In The Yarn Whisperer: Reflections on a Life in Knitting, renowned knitter and author Clara Parkes ponders the roles knitting plays in her life via 22 captivating, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny essays. Recounting tales of childhood and adulthood, family, friends, adventure, privacy, disappointment, love, and celebration, she hits upon the universal truths that drive knitters to create and explores the ways in which knitting can be looked at as a metaphor for so many other things.

Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins.

Building on the success of The Yarn Whisperer, Clara Parkes' rich personal essays invite listeners and devoted crafters on excursions to be savored, from a guide who quickly comes to feel like a trusted confidante. In Knitlandia, she takes listeners along on 17 of her most memorable journeys across the globe over the last 15 years, with stories spanning from the fjords of Iceland to a cozy yarn shop in Paris' 13th arrondissement.

A hilarious, heartfelt romp that will bring you home to yourself. You don’t have to be a knitter to fall in love with this book - any person who’s ever made anything with their hands will dive joyfully into these minutes and come back up renewed and ready to create. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron’s tales, each inspired by something she knitted, will speak to anyone who’s ever loved (or lost). From her very first sweater (a hilarious disaster) to the yellow afghan that caused a breakup (and, ultimately, a breakthrough), every chapter has a moving story behind it.

In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Poignant, funny, and moving, Knitting Yarns is sure to delight knitting enthusiasts and lovers of literature alike.

In a fractured world plagued by anxiety and loneliness, knitting is coming to the rescue of people from all walks of life. Economist and lifelong knitter Loretta Napoleoni unveils the hidden power of the purl and stitch mantra: an essential tool for the survival of our species, a means for women to influence history, a soothing activity to calm us, and a powerful metaphor of life.

As an employee of three different yarn stores, a teacher of countless knitting classes, and a volunteer with at-risk youth, Lee has had the opportunity to gather diverse stories. The stories she shares about herself and fellow knitters from around the world illustrate how each stitch and purl can comfort and calm, heal and renew. This book includes stories of women, men, and teens who have experienced profound change and enlightenment through knitting and crochet.

In her late 20s, Cait Flanders found herself stuck in the consumerism cycle that grips so many of us: earn more, buy more, want more, rinse, repeat. Even after she worked her way out of nearly $30,000 of consumer debt, her old habits took hold again. When she realized that nothing she was doing or buying was making her happy - only keeping her from meeting her goals - she decided to set herself a challenge: she would not shop for an entire year. The Year of Less documents Cait's life for 12 months during which she bought only consumables.

The rhythm, ritual, and pleasure of knitting are celebrated in this new collection for lovers of both knitting and literature. In Knitting Pearls, two dozen writers write about the transformative and healing powers of knitting. Lily King remembers the year her family lived in Italy, and a knitted hat that helped her daughter adjust to her new home. Laura Lippman explores how converting to Judaism changed not only Christmas but also her mother's gift of a knitted stocking.

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. 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.

Using a travel guide format, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee acts as tour guide extraordinaire, describing and critiquing every aspect of this territory she knows so well: its people (young and old, male and female), familiar phrases ("purl this, darn that"), strange beliefs, currency (skein trading), etiquette, holidays (any sale day at the local yarn shop), and customs. She notes important dates in knitting history and celebrates unsung knitting heroes.

Whether she’s playing an “age-defying” book editor on television or dazzling audiences on the Broadway stage, Sutton Foster manages to make it all look easy. How? Crafting. From the moment she picked up a cross stitch needle to escape the bullying chorus girls in her early performing days, she was hooked. Cross stitching led to crocheting, crocheting led to collages, which led to drawing, and so much more. Channeling her emotions into her creations centered Sutton as she navigated the significant moments in her life and gave her tangible reminders of her experiences.

When sporting events were put on hold in March 2020, commentator Andrew Cotter shifted to working from home. The one-on-one competitors? His two Labrador retrievers, Olive and Mabel. In the hilarious videos that ensued, the dogs engage in various contests, from bone-snatching and breakfast-eating to crushing it on the dog walk, while Cotter narrates to hilarious effect.

Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.

People who craft know things. They know how to transform piles of yarn into sweaters and scarves. They know that some items, like woolen bikini tops, are better left unknit. They know that making a hat for a newborn baby isn't just about crafting something small but appreciating the beginnings of life, which sometimes helps make peace with the endings. They know that if you knit your boyfriend a sweater, your relationship will most likely be over before the last stitch.

In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Poignant, funny, and moving, Knitting Yarns is sure to delight knitting enthusiasts and lovers of literature alike.

Throw Out Fifty Things is truly an eye-opener. According to Blanke, our lives are so filled with junk from the past--from dried up tubes of crazy glue to old grudges--that's it's a wonder we can get up in the morning, never mind go to work, care for our children and parents, and just put one foot in front of the other. Blanke wants to start a movement of people across America throwing out 50 things (magazines count as one!) that will help liberate us from the stuff - both physical and mental - that clutters our lives.

