Book Review- Knitting The Threads Of Time

Knitting the Threads of Time: Casting Back to the Heart of Our Craft by Nora Murphy  (published by  New World Library)

Nora Murphy weaves together the story of knitting her young son a sweater with stories about her life, as well as historical explorations of women’s connections to the making of yarn and clothing.

Reading the book is a lot like subscribing to a favorite blog and getting to know a very pleasant and intelligent person. Her style is very intimate and accessible.

Ms Murphy speaks passionately about the lives of women from ancient times right up to the present.

She talks from the heart about  women who work in abominable conditions now in order to clothe us….

and poses questions about how we can help to make their lives better.  Important information indeed!

I love Knitting the Threads of Time and HIGHLY recommend it!

By the way, I couldn’t resist looking up the url for the story about the exploding knitting needle.

I also went… cringe… and got out my bamboo needles to finish knitting the  sock in the picture above.

To photograph the book , I plunked the book and the sock in question on a sweater that I designed and knitted more than 20 years ago.  Why?

Because I have a fun story about this sweater.

I was wearing it to run errands. I was zooming into the grocery store, when a street person stopped me and did a happy little dance, and twirled his finger in the air, asking me to do a pirouette so he could see the back of the sweater.

He giggled gleefully and crowed: “Beautiful! Beautiful! and you did it all with 2 sticks and string!”

He then danced away, miming knitting and grinning over his shoulder at me, calling out:

“2 sticks and string! 2 sticks and string!”

Ah, yes … “2 sticks and string!”

There are so many stories about 2 sticks and string, and Nora Murphy tells all manner of them with grace  and intelligence.

(image source: Noreen Crone-Findlay. Copyright, not to be used without permission)