Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting

Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting

Ann Hood

Language: English

Pages: 304

ISBN: 039334987X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


“In this lovely anthology, Sue Grafton, Barbara Kingsolver, and other authors go public with their passion for knitting.”―People magazine, four stars

“The impressive collection of writers here have contributed essays that celebrate knitting and knitters. They share their knitting triumphs and disasters as well as their life triumphs and disasters. . . . These essays will break your heart. They will have you laughing out loud.”―Ann Hood, from the introduction

Why does knitting occupy a place in the hearts of so many writers? What’s so magical and transformative about yarn and needles? How does knitting help us get through life-changing events and inspire joy? In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Barbara Kingsolver describes sheering a sheep for yarn. Elizabeth Berg writes about her frustration at failing to knit. Ann Patchett traces her life through her knitting, writing about the scarf that knits together the women she’s loved and lost. Knitting a Christmas gift for his blind aunt helped Andre Dubus III knit an understanding with his girlfriend. Kaylie Jones finds the woman who used knitting to help raise her in France and heals old wounds. Sue Grafton writes about her passion for knitting. Also included are five original knitting patterns created by Helen Bingham.

Poignant, funny, and moving, Knitting Yarns is sure to delight knitting enthusiasts and lovers of literature alike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Lauck’s marriage fell apart after just a year, and Kaylie Jones sets out to repair what she lost as a young woman. Knitting forced some writers to ask themselves tough questions: After a boy teaches her how to knit in Kathmandu, Jessi Hempel examines her lesbianism; when Anne D. LeClaire cannot become pregnant, she turns to adoption and knitting. High-strung Elissa Schappell and nervous Elizabeth Searle explore the calming properties of knitting. Jane Smiley finds the link between

house near the beach in Portugal. There would be rooms for herself and her future husband, and for her mother, and for her sister and brother and their spouses and children, and of course, for me, and my future family. She hoped I would have lots of children and we would always be welcome in her home. We could come during the summer, for no beaches were more beautiful than the ones in Portugal, she told me. Even the crazy pale English went there for their vacations and turned red as boiled

child to create a family. I wanted a family and I yearned for a baby with a passion that was near hunger. My husband Hillary, too, shared this dream. Even before we were married, we had talked about a future that included children, a future I took for granted as easily as I did the morning sun. But, as with love or good health or any of the presumptive rights and privileges we too often take for granted, when I was visited by its loss, I was stunned and disbelieving. I listened to the

acres of tall jack pine or our grandmother Fern’s chicken, sausage, and okra gumbo, or Big Dean’s creek, or Pappy’s pickup we got to ride in the bed of up and down Highway 8. It was being in one place where people we were actually related to had lived for many years. Since our parents’ divorce in 1970, my sisters and brother and mother and I moved nearly once a year, sometimes more, from one cheap rented house or half-house to another. Just as we seemed to settle into one, we packed up and moved

blanket. “What’re you knitting?” At first she didn’t answer. I asked her again, and she reached for the remote and muted the TV. “A sweater.” “Who for?” “My sister’s new baby.” Her second or third, I knew that. But I hadn’t seen the obvious, that my young, rich girlfriend was somebody’s aunt, too. I may have told her that was nice of her. I hope I did, but maybe I didn’t. The previous Christmas, Jeannie had drawn my name. With her fading eyes she’d painted me a portrait of Pappy and his

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