A very exciting addition to my library, with the help of lovely Alice, is a very pretty book about yarns I’ve been coveting for many months. No I did not break my 2010 literary resolution—this book was acquired back in Dec. I, however, have only now started to read the book.
In The Knitter’s Book of Yarn: the ultimate guide to choosing, using, and enjoying yarn, Clara Parkes patiently teaches the reader about yarns handknitters would encounter from the fibers themselves to the end product in skeins. The book contains a lot of useful, but not an overwhelming dose of, information about yarn fibers, production, and quality. I especially appreciate her explanations on how to match the fiber content and the weight of a yarn with a specific pattern (design), a task that is both exciting and daunting for a novice knitter. The book makes me a more knowledgeable matchmaker for my next project. This, I think, explains and excuses the fact that the patterns in the book aren’t super exciting or novel. If you read the pattern notes, you can learn a lot about how to pair a pattern to a yarn.
Oh and of course, I enjoy this book a lot because I love the construction of the book itself: a delightful cover (featuring yarn flowers!); a bright orange inside cover; thick papers inside that are perfect for underlining and note taking. I did, however, wish there were more photos of the yarns/fibers themselves and illustrations of some of the concepts mentioned, for example, showing the difference between a woolen vs. worsted spun yarns.
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This is the second book I own that I would consider domestic, containing knowledge that every girl even a few generations would consider common knowledge but completely mysterious to me and my peers. My other domestic book is a comprehensive guide on how to keep house: Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson.
I am not required to keep house obsessively or to knit. And I do wonder if I get excited about yarns because it’s a hobby and not an obligation. If the many years I logged in the classroom involved learning practical things, would these mundane knowledge about keeping house and fiber choosing be horribly boring to me? Well, the only way to find out is to make math optional and see if kids clamor to buy up calculus books and have integral sessions at Starbucks.
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This yarn book is also one of those books that can only be appreciated by readers with a certain amount of experience. While reading this book, I frequently told myself how wonderful it would’ve been if I had read this book back when I first started knitting. This book could’ve saved me from some bad yarn purchases or inappropriate yarn pairing to a pattern. Oh but I should not kid myself, for no, I would not have been able to understand this book if it weren’t for my awful mistakes with yarns. If I had no experience touching different fibers and puzzling over them, the discussion on fibers would be meaningless. And if it weren’t for all the disastrous yarn/pattern pairings, I would not appreciate the knowledge imparted to me.
I just have to realize that certain books can only be appreciated after accumulating mistakes. For example, I read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White back in the eighth grade and found the book awfully boring and full of information no one can possibly find helpful. I again read the book a couple of years back after I had given myself enough time to make oh-so-many writing mistakes (probably all the most egregious ones in the book). And this time I truly appreciated the advice and saw that the book was a gem. Yes, when I look at the little volume, it does sparkle happily on my bookshelf.
So mistakes are not to be feared because they make knowledge more yummy. I guess mistakes makes us more teachable too. So I am not afraid to knit or write badly. I am, however, terrified of technology. It made me feel perplexed and profoundly uncomfortable to buy a new lappy or try a USB drive for the first time. Technology is so super scary that I still have the impulse to do all my writing on my Moleskines instead of this electronic typewriter that connects to the internet. The issue is intuition. I don’t know when things go wrong and I have no gut feeling about how to fix the problems. I also don’t know how things work so everything is a profound mystery. That’s why even though I have recently started to covet an E-book reader (okay, I’ll say it—a “Kindle”), I will never be able to think of a book having a flat screen. Something about that makes me feel uneasy.
Ah, so I shall end this entry about everything and nothing. This is the result of a wicked headache that I hope will go away soon.
2 comments:
Another reason why I both like and dislike writing in notebooks is that I write slower than I type. Sometimes this, you know, drags my thoughts, if my brain is hopped up, but sometimes then I can think as the pen is forming words.
Also I am glad you are keen on the book :) I think some mistakes you have to make yourself in order to know them.
Yes, exactly re. writing in notebooks. I find that writing in notebooks is great for thinking and typing is great for tweaking sentences.
And I do really like the yarn book. I'll have to read it a second time though to let the "lessons" really sink in...I am knitting a scarf in thick wool that has no drape... another mistake I suppose. But I knew this would be a "mistake" going in but couldn't resist because I have been coveting your thick black woolen scallop scarf for a long time and wanted to knit something like that...
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