The universal stories of knitters

I’ve started a fourth book club (I know, I need help). This one is for knitters and other crafty people. Fortunately our first book, Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting edited by Ann Hood, is one that I’d been meaning to read for a while, so it’s a win-win.

Ann Hood started knitting in 2002 during a time of grief, and the soothing sounds and motions calmed her mind and eased her sorrow. Talking to other knitters she discovered this was a common theme: “knitting helped them through all kinds of things that life throws in our path: divorce, depression, deaths; chemotherapy, loneliness, despair.” She also heard stories of knitting joys. And as she attended professional conferences and events, she heard the knitting stories of fellow writers.

The collection of essays she has gathered could have been written by any group of knitters. The stories explore all of the reasons we knit: as meditation, to become closer to a loved one, for the feeling of accomplishment, to ease our anxiety, and to just make something pretty. While the writers are telling their own stories, they are also telling ours. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and found most of the essays very readable, identifying with the knitters in several of the stories. I particularly enjoyed High-Strung Knitter, by Elissa Schappell, in which a woman with high blood pressure takes up knitting as meditation, only to find another compulsive habit. That essay and Elinor Lipman’s poem I bought this pattern book last spring truly describe both my need to knit and my yarn stash compulsion. It’s nice to know these are shared experiences.  

I did completely skip two of the essays - Barbara Kingsolver’s pretentious writing style put me off on the first page and the whiny/anxious tone/concept of non-knitter Elizabeth Searle’s essay was very off-putting in general. I also didn’t think the added knitting patterns were necessary, especially since they did not include finished object photos. I don’t have the ability to read a pattern and visualize the end result, so I wasn’t even tempted by them.  

Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting edited by Ann Hood. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Four Stars.

Judging a book by its title…and maybe its cover…

I ran across this gem while surfing the library’s ebook catalog and, based on the title and the fact that the subject headings included knitting, I HAD to check it out. It was more than curiosity, it was as if Crazy Aunt Purl whispered to me from the digital pages of this book and compelled me to check it out and read it. Hmm…I guess that makes Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat the knitter’s Necronomicon? ::shudder::  But as it turns out the memoir isn’t as much about knitting as it is survival and reconstruction.

Laurie did not have a great marriage, but it represented security and safety. When her husband decided to leave so that he could reclaim his creativity, Laurie was left floundering – emotionally lost and extremely vulnerable and the owner of four cats (most of her divorce settlement). She wasn’t even sure who she was anymore now that she wasn’t “wife.” Painstakingly Laurie took step outside of her comfort zone with a knitting group, and it was knitting that kept her sane as struggled to rebuild her life.

From the title and publisher’s summary of this book I really expected it to be a non-stop hysterical memoir. Instead it’s introspective, funny, often a bit melancholy, but, ultimately, triumphant. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s ever been dumped, or is in the process of getting over a dumping, or any fan of The Bloggess’ Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.

Perry, Laurie Beasley. Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit after He Split. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Incorporated, 2007.

Publisher’s Summary: If you've ever been dumped, duped, or three minutes from crazy, you'll love Crazy Aunt Purl. Side-splittingly funny and profoundly moving, Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair is the true-life misadventures of Laurie Perry, aka Crazy Aunt Purl, a slightly neurotic, displaced Southerner trying to create a new life after her husband leaves her to 'get his creativity back.' (Whatever that means.) But will she get her groove back in a tiny rented apartment, with a mountain of boxes, visible panty lines, and a slight wine-and-Cheetos problem?