Knitting Yarns - edited by Ann Hood

Writers on Knitting
Yee Ha!  I'm reading nonfiction!
This ones Dewey Decimal number is 746.432K749
I borrowed it from TPPL
294 pgs.
2014 WW Norton & Company
Goodreads rating:  3.73
My rating:

(I've decided to add this book to my blog, even though I'm in the midst of reading it.  I'll do this for any/all short story/essay collections, or I'll never get some of them posted!)

Intro by Ann Hood, the editor (5 pgs.)
She began knitting in 2002 to help lessen the grief she bore after losing her 5-year-old daughter to a strep virus.She drives 40 miles from Providence once a week to Sakonett Purls in Tiverton, RI.

The Pretend Knitter by Elizabeth Berg (6 pgs.)
"Can someone who loves everything about knitting -- the yarn, the tools of the trade, the knitted projects -- actually learn to knit?"
     Elizabeth Berg loves to knit; she loves all the physical and "spiritual" things that go along with it. She tells of knitting a long, long, l o n g garter stitch scarf for her college roommate.  She thought if she made it longer, the dropped stitches wouldn't be so noticeable!

The Perfect Gift by Lan Samantha Chang (7 pgs.)
"Is it possible that we need and like to knit so badly that we don't really care if the recipients of our knitted goods find them aesthetically pleasing or even bearable?"
     Lan Samantha Chang compares knitting a gift to preparing a meal...and then discovering, after everyone sits down with great anticipation to enjoy it, that it doesn't taste very good...at all.  She tells of people giving gifts to her mother, who frequently didn't like or care for them and put them aside, never to look at again.  And she tells of the one perfect sweater that she spent forever knitting, ripping, reknitting, that her mother absolutely loved.

Blood, Root, Knit, Purl by Andre Dubus III (12 pgs.)
"Knitting becomes an unexpected avenue to a Christmas gift for his aunt, and a way to knit his relationship with his young, rich girlfriend"
     What lovely writing!  Andre Dubus tells of his upbringing, living with his divorced mother and three siblings in Massachusetts and New Hampshire  mill towns in the 70's.  And he tells of the re-connection with his mother's family in Louisiana.  He tells of the somewhat strained relationship he has with his then-girlfriend in their tiny (8 x 13 - truly?) NYC apartment/room and how she taught him to knit so he could make a scarf for his aunt for Christmas.  Super memoir.