All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee


Politics and Prose had another members book sale, so of course I bought more books!

One that I bought and have been looking forward to getting is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's new book All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin. If you haven't read her blog, Yarn Harlot, or her past books, you are really missing out on something. Even if you don't knit, she is a great writter, hilarious and is just fun to read.

If you do knit it is an added bonus.  We all have similar problems that we run into with our knitting and there is no one that writes about those times better than the Yarn Harlot.  Sometimes I feel a little alone in the world with my obsession with knitting and everything that it brings to my life, reading her books makes me feel a little less alone in this world.

Have you read this?

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Jane Austen Biography

Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was recently asked if there was a biography of Jane Austen that I would recommend. Why yes, yes there is. Claire Tomalin's book Jane Austen: A Life is well written and gives, from what I can tell, an accurate account of her life. So many biographies on Jane Austen try to make more of her life than it really was. We all want there to be a romance in her life and some biographies go WAY out of their way to give us one. And recently there has been a lot of speculation about if she was poisoned her not (you can read more on this theory here). Tomalin just gives you her life. She states where she is inferring and I appreciate that, as well as her inferences.

So, yes, i do have one that I would recommend. Do you have one?

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On the Needles

As I posted before, my mother bought me some beautiful yarn at the Plaza Arts Fair earlier this year.  The yarn is from Lost City Knits in Oklahoma.  With it, she bought a pattern for a lace shawl for me to make with it.  At first I thought that I would wait until after the Christmas knitting was done to get started, but the lace weight yarn just kept calling to me. 

The yarn is Bamboo and Llama which makes it the first Llama yarn that I have ever knit with.  So far, I'm loving it.  The fiber tends to stick together more than other fiber I have worked with before, but that makes it take on a different appearance than I think it would otherwise.


The pattern is a bit complicated - again by Lost City Knits, it is the Sangiovese Stole.  I had a moment of utter disgust with myself and threw the poor, innocent shawl aside for a while to calm myself down.  You would think that if you read through a pattern, even copy it out again so that it was larger and easier to read that you would have picked up on what the pattern is suppose to look like.  Apparently, that isn't the case if your name is Kelli.  After spending oh, I would say a good 2 hours working on a chart for the shawl, I realized that I had been doing the wrong stitch for the last 6 rows of the 12 row pattern, and I was not on my first repeat of said chart.  

After stepping away for awhile and then spending a couple of additional hours ripping it out carefully (and as I mentioned before, this yarn tends to stick to itself rather tightly - which makes ripping back a chore) I was able to fix the mistake and re-knit the chart.  I am currently experiencing a love love relationship with the shawl again.  


I haven't been able to dedicate too much time to it right now because of the Christmas knits, but hopefully soon we will be reunited.

Unfamiliar Fishes

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have a confession to make, I LOVE SARAH VOWELL. When I heard that she was going to be doing a reading and Politics and Prose, I drug not only my husband to see her, but my mother-in-law who was in town that weekend.

If I know you, and I know that you haven't ever read a Sarah Vowell book I will immediately start to offer up the books that I own (and I own all of her books - hardback, that is how committed I am) to you to start your literary journey with one of the funniest and smartest writers.

She is someone who can take a completely nerdy topic and turn it into a hilarious book that you just can't put down. She is one of those writers that makes you want to have tea, or lunch with her just to sit down and talk with her about anything.

Unfamiliar Fishes was just the next in a series of great books by Sarah Vowell. It is hilarious and informative all at the same time. I learned a lot about Hawaii and its annexation to the United States and have taken on a new fascination with Hawaii and other territories since reading this book. Next step - visiting Hawaii!!

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FO

I have a finished project ... THAT I CAN SHARE ON THE BLOG!

I have so many Christmas knits going on that it feels weird not being able to share all that I am working on, but I actually have a finished project that I can share with you.

I finished this infinity scarf for my friend Sam (pregnant belly seen in picture above!) that I posted about last month.  She picked out the yarn, Cascade Yarns, Magnum in colorway 9564.  It is superbulky and was a lot of fun to work with.  The yarn is a single ply, so it created this wonderful hazy look that you can kind of see in the picture below.

The pattern is hot times by tshep.  If you know how to knit, purl and cable (which is easier than it seems, I promise) then you can make this scarf.  It was really easy and a lot of fun to knit.  I am actually thinking of getting some more bulky yarn and making myself one.

The only thing that I would do differently, and which I am thinking about fixing on Sam's scarf, is the kitchener stitch at the end to bind the two ends together.  I wanted to finish it quickly so that I could get it to Sam.  So, i stitched it up (with a bobby pin as the needle - no needle on hand, they make a nice substitute for bulky yarn! - or I was just being lazy and didn't want to get up and search for my larger needle) and took it down to her.  It didn't look right and it was bothering me that I couldn't figure out why. I told her to just hide that portion of the scarf, and when she didn't seem to mind the seam at all I thought maybe I was imagining things.  It wasn't until I was laying in bed that night that I realized why it was bothering me.  I did the kitchener stitch with the wrong side out - so of course the seam is visible on the right side when it should be on the other side of the work.  I might need to borrow her scarf back to fix it so that it doesn't continue to frustrate me.

No matter how long I knit, I realize, just take that extra minute, slow down and you won't make stupid mistakes that obviously keep you up at night! And, well, maybe read your charts correctly - a story for another time.

Christmas Knits

While I can't share my Christmas knitting on the blog yet, I thought that I would give you a sneak peak.

I absolutely love to get knitting boxes in the mail.  And this was a big order!! While I won't tell you exactly how much of this yarn I got quite yet, lets just say, I got more than 10 skeins.

This particular yarn is going to be made into a gift for my niece and nephew - Brooklyn and Aidan.

Sick

Sorry for the hiatus in posting, I have been sick for a few days.  I am feeling better, but am not up for large posts quite yet.  I will work on some this weekend so that I can catch up with everyone next week.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with another Jane Austen quote.  As was guessed, the last one posted was from Sense and Sensibility.  Any guesses on which novel this one is from?

"One man's style must not be the rule of another's."