When I talk about “knitting books,” it’s easy to assume I mean books of knitting patterns, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Knitting memoirs explore the craft through historical, personal, and global lenses. I discovered these books long after I’d already been using knitting as my own storytelling engine with After This Row, and it was so exciting to see parts of myself in these books.
Peggy is an accomplished journalist, so it makes sense she’d take a journalistic approach to a project like this. A longtime knitter already, Peggy decided during the COVID-19 pandemic that she wanted to learn how a sweater is made from the ground up: shearing the sheep, spinning and dyeing the yarn, and designing her own pattern. It examines each part of the process from the past and present in such a fascinating way, while also incorporating her and her family’s lived experiences during an infamously unprecedented time.
As a former journalist/communications professional who got back into knitting myself (and started this blog) during COVID, Unraveling was the first book of its kind that I’d read, and it blew the doors wide open.
Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees The World by Clara Parkes (2016)
Clara Parkes is a prolific knitting instructor, wool ambassador, and writer, having penned several knitting memoirs over the years. I’ve read a few, but Knitlandia is my favourite because it also functions as a travelogue. It’s a collection of essays about her travels that revolve around yarn, from festivals and conferences to global fibre tourism and clandestine yarn store visits on family vacations.
I laughed out loud when she talked about the time she attended a knitting event where the venue was kitty-corner to a Jeni’s Ice Creams shop — an American chain with a passionate cult following — and how the weekend devolved into everyone comparing notes on flavours and angling to try every single one. My husband and I had a similar experience when we were walking around downtown Charleston, SC, with our paper bowls of ice cream one night. A lady walking past stopped in her tracks, pointed at us, and said “Jeni’s?!” to which we replied with an equally enthusiastic “yeah!” before we went on our merry ways.
Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (2005)
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a blogger and doula living in Ontario, who has also churned out several knitting memoirs in addition to maintaining her near-daily blog at yarnharlot.ca since 2004. The latest addition to my lineup, while also being the oldest in terms of publication order, Yarn Harlot is a collection of personal essays that range from silly tongue-in-cheek open letters to hypothetical pattern designers and musings on self-imposed holiday knitting crunches, to meditations on grief that take you out by the kneecaps.
It’s an interesting thing to read a book this personal more than 20 years after it was originally conceived, as it’s also an accidental time capsule of knitting culture and attitudes. I especially found the essays on Stephanie’s trials and tribulations knitting ambitious projects for people in her life curious, because I rarely make things for other people — definitely not huge projects like blankets and sweaters, except for very special circumstances. Talking about it with my crafty friends, we posit that the boundaries around craft labour have changed drastically over the generations. I remember being utterly flabbergasted when a friend of my mom’s asked me if I’ve been “knitting sweaters for everyone in the family,” to which I replied “no??”
In all, I think the breadth of these books really drives home the fact that craft and storytelling go hand-in-hand, and stories about knitting are rarely just about knitting.