{"id":11156,"date":"2015-11-09T14:19:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T20:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.probonopress.org\/?p=11156"},"modified":"2016-04-15T23:13:40","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T23:13:40","slug":"purls-of-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurabillingscoleman.com\/purls-of-wisdom\/","title":{"rendered":"Purls of Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a short list of accepted truths that most knitters have to learn the hard way: Never knit for a boyfriend, don\u2019t talk while trying to turn a heel, October\u2019s too late to start knitting for Christmas, and no matter what they tell you at the yarn shop, metallic mohair is a bad idea.<\/p>\n

To this list of hard-won wisdom, novelist Caroline Leavitt can add one more: When your husband expresses interest in intarsia, hire an attorney.<\/p>\n

Leavitt (\u201cPictures of You\u201d) is one of the 24 contributors to \u201cKnitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting,\u201d editor Ann Hood\u2019s latest addition to what is becoming the increasingly crowded field of craft memoir. \u201cI suppose you could say a knitting project ended my first marriage,\u201d writes Leavitt, who goes on to describe how she missed all of the sure signs her marriage was unraveling, including the most obvious \u2014 her husband asks her to knit a dinosaur sweater. An adult-sized sweater with a brontosaurus on the front and back.<\/p>\n

I feel certain that if such a foolhardy project were made known to the members of my knitting circle, we would have rallied and found her a new apartment within 24 hours. But like most of the essayists in this surprisingly melancholy collection, our heroine is stranded in unfamiliar terrain, a little lonely, a little lost, leaning on her needles like Virginia Woolf, who famously told her husband, \u201cKnitting is the saving of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Hood\u2019s earlier anthology, \u201cKnitting Yarns,\u201d this collection (patterns included!) helps explain why knitting is so often the life sport of the literary set. Novels and Norwegian mittens require hours of sitzfleisch, and provide proof that \u201csmall amounts are cumulative,\u201d as Anne Bartlett explains in one essay. The gentle mindlessness of handwork also unleashes fresh ways of seeing the familiar, like Jodi Picoult\u2019s remembrance of how her grandmother\u2019s stitches \u201clined up like little kamikaze pilots, would leap into the abyss between the tips one at time, making the sacrifice of the individual to be part of the greater whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though this collection includes a top-flight list of contributors including Maile Meloy, Dani Shapiro, Diana Gabaldon, Jane Hamilton and fiber \u201crock star\u201d Jared Flood (if you have to ask \u2026), it must be reported that not every selection here is so tightly woven. Soporific descriptions of old sweaters, tricky patterns and allusions to Madame de Farge abound. One that lingers is \u201cThe Italian Hat\u201d by Lily King (\u201cEuphoria\u201d), who recalls how a hand-knit hat becomes a piece of personal armor for her 9-year-old daughter, struggling to find her voice in a foreign language.<\/p>\n

Stewart O\u2019Nan also strikes a poignant chord, reflecting on the task of knitting warm socks for faraway soldiers: \u201cIt\u2019s both a perfect activity and a perfect metaphor for those who sit and wait. \u2026 With its calm, methodical progress, it\u2019s a promise, in the midst of war and chaos and loss, that, somewhere, an orderly world still exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

As good as some of these pieces are, reading about knitting is still no replacement for actually knitting. So if you give a copy to a knitter you know this holiday season, be sure to throw in a few skeins for stitching up the cute stole pattern that St. Paul\u2019s The Yarnery contributed on page 196.<\/p>\n

Laura Billings Coleman knits mittens and writes for magazines in St. Paul.<\/p>\n

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