A Book About Life and Yarn

Children's book author and illustrator Michelle Edwards http://michelledwards.com/blog/has a warm and snoggly new book for grown-ups, A Knitter's Home Companion http://www.prairielightsbooks.com/book/9781584799160. It's a comforting compendium of projects, recipes, and essays about the ways that knitting fills the interstices of her life.

The essays touch on husbands and children, on home and giving, on relationships created through textiles, even Iowa City's very own Home Ec Workshop; they're universal in appeal, yet intimate in approach. It's the kind of book that just makes you feel good about the simplest things in life, the kinds of things that occupy most of us each day.

I've gotten to know Michelle a bit, as we've met for coffee and discussed writing, or bumped into one another at Home Ec. She's been extremely generous with her time and advice as I've picked her brain about the vagaries of writing and publishing.

So check out this lovely volume. You can feel good that a kind and clever soul penned it and I promise it will be worth your while to put down your knitting needles long enough to dip into an essay or two. Its ease and warmth will soothe you like the coziest hand-knit shawl.