New Year, New Knits + Reads!

Hi there!

I started this blog nearly a year ago, right after graduating from college (yay, me!), and haven’t actually published anything on it since then. I’ve got a couple google docs lying around with partially edited blog posts, but it’s been scary to get anything out. So, I decided not to do some really fancy, planned out introduction, and instead just go with the flow (the most terrifying thing a perfectionist can do).

Also, this was originally going to be a craft blog, particularly for my knitting and crochet project. I have decided to expand into writing about books as well, because I can and I want to!

New Year

I’m about two weeks late, but happy 2026! I’m still struggling to write the correct year on the date, but I don’t have to do that too often now that I’m out of school. I’ve never been much for new years’ resolutions, but well. Last year was so tough that I’m really motivated to make some changes and improvements. One of the biggest changes I’ve already made is that I quit my job! It’s kind of a terrible time to do that, what with the state of the job market, but it was a super necessary decision.

Regardless of whether you subscribe to the concept of resolutions, I think the new year is a great time to take a look at your life and set some goals for the future. I’ve been struggling with the future for a while now, so I’m trying to make my goals really small and attainable. Writing for this blog is one of my goals this year! I want to go back to school at some point, and writing is an incredibly important skill to hone for that. I don’t expect this blog to be at the level of academic writing I need to get to, but I think practicing the actions of typing and verbalizing my thoughts will help a lot. Hopefully, that’ll mean a lot of fun posts for you guys to read and enjoy!

New Knits (+ continuing projects)

Another goal I have for the new year, and every year, and which I constantly fail, is to commit to a few craft projects and actually finish them. I currently have… at least five ongoing projects, some as old as a year and a half, and I just started a new one! I know, I know, I should be publicly shamed. Most of my projects at the moment are knits, but I also crochet and it’s really easy for me to get distracted by a short crochet project.

Right now, I’m using some leftover yarn from a Christmas gift I made to knit some fingerless gloves. There’s no real pattern, I just measured my wrist and knit a gauge swatch, and then I’m knitting stockinette until it seems long enough. I’m using three colors, a dark gray, light gray, and white, and they are all SUPER fluffy. I really wanted to create an ombre (is that word still used?) look, so I tried my hand at some color switching within rows. I think I have a vague goal of learning knit colorwork this year, so that I can eventually go to Shetland Wool Week (!!! I wrote a paper about Shetland Lace Knitting in college and it would be SO awesome to learn from the masters). But this wasn’t anything I would call real colorwork, just switching yarn for each stitch for two rows. Plus, my stockinette is curling impressively at the moment, so I’m not sure how visible any of that will be!

This was a recent project started because my apartment is so drafty I need to wear gloves while I knit even in my room with the heater on (and I run hot!). Once I finish these guys, I’ll be back to working on my first cabling project that I started October/November 2024. I was hoping to finish it in time for Christmas, but I got distracted by other Christmas presents. And I’m sure all knitters know how long it takes to make a sweater—at least it’s a vest, so I won’t have to get stuck on sleeve island!

New Reads

Reading is never something I build super specific goals for, although I do participate in the Goodreads yearly reading challenges (currently planning on 60 books this year!). There are times when I need more of a push to read, but I’m on a pretty good stretch right now (knock on wood). I attempted NYT’s Summer Reading Bucket List last year and actually checked off eight of the ten items (let me know if you want a retrospective on that!), so I’ll probably do something similar this year.

My roommate also showed me a video someone did of “reading my height in books” and she thinks I should try it out. It looks super cool but I am in fact a library girlie and own nearly none of the books I read, so I will be trying to find them all on Am*z*n and using those measurements (paperback, if possible, to be most accurate). I mostly read horror, but I’ve been branching back into some silly little romance novels and graphic novels when I need a break. So far this year, I’ve completed four books (wow!).

The first book I finished this year was Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt (0.63in). This one was more of the last book from last year than the first book from this year, but I’m counting it based on when I finished it. I think there is a version of me that loves this book, but it is not the version who read it this time. I was really hoping for a happy coming of age romance and it was certainly coming of age but it was more bittersweet and definitely not what I would consider romance. I definitely still think I’d recommend it, especially to poetry fans, as the author was previously published as a poet.

Then I went to the library and devoured Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks and Stones by Ngozi Ukazu (0.8in). This book was happy coming of age romance and also a comic that I’ve loved for years (can you believe it was published EIGHT YEARS AGO? I feel old). I definitely have critiques for this book but at the end of the day it was fun and I wanted fun. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for fun, especially if you’re trying to get out of a reading slump or if you loved the Scott/Kip parts of Heated Rivalry (nowhere near as steamy, though).

The next book I read was Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto (0.75in). I kind of slogged my way through this book, and mostly listened to the audiobook while walking/knitting. I think I’m getting really tired of anthologies. There were parts of this book that I found really good and interesting, and I’d recommend it to fans of literary fiction, but I was also trying to finish it really fast so that I could move on to…

The Succubus’s Prize by Katee Robert (0.46in). I ADORED this book. I read two chapters on Sunday and then the whole rest of it from midnight to 3AM last night. I have been unsuccessfully trying to get this book since it came out in 2024, but I finally got my hands on it in December and was anxiously awaiting the time to read it. Katee Robert is more famous for her other series, most notably an absurd Greek mythology retelling that I, as a classicist, will never read, but I have been a fan of the Deal With a Demon series since 2023. The focus on consent in these books is absurd to the point of hilarity, but it’s also truly full of love and care. I also think she does a really good job of keeping consent in-universe, rather than having the characters sort of turn to the audience and let us know everything is A-okay. She shows characters truly struggling with the dynamics that these deals have created in interesting (but mostly fun) ways. I would recommend this to anyone looking for more of the fun you actually get in Heated Rivalry (iykyk).

Okay, so far I have read 2.64in. I am 5′6″, or 66in, so I’ve got 63.36 inches to go! Thanks so much for reading, and please feel free to ask any questions or suggest post ideas in the comments :)