Product Description

The Yarn Harlot strikes again! Best-selling knitting author and humorist Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is back with an irresistible collection of witty observations on how knitting and life wisdom are spun together.

In Things I Learned From Knitting (Whether I Wanted To or Not), Pearl Mc-Phee examines age-old aphorisms in light of knitting. From "Hope Springs Eternal" to "A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed" and "Birds Of A Feather Flock Together," Pearl-McPhee casts a fresh, off-beat light on these sayings. Presented in quick, punchy takes, each entry in this book calls out to be read aloud and shared with anyone who enjoys playing with yarn and needles.

Pearl-McPhee's observations are hilarious; the situations she describes strike a familiar, "not you, too?" feeling in the heart of anyone who knits. Interspersed throughout the book are her notes on the things that "Knitting is still trying to teach me. . ." That no matter how well you knit, looking at your work too closely isn't helpful. It's like kissing with your eyes open. Nobody looks good that close up.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16469 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From the Inside Flap
Pick up the needles, grab a skein of yarn, cast on…and let the life lessons to begin! From Patience is a Virtue and Hope Springs Eternal to Look Before You Leap, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee applies her trademark humor and wry insights to reveal the wise (and sometimes unexpected) truths contained within 45 familiar adages, understood as only a knitter could.

These irresistible reflections on life will have you laughing, crying and marveling out loud at how amazingly fortunate you are to be living your life as a knitter.

From the Back Cover
"Beginning is easy, continuing is hard" takes on special meaning for a knitter faced with five projects already on needles, yet struck by the irresistible urge to start something brand new. Share Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's amazement at the resounding, and even astonishing, truths found in everyday clichés and adages. Babies grow is a hard-learned lesson if you are a knitter who's stayed up nights making a tiny sweater for a special newborn, only to discover that a baby's ability to grow far exceeds your ability to knit. Knowing that you gotta roll with the punches can push an airborne knitter to the extreme of casting on with a couple of coffee stir sticks. After all, as every knitter knows for sure, idle hands are the devil's workshop.

About the Author
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has become the irreverent spokesperson for today's knitting revival through her popular blog (www.yarnharlot.com), and her best- selling books, At Knit's End, Knitting Rules!, and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off. She shares a home with her admirable yarn stash (and her family) in Toronto.

Customer Reviews

The Practice of Craft Crafts Us
All of those great thoughts you've had about life and the cosmology of the universe, that have come to you while you had knitting needles in both hands, and couldn't find a pen anyway - well, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee wrote hers down. "Things I Learned from Knitting" is a sweet little volume of the thoughts that go through our heads while we are rescuing dropped stitches and turning cables.

Mistakes Don't Go Away Unless We Intervene.
"Now, time has passed and I have become a good knitter, having learned a great deal since those early abominations. I've gained skill and understanding, I've learned that gauge matters and that there are some colors that don't look good on me (or any human, really), and I know enough to correct my mistakes as I go along instead of knitting them into perfect infamy." (page 54, @2008 Storey Publishing, 1st edition)

Perserverance Matters.
"Knitting is still trying to teach me that things get knit faster when you actually work on them. That's why the scarf I've allegedly been knitting for two years just isn't getting any bigger, no matter how long I leave it in the basket." (page 109)

Love, To Be Deep, Can Never Be Easy
"As I stood there, looking at the decoration on this sweater that was. . . let's be frank, not working, I wondered if I would be able to forgive the sweater all of this. This mistakes, the ripping, the gauge...the errors... Perhaps it was too much pain to pass between a knitter and her sweater...Or maybe I would love it more because I had surmounted all of the troubles...I wondered if my feelings for the sweater would be like my feelings for my children, where surviving the difficult times had only endeared them to me more." (pages 67-68)

Here we see less of the funny woman and more of the real woman as McPhee shares how the practice of craft has crafted her. It does lack some of the edge and energy of McPhee's previous works, but it possesses a soft gravitas that attracts like the wistful allure of cashmere when we are on an acrylic budget. Tuck this little volume into your knitting bag and pick it up when you need a pick me up - that is, right before you pick up, rip out or redo your latest errant project.

Laugh out loud good!
This book is laugh out loud fun! I am sure the people that ride my daily bus have decided that I have now totally flipped my gourd. I also sat with little post-it notes marking the pages that I wanted to go back to.

Seriously, if you are a knitter, you will indeed understand what she is talking about.

If you are not a knitter but love a knitter, but the book for them. The knitter in your life will thank you and you will enjoy the chortles.

Things I Learned From Knitting (Whether I Wanted To or Not)

Perfect treadmill reading
I'm on a knitting kick but have to do other things occasionally, such as getting on the treadmill. This little book was my answer to not being able to knit on the treadmill. I hadn't expected to actually enjoy it, but I did because from the "do over" to the yarn stash, it's all me. I thought it was entertaining and a bit profound at times.

I think it would also appeal to those hooked on crochet, and perhaps other thread crafts.

This was my first book by this author so if she repeated herself (as I read in one review), I was unaware of it.