Security Blanket

I'm hopeless when it comes to knitting, embroidery, or even sewing on a button. My daughter recently enlisted my help on a father/daughter project gone teary, and we made a teddy bear...a very long necked teddy bear. After that project, I could have used another kind of longneck.

So I find it sort of curious that when I'm feeling blue, I gravitate toward knitting novels. Having exhausted the Kate Jacobs' series and the Knit Lit books by Beth Pattillo, I picked up a copy of The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood this week.

Hood's novel follows Mary Baxter from scarf to sock to sweater. With each new project, Mary befriends another knitter who frequents the Sit and Knit. With each new stitch learned, she collects another story of lost love. Finally, Mary shares her own story about the death of her daughter Stella.

This novel is similar to other knitting yarns in that it follows a group of women who gather in the community yarn shop. The shop is warm, safe, and cozy with the bright colors of the wares and the tempting aromas of that week's shared dessert. Although the characters could almost be fashioned from the same patterns other books rely one (the aloof expert, the frazzled mother, the lovelorn artist), they too offer a kind of no surprises comfort.

Immersed in the knitters' gossip, I don't have to worry that my down jacket makes me look like an extra from an 80s John Cusack movie instead of the Land's End model mom I envisioned. I don't have to worry about brakes that don't work on ice so that swerving into the Bear Claw drive-thru is the only way I avoid plowing into a line of cars that ridiculously have Michigan license plates. All I have to worry about is getting to the library before it closes. I have The Shop on Blossom Street on reserve. With Christmas fast approaching, I'm going to need it.