Unraveled, Week 23/2026

Happy Wednesday! It has been a steamy start to the week, and I've found that I've been less and less tolerant of heat and humidity, so I've just accepted that it's the time of year when I'm going to have to deal with being sweaty all the time. I've also pretty much given up on blow-drying my hair unless I really feel like I want to look nice -- wet bun for the win! This weather is probably why I've feel a little unexcited about knitting lately, but I did promise some more official FO shots of my recent finishes and it's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with Kat and the Unravelers as per usual.

First, the baby pants!

The pattern is Rocky from Tin Can Knits. I chose the smallest size (0-6 months), even though I usually make a larger size for baby knits, because this baby will be born in Sweden and will need some warm clothing right away. I knit these at the gauge called for in the pattern, 24 stitches over 4 inches, but the fabric seems a little too loose for my taste, so the next time I knit these -- and trust me, there will be a next time -- I will likely either use a smaller needle and one of the larger sizes or just use thicker yarn. As is always the case with TCK patterns, this one was a breeze to follow and didn't require any modification. I didn't even need to wind off any yarn to start the second leg because the first one was bound off in just the right spot!

Next up, that hat I wasn't sure about:

I hope you can excuse the crazy hair; I pulled out the bun to get the hat to fit as it should. The reason I wasn't so sure about the hat is that I'm not sure if the pointy-uppy part looks fun or just ridiculous. I'm sure it'll suit someone, though, and that's just as well because this is going to the charity pile. But I was experimenting with the crown decreases all the same to satisfy my curiosity for design purposes. Any thoughts are welcome!

I'm sticking with a more traditional look for the current hat on the needles (also for the charity pile), which is now onto the ribbing.

Reading! There's been more of it! Here are the books I've finished this week:

I love a retelling of a classic, and I especially love a retelling of a Jane Austen novel. Unmarriageable is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in early 21st-century Pakistan, and it's brilliantly done. Alys (the Elizabeth Bennet character) is even an English literature teacher who loves Jane Austen! What was really interesting about this book was that storylines didn't really have to be modernized all that much to make sense, and the author notes that when she first read Austen, she very much felt like the world of those novels were nearly identical to the Pakistani society she knew. The author reads the audiobook and does a good job with the voices and accents. I also really appreciated the names she came up with for the characters and the traits that made them so recognizable. I gave it 4.5 stars, rounded up.

I wanted something fairly light and whimsical next, so I went for A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping, a relatively recent release (it came out last summer) that I've heard mentioned on podcasts several times. Sera was once a young witch with incredible powers, but she lost them and was exiled from the local guild after she cast a powerful spell to bring her beloved great aunt (and, inadvertently, the aunt's beloved late rooster) back to life. Fifteen years later, she's running the inn where they live and that's slightly magical in such a way that it appears to those who need it and thus has become home to people who don't seem to fit in anywhere. While it's partly a story about Sera trying to get her powers back, what I enjoyed the most about it was that it was a story about found family and people coming to love themselves. I gave it 4 stars.

In Unlikely Animals, Emma Starling, who once possessed the ability to heal people through touch, has returned to her childhood home in a small New Hampshire town. She was accepted to medical school but decided not to go, and when she learns that her father has a mysterious brain disease causing him to hallucinate animals and the ghost of a famous local naturalist, going home seems to be the best option. There she finds her mother hasn't fully forgiven her father for having an affair and her brother is struggling to get his life back on track after getting out of rehab for opioid addiction, and while her father is seeing animals and ghosts, he's also determined to find Emma's childhood best friend, who disappeared some months ago and is presumed to be dead of an overdose. This sounds like it would be incredibly depressing, but it's actually mostly funny and heartwarming. I think I enjoyed The Road to Tenderhearts a little more, but I gave this one 4 stars.

The Last Ranger sounded good to me when it was described in a recent podcast episode, and I've liked the Peter Heller books I've read before, so I thought I'd give it a try. It follows Ren, a park ranger in Yellowstone, as he investigates what looks to be poaching and then what appears to be an attack on his friend Hilly, a biologist who specializes in wolves. He also reflects on his childhood and the alcoholism of and abandonment by his mother. I thought the book was interesting, and it held my attention for the most part, but I struggled to follow the story and keep track of the characters at times. That may have been because I was listening rather than reading with my eyes, but regardless, this was not my favorite Heller. I gave it 3 stars.

I heard about How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder on a podcast (are you shocked?). For such a short novel -- only about 200 pages -- there is a lot going on here. The narrator and her sister are the product of an Indian mother and American father, and they live in Wyoming while their father is away working on oil rigs. They struggle with the usual issues of identity and being "other" in a very white small town, but when their mother's brother and his family come from India to live with them, that is the least of their worries. When their uncle begins to molest them, the sisters decide that they can't tell their mother and make her unhappy, so the best solution is to murder him by poisoning him with antifreeze. It's weird and different but also intriguing. I gave it 3 stars.

Now I'm trying to finish up the last 80 or so pages of Whistler, and I have several books waiting to start next. How about you -- what are you making and reading this week?