All Wound Up

All Wound Up by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Just about any day can be improved for me by reading one or two or three of the Yarn Harlot’s essays on knitting and life. I don’t know that there are so very many non-knitters who read her books and her fabulous, award-winning blog, though her humor and insight into life certainly goes beyond knitting. This is another book that looks at things like should knitting be treated as an addiction and how to answer questions from non-knitters like, “Did they let you on this airplane with those needles?” In the knitting realm, I recognized myself in the essay on why knitters feel compelled to knit gifts. In the non-knitting realm, there was a very funny obituary for a dead washing machine, as well as “That Kind of Mother”, the story of what one normally restrained mother (that would be Pearl-McPhee) did one hot August day when her three girls started in indoor water balloon fight. If there is a knitter on your Christmas shopping list this year, do her or him a favor and get this book.