we very much enjoyed it.) Settling into my seat, I carefully arranged the three balls of yarn I'd brought with me, and prepared to spend the next hour and a half with my feet up, working on my most recent cast-on - my ideal weekend activity.

It is at times like these that I really rely on my knitting. When I don't have the energy to do much besides sit on the couch and read of an evening, I can at least still make progress on a knitting project at the same time. Not only do I still get the satisfaction of feeling like I've achieved something, but the act of knitting keeps me in touch with my own creativity. Spending even the smallest amount of time on my making practice is restorative and energizing in equal measure; it’s an essential part of my day.

My motivation for sewing tends to wax and wane, but my dedication to my knitting never wavers - I knit for at least a quarter of an hour on most days, and it has been my lifeline over these past few weeks. When I don't have a knitting project, I feel uncomfortable, incomplete, like I’ve put my shoes on without any socks. Most of this newsletter gets written in my head while I knit, the sentences slowly forming to the rhythm of the stitches.

This summer, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, I finally saw Vanessa Bell’s portrait of her sister, Virginia Woolf, in person. I love this painting so much. It’s an incredibly intimate portrait - the tenderness of it, the way you can tell, just by looking at it, that Virginia is the younger sister. That wisp of hair on her forehead, so distinctive.

I also love how well it captures the feeling of drowsing by the fire with your knitting. (There is no fire depicted in the painting, but I feel sure that she must be sitting near one.) Who knows what Virginia is thinking of here - the painting is dated to 1912, the year that the two sisters rented Asheham, a country house in Sussex, where Virginia finished The Voyage Out; also the year that Virginia and Leonard Woolf were married1. She might be contemplating the themes of her next novel, or really just falling asleep over her handwork. Either way, she looks contented and, I always think, very safe, tucked into the armchair like that.

The text plate in the museum ended with a sentence that amuses me: “The blurred eyes suggest the importance of her inner creativity.” I feel sure that the creativity referred to there is of the literary kind and yet, as a knitter myself, I am most curious about what she might be stitching. Is that a sock, a sweater sleeve, a tea cozy? Is it something of her own design, or is she following a pattern? Is she pleased with how it is working up? Where is that yarn from? Knitting is, in itself, so creative, not only in a purely mechanical way (you are literally creating something) but also in the endless artistic choices - of colors, motifs, textures - that it requires.

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In 1912, Virginia wrote to Leonard that ‘Knitting is the saving of life’2. I know what she means. For weeks now, I've been meaning to sew something, to make a collage, to learn a new song on the ukulele, to write a newsletter. I've failed to do any of those things, but I have knitted a vest for my (forthcoming) nephew, a mug cozy for my mom, and am working now on a striped sweater, made with a few special skeins of yarn that I purchased on a trip to France last summer. When it feels like I have nothing else, there is always my knitting.

Best,

January has been a wonderfully long month for me - after the rushing whirlwind that is December, life seemed to slow way, way down. I've been trying to prioritize knitting and sewing this month, and for several weeks I was doing market prep, so I've actually not done as much reading as I thought that I might. Two books finished, and I'm still meandering through Anna Karenina. However, I think this is a case of quality over quantity, as I've absolutely loved everything I have read and am enjoying Tolstoy tremendously.

Reading in midwinter is always a bit tricky, I think. There's such an atmosphere to this particular time of year, and you have to find something that suits it. You have to have the right sort of book, I mean, a very quiet novel, or some contemplative nonfiction, or maybe just a couple of cookbooks by the bed, to savor before going to sleep.

Personally, I’ve also found that I am enjoying silence this month, and have not been able to find an audiobook that I like. I gave up on Weyward, though I might revisit it at some point, then started listening to I Who Have Never Known Men, completely forgot about it, and my library loan expired. Two failures, so I decided to take a break from audiobooks for a while. Perhaps what I need is another children’s fantasy series to listen to on audio - I think I’ll see if my library has Redwall audiobooks.

Anyway, here’s what I did read this month.

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, from which I earn a small commission if a purchase is made. No Am*z*n links are used, and as always I encourage you to borrow from your local library either in person or through the Libby app.

What I Read

Orbital, by Samantha Harvey

You may recall that I began reading this novel as an ebook a few months ago, but my library loan expired just after it won the Booker Prize and it was immediately requested by dozens of people, so the wait was going to be weeks and weeks. Fortunately for me, my darling husband got me the paperback for Christmas.

I started reading this on the plane home from England on New Year’s Eve, and finished it on January 1st. Friends, let me tell you: I adored this book. There has been a lot of hype around this novel, especially since it won the Booker, and I think it deserves all of the adulation and more. It is quiet, pensive, intense, incandescent. Some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever encountered, this is a meditation on climate change, progress, and the meaning of home and family. It’s definitely a literary novel, but my husband, who reads mostly nonfiction history books, was also completely captivated by it. One of the loveliest books I’ve ever read, I felt somehow more sad and more optimistic about humanity at the same time.

A Thousand Feasts, by Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater is one of my favorite food writers of all time, and it’s a shame he isn’t better known in the US. (His Observer column has inspired many a meal at my house.) This book was also a Christmas gift from my husband, and I initially picked it up as a lighter counterpoint to Anna Karenina - however, I was soon reading only this book at home and I finished it rather quickly. The sub-title to this book is “small moments of joy…a memoir of sorts” and that is a very accurate description of it. The ‘chapters’ are short, often only half a page, and they describe fleeting moments in Slater’s life: a spruce-tip cocktail in Norway, a visit to a potter’s studio, breakfast at a tiny hotel in Japan. It is beautiful, delicious, inspiring. There’s also a lovely chapter on visibly-mended sweaters, which I found particularly endearing.

