Unraveled, Week 52/2022

Look at that -- we've reached the final Wednesday of 2022, just like that! I have to start off this last Unraveled post of the year by thanking Kat for hosting this weekly link-up, truly the highlight of my blogging week!

I know because it's the last week of the year, many of you are doing end-of-year wrap-up posts, but I'm saving that for the end of the week and doing my typical Wednesday post today.

As is typical for me when we are on vacation in Florida, I've been getting a lot of knitting done. That's been even more the case this year because we've had unseasonably cold temperatures here (lows in the 30s, if you can believe it), so there's been much more time spent inside. My Recalibrate has been my main focus, and if you remember my photo of it last Friday, I was in the middle of my seventh stripe on the left front. As of yesterday afternoon, here's what it looked like:

The left side (as worn) is now complete, and I actually added another stripe on the right front after taking this photo. I don't think I will finish the top before we leave to go home, but I may very well finish up the right side. There's still finishing to do on the neckline after that as well as some additional length to add to the body. I think it's likely this will be my first FO of 2023.

I've also been working on a pair of socks for Rainbow, whose feet have grown yet again! They're now just half an inch shorter than mine, which means that as long as she doesn't mind a little extra wiggle room in the toes, she can borrow my socks (and I've already given her a pair that were on the small side for me). These are being knit in Knit Picks Felici, which we recently stocked up on. Rainbow has expressed interest in learning to knit socks herself, so perhaps she will make her own next pair.

Reading has been excellent this past week and looks to stay that way through the end of the year. I have two finishes since last Wednesday.

I had a pretty long wait to get Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow from the library, but it was absolutely worth it. What everyone else has said about not needing to know anything about video games to enjoy this book is spot on. I am not and have never been a gamer, but I adored this book. At its heart, it's the story of a friendship and its many ups and downs. And it's a beautifully written story of the two main characters, who I came to care about so much that I could not put this book down. If you haven't read this book yet, please put it on your TBR list. This is one I may need to go buy a copy of because I think I will want to reread it. I gave it 5 stars.

Usually when we come on this vacation, I get the benefit of reading books that my mother has already bought, and that was the case with The Winners, the third and final book in the Beartown series. I loved the first two books and was really looking forward to the third, but unfortunately it didn't quite live up to my expectations. My mother said she thinks the author was just too attached to the characters and didn't want to let go of them yet, and I think that's a fair assessment. I appreciated that the story was wrapped up, but I think this final installment was too long and too drawn out; the book is nearly 700 pages long and about twice as long as I think it needed to be. Many times I found myself thinking, "Just get on with it already!" But the last chapter made me cry, so it wasn't entirely a wasted read. I would say that unless you really want to know how everything works out for the characters, you can probably skip it, particularly if you don't like long books. I gave it 3 stars.

I'm now reading what may or may not be my last finish of the year, and it's another one I've had a long wait for at the library: Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts. I only started it yesterday and am already a third of the way through it and enjoying it a lot.

I hope you're having a good last week of 2022 and would love to hear what you're trying to finish up before we roll over into 2023!