As an employee of three different yarn stores, a teacher of countless knitting classes, and a volunteer with at-risk youth, Lee has had the opportunity to gather diverse stories. The stories she shares about herself and fellow knitters from around the world illustrate how each stitch and purl can comfort and calm, heal and renew. This book includes stories of women, men, and teens who have experienced profound change and enlightenment through knitting and crochet.

Decluttering expert Tracy McCubbin offers revolutionary help to anyone who has repeatedly tried to break their clutter's mysterious hold. Her powerful answer lies in the Seven Emotional Clutter Blocks, unconscious obstacles that stood between thousands of her clients and financial freedom, healthy relationships, and positive outlooks. Once a Clutter Block is revealed - and healed - true transformation of home and life is possible.

Chasing Slow models HGTV star Erin Loechner's journey to help you break out of the faster-better-stronger trap and make small changes to refresh your perspective, renew your priorities, and shift your focus to what matters most.

What makes you happy? Others share how they found their passion, purpose, and joy in life in these 101 personal and exciting stories that are sure to inspire and encourage listeners to find their own happiness. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Find Your Happiness will encourage listeners to pursue their dreams, find their passion and seek joy in their life with its 101 personal and inspiring stories. This book continues Chicken Soup for the Soul’s focus on inspiration and hope, reminding us that we all can find our own happiness.

It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.

After almost 20 years of caring for elderly parents - first for their senile father and then for their cantankerous 93-year-old mother - author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, 23 rooms bulging with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Plum thought, How tough will that be? I know how to buy garbage bags. But the task turns out to be much harder and more rewarding than she ever imagined.

Do you experience heart palpitations at the sound of an unexpected doorbell? Do you stare in bewilderment at your messy home, wondering how in the world it got this way again? You’re not alone. But there is hope for you and your home. Managing your home isn’t an all-or-nothing approach, and Dana has broken down the most critical things that you'll need to do to keep up with the housework. With understanding, honesty, and her trademark humor, Dana shares her field-tested strategies.

Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age 40 she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence.

In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)

There are 62 LEGO bricks for every person in the world, and at age 30, Jonathan Bender realized that he didn't have a single one of them. While reconsidering his childhood dream of becoming a master model builder for The LEGO Group, he discovers the men and women who are skewing the averages with collections of hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks. What is it about the ubiquitous, brightly colored toys that makes them so hard for everyone to put down?

The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from best-selling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, 11-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there 30 years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life.

As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.

The adventures of an extraordinary and unforgettable woman as she attempts to rescue her family’s struggling shoe business and find love at the same time, Very Valentine sweeps the listener from the streets of Manhattan to the picturesque hills of Italy.

In The Yarn Whisperer: Reflections on a Life in Knitting, renowned knitter and author Clara Parkes ponders the roles knitting plays in her life via 22 captivating, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny essays. Recounting tales of childhood and adulthood, family, friends, adventure, privacy, disappointment, love, and celebration, she hits upon the universal truths that drive knitters to create and explores the ways in which knitting can be looked at as a metaphor for so many other things.

Building on the success of The Yarn Whisperer, Clara Parkes' rich personal essays invite listeners and devoted crafters on excursions to be savored, from a guide who quickly comes to feel like a trusted confidante. In Knitlandia, she takes listeners along on 17 of her most memorable journeys across the globe over the last 15 years, with stories spanning from the fjords of Iceland to a cozy yarn shop in Paris' 13th arrondissement.

The COVID pandemic propelled many people to change their lives in ways large and small. Some adopted puppies. Others stress-baked. Peggy Orenstein, a lifelong knitter, went just a little further. To keep herself engaged and cope with a series of seismic shifts in family life, she set out to make a garment from the ground up: learning to shear sheep, spin and dye yarn, then knitting herself a sweater.

Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins.

In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Poignant, funny, and moving, Knitting Yarns is sure to delight knitting enthusiasts and lovers of literature alike.

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. 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.

A hilarious, heartfelt romp that will bring you home to yourself. You don’t have to be a knitter to fall in love with this book - any person who’s ever made anything with their hands will dive joyfully into these minutes and come back up renewed and ready to create. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron’s tales, each inspired by something she knitted, will speak to anyone who’s ever loved (or lost). From her very first sweater (a hilarious disaster) to the yellow afghan that caused a breakup (and, ultimately, a breakthrough), every chapter has a moving story behind it.

Throughout history, across cultures and countries, silk has reigned as the undeniable queen of fabrics, yet its origins and evolution remain a mystery. In a gorgeous and sweeping narrative, Silk weaves together its intricate story and the indelible mark it has left on humanity.

The story of humanity is the story of textiles - as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world.

The Lost Flock is the story of the remarkable and rare little horned sheep, known as Orkney Boreray, and the wool-obsessed woman who moved to one of Scotland’s wildest islands to save them.