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Summary
Summary
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's deepest wish is that everyone understand that knitting is at least as fun as baseball and way cooler than the evil looped path of crochet. Every project, from a misshapen hat to the most magnificent sweater, holds a story. Yarn Harlot tells all those stories with humor, insight, and sympathy for the obsessed.
Over 50 million people in America knit. The average knitter spends between $500 and $1,700 a year on yarn, patterns, needles, and books. No longer just a fad or a hobby, knitting has advanced to a lifestyle.
Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter moves beyond instructions and patterns into the purest elements of knitting: obsession, frustration, reflection, and fun. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's humorous and poignant essays find humor in knitting an enormous afghan that requires a whopping 30 balls of wool, having a husband with size 13 feet who loves to wear hand-knit socks, and earns her "yarn harlot" title with her love of any new yarn--she'll quickly drop an old project for the fresh saucy look of a new interesting yarn.
Since the upsurge in knitting began in the early '90s, the number of women under 45 who knit has doubled. Knitting is no longer a hobby for just grandmothers--women and men of all ages are embracing this art. Describing its allure is best left to Stephanie who explains: "It is a well-known fact that knitting is a sparkling form of entertainment, as spiritual as yoga, as relaxing as a massage, and as funny as Erma Bombeck trapped in a PTA meeting."
Author Notes
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is the author of several books and three collections of essays: Yarn Harlot , Free-Range Knitter , and All Wound Up . (Two of those are New York Times best sellers, which both Stephanie and her mum are really proud of.) She maintains a popular virtual home at www.yarnharlot.ca , and a less organized (and popular) actual home in Toronto, Canada. She's a mother of three, a wife of one, can drive a standard, and has owned two cats in a row that don't care much for her.
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. xi |
1 The Red Wool of Courage: Or, Projects I Have Known and Loved | p. 1 |
The Green Afghan | p. 2 |
The Wedding Sweater Saga | p. 11 |
The Cardigan Letter | p. 27 |
The Thing About Socks | p. 31 |
The Sheep Shawl | p. 35 |
The Entrelac Socks | p. 41 |
2 Twenty Thousand Skeins Under the Bed: Or, Stash and Why You Want It | p. 45 |
The Beast | p. 46 |
Cracking the Whip | p. 54 |
Nothing in My Stash | p. 60 |
Mine, Mine, All Mine | p. 64 |
If You Have a Lot of Yarn... | p. 67 |
The System | p. 72 |
Moth | p. 76 |
3 Dangerous Liaisons: Or, Yarn Can Be Addictive | p. 87 |
Archaeology | p. 88 |
Spring Is Sprung | p. 94 |
How to Succeed at Knitting (Without Really Trying) | p. 99 |
Yarn Requirements | p. 103 |
"IT" | p. 106 |
Sour Grapes | p. 115 |
Socks for Sinead | p. 120 |
4 War and Pieces: Or, You Can't Win Them All | p. 133 |
What Her Hands Won't Do | p. 134 |
Freakin' Birds | p. 140 |
Operation: Cast On | p. 145 |
I Can Do That | p. 148 |
One Little Sock | p. 153 |
What Passes for Perfect | p. 157 |
Veni Vidi Steeki | p. 162 |
Good Morning, Class | p. 173 |
5 My Family, and Other Works in Progress | p. 177 |
The Rules | p. 178 |
What She Gave Me | p. 184 |
Ten Ways to Anger a Knitter | p. 190 |
This Makes More Sense | p. 192 |
Three Blankets | p. 196 |
Resister | p. 202 |
Parents and Knitters | p. 204 |
Is This a Test? | p. 206 |
DPN | p. 212 |
Acknowledgments | p. 221 |