Unraveled, Week 37/2026

Here we are at Wednesday again, and again it's time to join in on the fun with Kat and the Unravelers!

I've been working steadily on my sweater in the evenings (it's not really at a place where I can work on it with Ruthie in the same room) and have started the knit/purl texture sections, though I think my yarn might be a tad too busy for the patterning to be as visible as it could be.

I am hopeful that once the sweater is done and blocked, the patterning will be a bit clearer, but I'm not too concerned at this point. I'm enjoying working with the yarn and I think the sweater will be very comfy, and that's really what matters the most to me right now.

Sock knitting is still happening in the afternoon, but I needed something else to work on when we were at my parents' for lunch on Sunday (because the recipient of the socks was there), so I grabbed some dishcloth cotton and a crochet hook and started a quick dishcloth:

If the yarn looks familiar, it's because I was using it earlier in the summer to learn the crochet thermal stitch. Because I was just learning it, the resulting dishcloth was wonky and misshapen, and I decided to frog it once I got the hang of the stitch. I'm just using the basic corner to corner method here, with some single crochet around the outside edge to finish it of. I had about 3/4 of a skein of Knit Picks Dishie to start; I haven't weighed the finished cloth yet, but I'm hoping I can get at least one more of the same size out of the yarn that's left. It's a good instant gratification project when I need a break from the sweater.

I've finished three books this past week, two of which I really enjoyed.

I purchased House on Endless Waters when it was Kindle deal on a bit of a whim, having read only the description but not having heard of it or the author before, and I was very pleasantly surprised. In this novel in translation, the main character, a famous Israeli author named Yoel Blum, discovers a long-buried secret when he visits Amsterdam, the city of his birth and the city his late mother made him promise never to return to. His publisher finally persuades him to visit, and while he is there, he and his wife visit the local Jewish history museum, where he is shocked to see his mother in a film reel -- holding a baby that couldn't possibly be him. Confronting his older sister upon his return home, he learns the truth that has been hidden all these years and returns to Amsterdam to trace his family's experiences in WWII and write the novel he realizes his life has been leading him toward his entire career. As readers, we see Yoel explore the city and simultaneously see his family adapt to their changing circumstances as their lives as Dutch Jews become more and more difficult and desperate. As the Germans close in, arresting and deporting more and more Jews and prompting more of them to go into hiding, Yoel get closer and closer to the answer of his true identity and to understanding why his mother was so reluctant to talk about the war or connect with other Dutch Jews once they'd moved to Israel. This book was compelling and fascinating; though it is a fictional story, it reads in some respects like a memoir, and I think the author intended to highlight the struggles that many Dutch Jews who were hidden as children encountered once they uncovered the truth (some of them, for instance, had no surviving family after the war and were raised believing the families who hid them were their biological families, only learning the truth as adults). Though the stories aren't really similar, the setting and tone reminded me a lot of The Safekeep. I really enjoyed this one and gave it 4 stars.

I found The Girl Who Wrote in Silk on Hoopla and thought it sounded interesting, not least because it claimed to be based on true events. I would say very loosely based on true events. It's a dual-timeline novel, following Inara in present day and Mei Lein in the late 1800s, both of them in Washington State. Inara, having inherited a property on Orcas Island from her late aunt, sets out to renovate it into a boutique hotel and in the process discovers the heavily embroidered sleeve of a garment hidden under a stair tread. The embroidery shows a fairly gruesome scene of a ship and people (or demons?) in the water. Trying to figure out the origin of the sleeve and what the embroidery could mean leads her to a Chinese American professor at the University of Washington, to whom she finds herself very conveniently attracted (cue predictable romance interest here). Mei Lein, who lives with her father and grandfather and whose mother died when she was an infant, finds her family the target of anti-Chinese violence, as they are forced from their home and onto a ship they believe is bound for China. She overhears something that leads her to believe otherwise, however, and her father convinces her to jump ship in the hope of saving herself. She (again, very conveniently) is rescued by a white farmer who becomes her protector and eventually more than that. As the two timelines progress, the connection between all these individuals is revealed. While there is some basis of truth to the 1800s story (the anti-Chinese violence and expulsions from certain cities and towns), the defining tragedy was completely fabricated, and overall I found a lot of the two storylines to be a little too far-fetched, especially for historical fiction. I didn't find the characters and some of their actions to be particularly believable. I would have DNFed this if I wasn't curious enough to find out how it would all come together, and I wouldn't recommend it. I gave it 2 stars.

Thankfully, my most recent finish was much better. In The Astral Library, Kate Quinn takes a break from her usual historical fiction to dip into fantasy and sing the praises of libraries and stories. When times are tough, wouldn't we all love to disappear into a book? That's just what Alix does when she's fired from her main job, evicted from her shared apartment, and discovers that she's locked out of her bank account due to fraud. Opening a random door off the reading room of the Boston Public Library leads her to the Astral Library and its somewhat cantankerous librarian. Here, patrons can escape the world and their troubles and enter the world of any book in the public domain. They aren't main characters and can't change the story in any way, but they can be in the background of, say, Jane Austen's England or Jay Gatsby's New York. Alix is all set on disappearing for a while when the librarian begins receiving warnings indicating that the library is under attack, all while notices keep coming that the library board is ready to make changes to modernize (and monetize) the library, and she is swept into the action. There's no need for this caper to be realistic, and it's pure fun for readers and book lovers. I really loved the little details, like the snacks that are always available in the library (though while you're there, you're never hungry) or the fact that the library is haunted by ghosts of people who feel they can't cross over because their TBRs are too long. It was an easy listen and a great pick-me-up after the previous disappointment. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?