The author is an Italian journalist, a prolific and well known political/economics analyst, whose work takes her all over the world. And everywhere she goes she takes her knitting. She learnt at her grandmother's feet in the strong family community she grew up in. Idyllic. Her life takes a wild left turn when her marriage collapses due to her husband's money issues. Knitting is there, it saves her, gives her a focus, keeps her going. And in the process, tells us about knitting and its power. She touches on where and how knitting originated - a long, long time ago. Why did those old women knit as the guillotine sliced off the heads of the aristocrats during the French Revolution? Did you know knitting has been used to carry codes and secret messages? And is now being used in climate change protests? And what is it about the simple act of knitting and purling row after row after row that somehow seems to reduce tension, stress, allows us to connect with one another?
It is not a particularly deep or literary book, and she flits from subject to subject, which is a little frustrating. I would've liked to have known more. It is also difficult to determine if it is a memoir, a history of knitting - very broad and generalised, or a sort of commentary on the state of the world. Despite this aimlessness I did enjoy it, and my reading of this has made me look at my knitting needles again and take a renewed interest in all the lovely wools out there at the moment.
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