- Ann Bauer, “When I sold out to advertising” (Salon)
- David Bezmozgis, “The Novel in Real Time” (The New Yorker)
- Edan Lepucki, “Life is Too Short to Read a Bad Book: A Conversation with My Editor” (The Millions)
- Ben Montgomery, “Writing the book: Ben Montgomery on Grandma Gatewood’s Walk” (Nieman Storyboard)
- Nick Ripatrazone, “No Right Path: Arriving at Writing from Outside the Humanities” (The Millions)
- Hanna Rosin, “The Overprotected Kid” (The Atlantic)
- Eva Saulitis, “Wild Darkness” (Orion Magazine)
- Gerda Saunders, “My Dementia: Telling Who I Am Before I Forget” (Slate)
- Sadie Stein, “Small Wonder” (Paris Review)
- Ivor Tossell, “The Story behind the Rob Ford Story” (The Walrus)
Tag Archives: Essays
Some things I read this month
- Christie Aschwanden, “Why Blog?” (The Last Word on Nothing)
- Kerry Clare, “Solid” (Pickle Me This)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Champion Barack Obama” (The Atlantic)
- Jill Kronstadt, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Lady James” (Bloom / The Millions)
- Steven Kurutz, “Lee and Morty Kaufman: Cleaning Up in Their 90s” (The New York Times)
- Edan Lepucki, “Style Sheet: A Conversation with My Copyeditor” (The Millions)
- Megan McArdle, “Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators” (The Atlantic)
- Seth Mnookin, “Why Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death Is So Scary” (Slate)
- Maureen Orth, “Mia’s Story” (Vanity Fair, from 1992)
- Jennifer Pastiloff, “Survival of the Fittest: On Losing My Hearing” (The Nervous Breakdown)
- Janet Potter, “28 Books You Should Read If You Want To” (The Millions)
- Arianne Wack, “Is She Writing About Me?: A Profile of Lorrie Moore” (The Millions)
Some things I read this month
- Christie Aschwanden, “How an internet quiz put me in my place” (The Last Word on Nothing)
- Anna Fitzpatrick, “Young Adult, Not So Virginal” (Hazlitt)
- Rebecca Mead, “Written Off” (The New Yorker)
- Michelle Nijhuis, “My Dirty Stream” (The Last Word on Nothing)
- Drew Philp, “Why I Bought a House in Detroit for $500” (Buzzfeed)
- Emily Rapp, “Proof of Loss” (The Rumpus)
- Scott Saalman, “Do Not Endure Verbal, Emotional, or Physical Abuse” (The Morning News)
30: Knitting Yarns
Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting by Ann Hood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars*
Purchased new at Chapters on Robson
Read in December 2013
*So, the first thing I want to say is that while I gave the anthology as a whole 3 stars (like!), I loved some of the essays in this collection. Other pieces I was less excited about. That’s the trouble with anthologies, right? But overall, this was an enjoyable book and a nice way to close out the year. Recommended to writers who like to make things.
I heard about Knitting Yarns when I ran across Ann Hood’s essay “Ten Things I Learned From Knitting” on my Tumblr dashboard. This essay, about knitting through grief, resonated so much with me, I was prompted to write my own. It also spurred me to try again to figure out how to knit (success).
Prior to purchasing the book, I also came across Bernadette Murphy’s essay “Failing Better,” about learning resilience through making mistakes. That was the clincher, really. If the rest of the book was as good as these two essays, I wanted to read it.
The book was shelved in the knitting section at Chapters, despite being clearly labeled ‘memoir’ on the jacket. Well, it turns out it does include patterns, so I guess the shelving wasn’t completely off the mark. There are five or six essays, then a pattern, and so on. Each essay is introduced with a brief abstract.
The essays are arranged in alphabetical order (by author’s last name). I think I’d have arranged it by theme, as there are clear themes that recur throughout, and juxtaposing the essays thematically would strengthen them individually and collectively.
One popular theme is the knitting version of “I can’t boil water,” which as you know I’m not that into as I’ve never really understood the attraction of the “I’m a smart person who can’t do a simple thing” trope. Anyway, apparently a lot of writers like to knit even though they are terrible at it.
Another popular theme is that of family, and the passing down of knitting as a skill (or not). I related to the tales of families of crafters and makers, as that’s the kind of family I came from. More than one writer mentioned they grew up with a rule that you could only watch TV if you were making something at the same time, which I found interesting. We never had a rule about it; it wasn’t necessary. You always did something else while watching TV! Maybe this is why I don’t have the TV-angst that so many people seem to have. For me, watching TV has always been synonymous with making things.
And there’s the aforementioned theme of grief. Many of the essays were in whole or part about knitting getting them through a a difficult time in their lives, a death or other loss. Again and again, writers spoke of the zone, the flow, the trance that knitting puts them into, a space that calms anxiety and a chattering mind.
In addition to Ann Hood’s essay, I especially loved: Andre Dubus III’s “Blood, Root, Knit, Purl” (this reads like a story), Kaylie Jones’s “Judite” (ditto), and Joyce Maynard’s “Straw Into Gold” (her mother sounds like she was amazing).
A few quotes:
But you couldn’t crochet or knit and read at the same time, and reading was all I wanted to do. (Marianne Leone, 161)
Yep, that pretty much sums up why my younger self didn’t take to knitting and the like. Reading! *Homer Simpson drool*
In nineteenth century literature it seems sometimes to be true that good women knit and bad women crochet or do fancy work. (Alison Lurie, 179)
I’ll have to keep that in mind 😉
No one pushes back from her desk to knit a few rows and contemplate the sentence on the page… (Ann Patchett, 207)
Oh, no…? >cough< Pretty sure I’ve done something along those lines. >cough<
The Remainder Table 