At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Synopsis

The Yarn Harlot takes time away from her knitting to offer observations, meditations, reflections, and rants to soothe and delight the knitter's unraveled soul.

Like golfing, fishing, and gardening, knitting is an obsession. It's an activity fraught with guilt, frustration, over-optimism, sly deception, and compulsion, along with passionate moments of creative enlightenment. Not to mention heaps of yarn you really think you'll knit someday.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee totally understands. In this hilarious collection of tangled reflections, she offers ample reassurance for anyone who has ever wondered, "Am I alone in my mania?" Casting off with some of her favorite quotations, she muses on why it's impossible to knit too much, how many calories knitting burns (about 90 an hour, not counting the extra for retrieving your ball of yarn from under the couch), and when it's okay to stalk a man in the grocery store (not because he's good-looking, but because he's wearing an Aran sweater you want to know how to knit).

The first step toward recovery is getting help—and having a good laugh at your compulsion. At Knit's End is a wicked and wickedly funny fix for any knitter.

Publishers Weekly

Obsessive knitter Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whose popular knitting blog gets 20,000 hits per day, offers her fellow knitters humorous knitting anecdotes, bits of homespun (no pun intended!) wisdom, helpful tips and little "mantras" to help keep their sanity when realizing an entire sleeve of a sweater has come out wrong and has to be redone. Even nonknitters can appreciate much of her humor-for example, her technique for "darning" socks that have holes in them, "which consists of loudly exclaiming 'DARN!' and a few other choice expletives before dropping them in the garbage." Pearl-McPhee has a warm, engaging voice brimming with humor and often punctuated by a self-deprecating chuckle. This audiobook of her folksy ruminations would make the perfect gift for anyone who loves to knit. The print version of this title won the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award in humor. A Storey Publishing paperback. (July)

Biography

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has become the irreverent spokesperson for today's knitting revival through her popular blog (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.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has become the irreverent spokesperson for today's knitting revival through her popular blog (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.