Product Description

There's a little yarn shop on Blossom Street in Seattle. It's owned by Lydia Hoffman, and it represents her dream of a new life free from cancer. A life that offers a chance at love . . .

Lydia teaches knitting to beginners, and the first class is "How to Make a Baby Blanket." Three women join. Jacqueline Donovan wants to knit something for her grandchild as a gesture of reconciliation with her daughter-in-law. Carol Girard feels that the baby blanket is a message of hope as she makes a final attempt to conceive. And Alix Townsend is knitting her blanket for a court-ordered community service project.

These four very different women, brought together by an age-old craft, make unexpected discoveries -- about themselves and each other. Discoveries that lead to friendship and more . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2789 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A Seattle knitting store brings together four very different women in this earnest tale about friendship and love. Lydia Hoffman, a two-time cancer survivor, opens the shop A Good Yarn as a symbol of the new life she plans to lead. She starts a weekly knitting class, hoping to improve business and make friends in the area. The initial class project is a baby blanket, and Macomber (Changing Habits), a knitter herself who offers tips about the craft and pithy observations from knitting professionals throughout the novel, includes the knitting pattern at the start of the book. Well-heeled Jacqueline Donovan, who chooses to ignore her empty marriage, disguises her disdain for her pregnant daughter-in-law by knitting a baby blanket. Carol Girard joins the group as an affirmation of her hopes to finally have a successful in vitro pregnancy. Alix Townsend, a high school dropout with an absentee father and a mother incarcerated for forging checks, uses the class to satisfy a court-ordered community service sentence for a drug-possession conviction for which her roommate is really responsible. Unfortunately, Macomber doesn't get much below the surface of her characters, and, although they all have interesting back stories, the arc of each individual happy ending is too predictable. The only surprise involves Alix's hapless, overweight roommate, Laurel, and even this smacks of plot-driven manipulation. Macomber is an adept storyteller overall, however, and many will be entertained by this well-paced story about four women finding happiness and fulfillment through their growing friendships.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Narrator Linda Emond portrays four women, from a Goth to a reluctant grandmother, who become unlikely friends in a knitting class. Emond develops a sense of urgency through timing and expert vocal nuance as reoccurring illness and miscarriage, divorce and betrayal rather predictably visit the characters. Clearly capturing each woman as she supports the others and searches for the answers to her own troubles, Emond outdoes herself in portraying counterculture proponent Alix, who joins the group to fulfill court-ordered community service. Although the novel is slow to start, the warmth of Emond's voice so embodies the tenacious characters as to deliver a worthwhile story of change and hope. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

BookPage
"Debbie Macomber tells women's stories in a way no one else does."

Customer Reviews

Knitting your way to love.
Debbie Macomber is a popular writer for women's literature. In this story, she united four women of different backgrounds, whoes lives may otherwise never intertwine, through their enrolment in a knitting class.

Lydia Hoffman is a twice cancer survival who ownes the knit shop A Good Yarn. Through the courage of setting up the shop, she learn to live again.

Jacqueline Donovan, a rich socialite, estranged from her husband, joined the knitting class to knit a baby blanket for her soon to be born grandchild, whoes mother she does not approve of.

Carol Girand is hoping that the baby blanket brings with it the baby she so yearned for, having failed IVF twice.

Alix Townsend, the punk haired problem video shop girl joined the class as she has a court ordered community project to fulfill.

Debbie Macomber has generously shared the baby blanket pattern in the book for readers. Some chapters are also accompanied by quotes on life lessons from famous knitters.

One may just pick up knitting after reading this book.

Inspired me to learn to knit!
I really enjoyed this book! It is a fun, easy read, great when I was feeling down and needed a pick me up. It (and the other books in the series) inspired me to learn to knit, which I love as well! Knitting is relaxing, a great de-stressor, and is good for my social life. I've always been a bit on the shy side, and knitting has been a good ice breaker, so I recommend both the books and learning to knit (preferably with a class!)

I passed this book on to my mother and grandmother after reading, and they both enjoyed it as well.

Trite
I honestly don't remember if I read something that trite ever. From the very first pages, I had the feeling I was before a "packaged" product, whether the agent of that packaging is some "writer's software", or some other assembly-line system of writing that spits out one formula after the other.

And, as if that were not enough, the content itself is a series of cliches strung mercilessly one after the other.

The women in this book are mostly the "wait-for-your-man-and-cater-to-him" type, with nauseating cliches about their magic works in the kitchen, women who say things like "a man I could lean on", women who "make meals to please their husbands", women who are distraught they "disappointed their husbands" because they couldn't bear them babies.. etc..etc.

So, the author seems to believe it is just that type of woman who would be into knitting, repeating the old (and ignorant) stereotype about knitters as a species.

Then, the author keeps repeating writing about events she'd stated, over and over again like she'd forgotten she already mentioned them, and my question is: did she not revise even once? Where was the editor??

As if that were not enough, she over-explains everything like she's writing to dimwits who have to have everything explained and re-explained to them in order for them to "get it"!

As for her dialogues, I found myself constantly wondering, "WHO ON EARTH SPEAKS LIKE THAT???"

Cliched words, cliched situations, cliched men and women, cliched stories and cliched endings... Smacks of some "machine-writing" to me... maybe a new "writing wiz" that you feed a few keywords the way you put in a search engine and it vomits a story out to you? But then again, I could be wrong, and this story could be solely the product of the author's imagination... which would be infinitely worse...

There is but one redeeming feature in this book, however, aspiring writers could use it as a way to learn how NOT to write, its merit lies in its instructive value as a perfect specimen of dreadful writing.