I really enjoyed Anne L. MacDonald's No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting when I first read it a few years ago. It's a great book for people who are interested in how knitting started in America and the changes it has gone through.
But it's a really long, big book, full of tons of information that some knitters just might not be interested in. This abridged (though still four CD and nearly five-hour-long) audio version gets listeners some of the highlights without such a huge commitment.
A Brief History of Knitting
Knitting has been a part of American history since before we were called Americans, and this audiobook from Knitting Out Loud gives a detailed account of knitting's presence in people's lives since the first colonists arrived through modern times knitting with Elizabeth Zimmerman.
While bits of the story are cut out of this reading, it is still packed full of information -- maybe more information than most knitters would care to know about their craft.
To me, this book is best listened to intermittently and in the background while knitting or working on other things. It becomes less overwhelming if you aren't listening exclusively and if you don't try to listen to the whole thing in one afternoon.
Just like I wouldn't try to read the book in a sitting (or even a week), the audio version would be better savored, listened to a chapter at time rather than a whole disk, or even the whole book, at once.
You just won't get everything you can out of it if you listen to it in marathon sessions.
Voices and Lessons
The reader, Kimberly Dakin, is an award winner, but she's still not my favorite. I feel like her voice is a little droning in a hypnotic and soothing way, making it easy to tune out her voice and not really pay attention to.
This could almost be considered a good thing because you can listen to it several times and get different things from it if you kind of tune in and out while you listen.
Sometimes the voices that the reader uses are a little annoying, though they're meant to be cute. For example, when she's reading the diary of a colonial knitter reporting her slow progress on a sock is read with a really sarcastic tone. Sure, the knitter in question probably was annoyed at the slow progress of her knitting, but the tone in the reader's voice was off-putting to me, and probably would be to other modern knitters who think any day knitting is a good day.
Still, knitters will enjoy hearing things that will make them feel connected to other knitters through the ages and bring a smile to their faces.
For example, the story about the disastrous results of trying to wear a knit bathing suit in the water (some things never change), and the idea that knitting tells stories, that memories are held there, not only of knitting but of the things that were happening as the project was knit. Even sad memories are treasured when worked into the stitches.
The section on Elizabeth Zimmermann that ends the audio version is another fun moment when you consider how many of today's knitters do things "because Elizabeth said so" maybe without even knowing it.
Publication Date: March 2008.