Currently Reading

The major book I have on the go at the moment is Anna Karenina, which has just recently started stressing me out a little bit. Anna Arkadyevna is about to do something very foolish, I fear. In all other respects I am enjoying this tremendously and find it very hard to put down once I start reading it.

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I’m also reading Crudo by Olivia Laing, which I borrowed from my library on a whim. I have some thoughts and feelings about this book, but I think I will save them for next month’s reading list.

Before I go, I wanted to say quickly that I had a such a fabulous time at the Rust Belt Fibershed symposium - truly a wonderful, inspiring, and heartwarming event. I sold out of naturally-dyed spinning fiber at the market, but I have made a few more batts and now have them listed on my website. They're absolutely lovely, regional fibers that are dyed with vegetable waste (from my local grocery co-op) and then hand-blended, and you can find them here if you are interested.

I also drew my monthly cover for February’s morning pages, and I’m very pleased with how this one turned out. Inspired, as ever, by Art Nouveau book covers, I had a great time designing this one and am already looking forward to drawing next month’s cover.

So, what have you been reading this month? Do you also struggle to find just the right book in January? Any tried-and-true favorites for a cold winter’s night read?

Best,

Winter always feels, to me, like a rather solitary season, and in our corner of the world, January is deep winter. It’s contemplative, introspective. The hush of the world, when blanketed in snow, makes one turn inwards. Thanks to Katherine May and her brilliant book Wintering, I think we are all familiar now with the concept of slowing down throughout the winter, expecting less of ourselves, and surrendering to a kind of hibernation as the days get darker and colder. This is a philosophy of living that I very much embrace, and therefore I have spent most of this month pottering about the house, baking bread, knitting, hand-sewing on the couch, reading books in the bath. In my office at work, I wrap up in a big shawl and make afternoon tea. Hot chocolate has become my evening drink of choice, and we’re cooking a lot of soups.

I’m still swimming a few times a week, and doing short yoga sequences on most days, but this month I have really allowed myself to focus simply on the current moment, and do what feels good right now. January always seems like the perfect time to check in with yourself and do a bit of stock-taking. How am I feeling? What is important to me right now? What do I want to spend my time on? Often, I feel like having a quiet evening at home, or spending a weekend morning in bed with my cat and a good read. And so this is what I have been doing.

There are, of course, always projects on the go. I finished knitting a vest for my husband, meant to be a Christmas present but received for Twelfth Night instead. I took myself upstairs for a few days and sewed a gym bag and a pair of trousers, which was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a weekend. This week, I have been dyeing a lot of fiber (of which more soon).

As a self-identified introvert, I love this slow season. Leaning into routine and habit feels correct, somehow, and I relish the rhythms of my very predictable days. Coffee, work, swim, dinner, bed. If it’s a weekend: coffee, reading, coffee, breakfast, sewing, dinner, movie, bed. Of course, I don’t want to mislead you: one part of the reason I’ve been sticking to a simple routine is that my anxiety is on the upswing recently. Keeping my daily life predictable helps me manage, and the pool has become a real lifeline for me when it comes to my mental health.

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On Friday mornings, I walk to my favorite local cafe and meet my friend who is writing a novel. We type sporadically, chatting about our lives and work and mutual friends, lapsing into silence when struck by inspiration. We began doing this in late autumn, and it has quickly become a treasured part of my week. It’s even more lovely to walk through the neighborhood when the early-morning air is biting and the snow makes everything sparkle, and the warmth of the cafe after 15 minutes in sub-freezing temperatures is sublime.

I hope winter is treating you well, if it is winter where you are. This year I am reminded, again, that it really is one of my favorite seasons (despite the lack of sunshine and the time-consuming necessity of brushing snow off my car every time I want to use it). There is something magical about the depths of winter; I will always feel that. I’ve lived in Buffalo for my whole life and I still feel a thrill when I walk through a flurry of snow, catching flakes on my tongue.

When it’s cold and blustery outside, I find it very comforting to sit inside at my spinning wheel. Right now I’m spinning fiber that I dyed with onion skins a few years ago, and the color is absolutely stunning. I love it so much, in fact, that I’ve developed a little range of spinning fiber blends - which I am extremely excited to announce I will be bringing to the Rust Belt Fibershed Symposium this weekend in Cleveland, OH.

I am thrilled to be vending at the symposium, and I will have pennants, patches, printed manifestos, and this collection of regional fibers, hand-dyed and blended by me! I have used wool fiber sourced from farms in New York State, Pennsylvania, and New England, dyed with vegetable waste from my local co-op and low-impact acid dyes. Several different breeds are represented in these blends, and this fiber would be beautiful for hand-spinning or needle felting!

This idea has been developing for years, and I’m so excited to be bringing it to fruition. After the symposium I will be listing stock on my website, and will continue developing new color blends and working with some new fibers. I’ve sourced a raw wool from a biodynamic farm in Central New York that I am really excited to work with, and I hope to get my hands on some local alpaca soon too.

Okay, that’s it from me for this week - I’m off to get more braids of roving ready for the symposium. Please feel free to send this post to anyone that you think may be interested in buying local wool, and do let me know if anyone else is planning to attend the symposium - I’d love to see you there! Otherwise, take care and try to find some joy in this deep winter season, if you can.

Best,