Unraveled, Week 9/2026

Good morning and happy soggy Wednesday! The rain came in overnight Monday and will be with us for a while, so I'm making good use of my raincoat. At least at this time of year, I'm less bothered by the fact that it's heavy and doesn't breathe. But enough about the weather -- time to join in with Kat and the Unravelers!

I appreciate all the thoughts and opinions on my sweater WIP. For now, I'm leaving it where it is, though I am leaning toward ripping it out and moving on to something else. If I really wanted the sweater, I would carry on and accept that it'd just take me a long time to knit it, but I looked at completed projects on Ravelry and am not sure I really would wear it anymore, and frankly I'd rather decide that now, when I've only invested a handful of evenings working on it, than after finishing the darn thing. Well, I guess I have made up my mind after all!

In the meantime, I cast on a new project, a hat to match this cowl. It's not much to look at yet, but it should grow and look more like a hat soon.

The rain isn't doing the colors any favors, but I'm using the leftovers from the cowl, just reversed. I changed up the colorwork just a bit to work with the smaller scale. I'm hoping that it works out because the main motif is a 10-stitch repeat, which limits the sizing a bit.

Thanks to that big project I was expecting turning into a no-show, I had a big reading week, with five finishes. Because of the volume, I'm going to stick with some shorter reviews this week.

Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown

3.5 stars

This novel is two stories in two timelines tied together by a house. Nellie is a 1950s housewife with an older husband who is demanding and unforgiving. Alice, in more or less present day, recently left her demanding job in publicity to try to write a novel and is feeling unmoored in her new suburban NYC house, where she is alone for much of the day while her husband works in the city and studies for his actuarial exams. When Alice finds a cookbook and old women's magazines in the house's basement, she gains insight into Nellie's life and begins to examine her own life and marriage. I enjoyed the dual timelines and the look at a woman's life -- including how little has changed over the decades -- but was somewhat dissatisfied with the ending, which seemed a little rushed and unfinished compared to the rest of the book.

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown

4 stars

Jane has been raised in a remote cabin in Montana by her father following the death of her mother when she was just a toddler. He has homeschooled her, teaching her math, philosophy, and his negative views of the outside world. One day he brings a computer home so that Jane can help him publish his manifesto, and she discovers there is more to the world -- and that perhaps he hasn't been entirely truthful about their past. When he involves her in a violent act, she realizes that she needs to escape to find out the truth, only to land in Silicon Valley at the height of the explosion of the internet. She has to decide which version of reality is right for her and must grapple with whether to turn her father in when it means implicating herself as well.

Tilt by Emma Pattee

3 stars

Annie is 37 weeks pregnant and at IKEA to buy a crib when an earthquake hits and devastates Portland, Oregon, where she lives. Over the course of a day, she tries to make her way across the city to find her husband, along the way encountering the best and worst of human behavior, reflecting on her life and marriage, and remembering her mother. I thought it was an interesting way to make the reader think about how unprepared we are for a major disaster, both logistically and as a society that doesn't value helping others, but I didn't love Annie as a main character.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

3 stars

This is a thriller set during a wedding weekend on a remote Irish island. We know something bad has happened in the present and alternate between finding out what that is and flashing back to the days leading up to it, as told through the points of view of multiple characters: the bride, the best man, the bridesmaid, the plus-one. I knew going into this not to expect fine literature and really only chose to read it because I thought it would be entertaining while I was running. I figured out most of the twists ahead of time, so it wasn't all that suspenseful to me. Still, it kept my attention well enough, and I enjoyed cast of narrators.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

3 stars

This book has been sitting on my bedroom chair for months, and I finally read it after Jane talked about it last week. The format is unusual; rather than a traditional narrative or even short stories, it's made up of a series of brief scenes that are rather similar to the episodic nature of our memories of childhood and that give us glimpses into the life of Esperanza, a Latina girl growing up in a house (on Mango Street) in Chicago. I enjoyed these little snapshots of her life, but I did not find the book to be as engaging as I expected because it was so broken up.

I am currently reading an ARC and am excited to start a buddy read with Katie of The Odyssey tonight!

Also, not to bury the lede, but I've just published my new colorwork cowl pattern. You can find it on Ravelry and Payhip.