Knitting Quote

(UK Amazon Link)(US Amazon Link)

This book is mostly a crossover Horror/Mystery/Dark Fantasy read but on page 132 in the UK Edition

"At four a.m., Donal was exploring a room in his apartment, a room that he'd scarcely been inside. In a small chest of drawers, he found bundles of soft, dyed mammoth wool in a dozen different colours, along with knitting-needles, a just-started scarf of burgundy and silver, and a knitting-algorithm, printed in purple in flimsy paper, that indicated how the scarf-knitting was to proceed.

"Laura. I didn't know you could do this stuff

"It was nothing that Donal had ever watched or thought about, but the instructions were mathematical in a way that reminded him of his brief stint in Artillery School, and it wasn't as if he needed to sleep. There might be more useful ways for a zombie to pass the night-time hours, but what the Hades - no one could be serious twenty-five hours a day, nine days a week.

"He picked up the needles and wool, read the algorithm through once more, and then tried to follow the instructions.

"It took seventeen minutes to get the rhythm going, and two minutes more to decide that however much amusement he might get by taking his knitting in to the task force office, it wasn't for him. He threw everything back into the drawer."

I love the way it's phrased, this is an alternative world and it's such a throwaway scene. I also love the knitting-algorithm idea instead of knitting pattern.

Knitting in 1939

Amazon.com Link: 1939: The Last Season

From 1939 The Last season by Anne De Courcy, I have been interested for years in the interwar period and this was an interesting read, as I was reading I was amused to come across these little snippets about knitting.

p5 "Society lived well. The rich drove Daimlers, Rolls-Royces and the now forgotten Lanchester (its selling point: 'At 50 m.p.h. you can knit comfortably')."

p184 "The habit of knitting in the ballroom, however, was becoming ever more popular. Needles clicked away merrily among the rows of chaperones sitting along the walls. Lady Acland, respponsible for starting the whole thing a few weeks earlier, brought an ambitious piece of work with her to one dance, a wool dress to which she managed to add several inches during the course of the evening. Even so, one chaperone who brought a mauve jumper she hoped to complete during a dance at Claridges did not have the courage to bring it into the ballroom when she realized everyone else was empty-handed, and left it bundled up ignominiously in the cloakroom."