Reviews
For all reviews excerpted here, click on the link below it to read the entire review.
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I read this book last night. 156 pages that gives knitters and non-knitters alike a bit of insight into those totally confusing conversations knitters can have when they get together. This book is great! Small enough to fit in my knitting bag so I can pull it out and hand it to my friends/family when they give me that "what the heck did she just say" look but comprehensive enough that they might understand what I say from now on.
Thank you Mary Beth for my book and for finally finding a way to explain S.E.X. to my parents!
Temple writes about business for YMN so it's nice to see her flex her funny bone in this humorous dictionary of terms for the knit-obsessed, sized for the cashier counter... She devises a formula to calculate dollars-per-hour spent knitting, rationalizing steep yarn purchases, estimates the half-life of novelty yarn as "roughly equal to nuclear waste"; grouses about Lord Kitchener; and translates the many meanings behind the "it's too pretty to use" backhanded thank-you for knitted gifts...
...a wonderful tongue-in-cheek, insider look at knitting from a died-in-the-wool addict. She observes, "...interesting that many words knitters use to describe their hobby have somehow migrated from the language of the illegal drug trade." Then she lists: "stash, needles, dealer, habit, addiction...."
She cautions: "Next think you know there will be a twelve-step program: 'Hello my name is MaryBeth, and I am addicted to alpaca.'"
Well for me, I'm addicted to Mary Beth's laugh-out-loud, ohhh too true Secret Language of Knitters.
Keep a copy handy and pass it quietly to those who need it so they don't feel left out.
Now that I have read the book, I could tell you what all those words and acronyms mean. But I’m not going to. If you want to know, you’re going to have to get a copy of "The Secret Language of Knitters" all your own. It’s the perfect size to toss into your project bag, handy when someone in your knitting group says, ever so casually, "After SEX yesterday, all I wanted to do was surf the Web for yarn porn. I think I’m becoming a knitting addict." ...
Thanks, Mary Beth Temple, for codifying knitter-speak and giving us all a good laugh.
What I enjoyed most about the book was the feeling that I was in a secret club where, finally, someone "got it" - they understood me as a knitter. They understood our funny little quirks and idiosyncrasies - and they were all just fine! In fact, it was okay to laugh as we recognized ourselves in the funny vignettes.