At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much [Bargain Price] [Audio CD]

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 2007

The Yarn Harlot takes time away from her knitting to offer observations, meditations, reflections, and rants to soothe and delight the knitter’s unraveled soul.

Like golfing, fishing, and gardening, knitting is an obsession. It’s an activity fraught with guilt, frustration, over-optimism, sly deception, and compulsion, along with passionate moments of creative enlightenment. Not to mention heaps of yarn you really think you’ll knit someday.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee totally understands. In this hilarious collection of tangled reflections, she offers ample reassurance for anyone who has ever wondered, “Am I alone in my mania?” Casting off with some of her favorite quotations, she muses on why it’s impossible to knit too much, how many calories knitting burns (about 90 an hour, not counting the extra for retrieving your ball of yarn from under the couch), and when it’s okay to stalk a man in the grocery store (not because he’s good-looking, but because he’s wearing an Aran sweater you want to know how to knit).

The first step toward recovery is getting help—and having a good laugh at your compulsion. At Knit’s End is a wicked and wickedly funny fix for any knitter.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Obsessive knitter Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whose popular knitting blog (www.yarnharlot.com) gets 20,000 hits per day, offers her fellow knitters humorous knitting anecdotes, bits of homespun (no pun intended!) wisdom, helpful tips and little mantras to help keep their sanity when realizing an entire sleeve of a sweater has come out wrong and has to be redone. Even nonknitters can appreciate much of her humor-for example, her technique for darning socks that have holes in them, which consists of loudly exclaiming 'DARN!' and a few other choice expletives before dropping them in the garbage. Pearl-McPhee has a warm, engaging voice brimming with humor and often punctuated by a self-deprecating chuckle. This audiobook of her folksy ruminations would make the perfect gift for anyone who loves to knit. The print version of this title won the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award in humor. A Storey Publishing paperback. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This small book holds a treasure of thoughts with which every knitter can identify: the frustrations of ignoring gage, the thrill of a new project, the compulsion of yarn addiction aka SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectation). Pearl-McPhee is a lifelong knitter whose bona fides are secured with this story: when she asked her midwife how she'd know when to summon her, the midwife answered, "When you don't feel like knitting anymore." This small paperback, which fits easily in a knitting bag, contains about 300 short anecdotes, vignettes, and pieces of advice for knitters. For some of her musings, she adds lessons learned: "I will remember that no one has ever been killed or maimed by being adventurous with knitting." Many knitters will find it a relief to read a knitting book with no patterns they feel they must try. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: HighBridge Company; Unabridged edition (June 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598875205
• ASIN: B003156BOU
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #953,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is the author of Yarn Harlot, At Knit's End, Knitting Rules!, and Casts Off. She maintains a popular blog at www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/. She lives with her family in an untidy, wool-filled house in Toronto, where she avoids doing the laundry and knits whenever she gets a minute.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Short, sweet and funny!, March 25, 2005

By 

D. Boyken "Knitting Scholar .com" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much (Paperback)

This small gem of a book is just a delight for anyone who knits (or who knows a knitter). It's filled with little essay-like "meditations" about knitting, obsession, family, stashes of yarn . . . all things that any person who knits can appreciate. Each entry is short and sweet--some only a paragraph long, some a page or two--but they're unreservedly fun. Each is headed by a delicious quote, too, by knitters and non-knitters alike, and then summed up in Ms. Pearl-McPhee's own, sparkling way. It's a small little book, but easy to flip through, and I must for any knitter's library.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's like looking into a mirror, November 29, 2005

By 

Chanel No. 5 "Fashion Fan" (Tristate) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much (Paperback)

This little book is so much fun and every knitter who's a little bit serious (I would not call myself obsessed with knitting but I always squeeze some knitting in my schedule - even if my work week goes really crazy and beyond the 80 hours per week :))about her/his knitting will recognise themselves and their thoughts while reading this book.
I like the format in particular - you can pick it up, have a good time reading it, put it away for a while and then just pick up where you left off w/o an issue.
Without a doubt, I would buy it again.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is laughing gonna' hurt you?, April 4, 2005

By 

Dena/Daniel Bugel-Shunra - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much (Paperback)

If you're just after surgery, stay away from this book.

If you don't like laughing so hard that you can't breathe, just keep your mouse away from that "buy now" button.

If you actually want to DO something between the moment you lay your hands on the book and the moment you finish reading the whole thing, spare yourself the anguish.

If you've got appendicitis... ...NOT the book for you.

But if you don't mind having a prolonged series of giggles at life's sublime ironies, buy a copy. Buy it because it's the funniest book to be published in 2005. Buy it to encourage Ms. Pearl-McPhee to keep writing. And knitting. Buy it - and drop by her blog to let her know you've done it.

But only if you don't mind some hearty laughter.