A book review of The Yarn Harlot...

On the Friday before Labor Day weekend, I thought I'd post a light book review :) For those that enjoy knitting, or even just someone who enjoys a witty and humorous read, you simply must pick up The Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter. This is the funniest book I've read in a long time, and I highly enjoyed reading it.

Our fine author is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, a now very well-known Toronto knitter who also maintains a popular blog. She's written several books, and this one is her first, and so far my favorite. It's a collection of anecdotes about her life as a knitter, a writer, and wife and mother to 3 children. She writes of well-intentioned projects gone horribly awry (the GREEN AFGHAN, and the matching wedding sweaters), of nearly paying a sizable late return fee on a rental car simply because a favorite needle had gone AWOL inside, of the battle against moths and against her yarn stash completely taking over her house. Her chapter on a nefarious squirrel that kept stealing her hand-spun and dyed yarn from her clothesline had me nearly in tears:

"What the hell was he doing with all this wool? 'Nests,' Fred assured me. I wasn't so sure. I reminded Fred that our little freakin' friend had two full fleeces (stolen a little at at time) and about twenty skeins of yarn in every color of the rainbow. Squirrels build nests in trees (Fred concurs) and that seems like a lot of fiber to take up a tree. Fred had told me that the home range or stomping ground of an urban gray squirrel is about an acre. I thought about that. If we used my home as the epicenter for the squirrel's turf, then there were thirteen trees close enough that they could house his nest. None of them was hollow, so if our wool-stealing buddy was...er...squirreling his stash up a tree, I would have seen it. Hell, my neighbors would have seen it. People would be talking about it. I would hear things on the street like, 'Hey, did you see that colossal multicolored squirrel nest down the street? I swear it's got pink mohair in it." It seemed unlikely. We needed another theory."

I'd be in bed, reading side-by-side with Mike, and just start snorting with laughter. I *loved* this book, and highly, highly recommend it. It's a fantastic light read. Check it out!