Knitters, Wool, and Hugh Howey

Knitters are diverse. There are girly-girl knitters, geek knitters, grandma knitters, hipster knitters, nerdy knitters, and conservative knitters. A quick run-through of knitters I know gives me pagan, pastor, teacher, seamstress, software engineer, social worker ... kind of fun. Knitting brings us all to the same table, where I've noticed at least one other commonality: we read. During a gathering, once we've checked out what everyone else is making/frogging, commiserated with this one and congratulated that one, and after acknowledging yet again that we really can't cable and talk at the same time, we talk about books.

I have yet to sit with a group of knitters without ipads, phones, and Moleskines being whipped out of knitting bags to jot down the book titles that start flying around the room. We're a literate bunch. We knit and we read, and while I'm not willing to go so far as to give the collective "we" to a genre, I've noticed that a lot of us read sci fi. 

So have you read Wool?

Wool is the first in a series of short stories - novellas? installments? - by Hugh Howey. They are not about knitting. I repeat, they are not about knitting, although there is a character who knits and there is a piece of wool. We spend a few lovely paragraphs with the knitter's thoughts as she admires her needles (wooden needles in a leather pouch, "like the delicate bones of the wrist wrapped in dried and ancient flesh.") and casts on for a sweater. The titles are the best use of knitting metaphor ever:

Wool

Proper Gauge

Casting Off

The Unraveling

The Stranded

I started to think that Howey either knits or is close to someone who does, and I was  right. I read the first book, Wool, and then immediately bought the Omnibus, with the first five stories. (God love a Kindle for instant gratification.) Go get it, paperback or Kindle.  Then you'll go to his website and discover, as I did, that there is an imminent sixth story, and that there is much more to discover about Howey, his fans, and his work.

You're welcome.