Unraveled Wednesday: 2/4/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today, with some completed thumbs, progress on the Hitchhiker, and something else. 

First, I did knit thumbs for the fingerless handwarmers. They fit well and I've been wearing them all the time. 

The Hitchhiker is progressing, albeit slowly. I think I've got enough left of the main color to finish the current strip of six teeth, but after that I think it will be more of the soft gray. That's fine, but the rows are getting a lot longer a bit too long. 

 

 

The "something else" is a Melt the Ice Hat. I bought the pattern thinking it was a small donation to immigrant aid associations, but then I remembered that I had leftover red yarn from the mittens, so I cast on. The pattern is written for fingering through worsted weight, and my yarn is bulky. After looking through the other projects knit with bulky, I cast on 72 stitches and I'm just using up my leftover yarn on ribbing. I'm thinking about unraveling the first pair of mittens that I knit (the ones with uncomfortable thumbs), but I do have a few more skeins of yarn coming this week. I may still unravel the uncomfortable mittens and use the yarn to finish the thumbs on the comfortable mittens since the yarn will be the same lot number, but it's not like I don't have plenty of projects to knit before my red yarn arrives. 

 

 

Last week Sarah said this book was bonkers, and she was right! I went into Best Offer Wins expecting to suspend my disbelief a bit in exchange for an entertaining, exaggerated look at the insanity of today’s real estate market. I’m more than willing to do that for a novel that provides a somewhat believable premise, but this book asked for far more suspension than I could manage.

The protagonist, Margo Miyake, quickly goes well past believable and into territory that feels completely disconnected from reality. What might have been a satirical or darkly funny exploration of housing desperation instead becomes implausible to the point of distraction. I found it hard to stay engaged once the story lost any grounding in how actual people behave, even under stress.

I also struggled with Margo herself. She is an unabashed whiner, and despite having $1.3 million to spend on a house, she refuses to settle for anything that deviates even slightly from her idealized life plan. Rather than coming across as sympathetic or self-aware, her complaints grew tiresome and made it difficult to root for her in any meaningful way.

The bright spot here was the audiobook narrator, Cia Court, who did an excellent job bringing energy and nuance to the material. Her performance was easily the most enjoyable aspect of the experience.

Overall, this one didn’t work for me. The premise had promise, but the execution veered too far from reality and left me more frustrated than entertained. I should pay more attention when books are described as bonkers!

What are you making and reading this frigid week?