Admittedly, this week’s Craft Book Spotlight is a little more literal than usual. But when Alice Hoffman – the Alice Hoffman, best-selling author of Practical Magic and The Marriage of Opposites – releases a new book with her cousin, master knitter Lisa Hoffman, you sit up and pay attention.
Faerie Knitting: 14 Tales of Love and Magic is half knitting pattern primer, half storybook. Each pattern begins with an original fairy tale written by Alice, and the resulting knitting project is inspired by the preceding tale. The book itself is intended to evoke classic books of fairy tales, with gilded corners and fanciful designs.
“How fairy tales are told and remembered has a great deal in common with knitting traditions,” explains Alice. “It is no mistake that we describe storytelling as knitting a tale, or weaving a story, or spinning a yarn.”
And with patterns like the “Amulet Necklace” and “Witch Gloves,” it’s just in time for Halloween. Perhaps weaving patterns from the Hoffman cousins’ book may be just the thing to unspool a bout of writer’s block this winter.
