Books – Merula Designs

Hello!

It was on my way to the Knitting and Crochet Days in Amsterdam in May 2019 that I saw the first minibieb (pronounced as: mini beep). It was a beautifully crafted boat, complete with mooring posts.

Over the past 18 months or so, when our ‘real’ libraries were closed for a long time, these little libraries have mushroomed around here.

During my walks and bicycle rides I’ve taken pictures whenever I passed one. Most of them are like small cabinets, some with sloping and others with pointed roofs (click on images to enlarge).

Similar, but still all different. Many of them have mottos, like ‘give and take’; ‘one out, one in’, or:

‘A good book can be shared together, borrowed, swapped, donated.’

Here is a peek inside one:

Several English books among the ones in Dutch, a few crime and other novels, and a book with the intriguing title Chuapi Punchapi Tutayaca (or is it the author’s name?). As well as one that is also on my own book shelves: Zomerboek (The Summer Book) by Tove Jansson – who would give that gem away, I wonder?

Some little libraries are tiny…

… and found along city streets lined with wheelie bins.

Others are slightly bigger and found in out-of-the way places. Along a grassy path…

…I found this one, also selling plum jam and walnuts.

En route, I passed this sign, where we are meant to tralalalalaaaa our way to the next little library.

One little library in our neighbourhood is located inside a café.

And several provide benches, so that you can start reading straightaway, like this one.

And this one.

Nice, isn’t it, with little olive trees on either side of the bench. This minibieb is called Bieb aan ‘t Diep.

That means Library on the Canal. And this is what it looks out on.

I had a nice chat with the owner of this one…

… that has a bench with a brass plate on it saying ‘Little Book Bench’.

I asked her why she decided to start a minibieb. She told me of her lifelong love of books. She also mentioned things like social cohesion, enlivening the street and serving people (especially young and elderly) who can’t easily get to the public library.

I’m writing about the minibieb because I think it’s a wonderful new phenomenon. And also because there is a link between books and my new knitting design. We’ve already been out for a photo shoot. I’m working hard on the lay-out now and hope to publish the pattern next week. Here is a sneak peek.

Googling, I discovered that the minibieb movement started in Wisconsin in the US and that there now are little free libraries (as they are officially called) in 91 countries. Do you have them near you, too? Do you use them?

Some people seem to be worried that they will steal readers from the public libraries. Hm, maybe. Or maybe they’ll create new readers eager to move onto larger libraries after a while.

More information and a world map can be found on the Little Free Library website. The Dutch minibieb website can be found here. I don’t know if this goes for the rest of the world, but in the Netherlands there are many, many more minibiebs than those registered on the website. Once you’ve found one, you can always ask the owner if they know more near where you live.

Well, that’s all for today. I hope to be back next week with a knitting story. Bye for now and take care!

That I’ve called this blogpost ‘Novels for Knitters’ doesn’t mean that I think knitters are a separate species that can’t read ‘ordinary’ novels. Not at all! All it means is that I’ve pulled a selection of novels from my bookcases in which knitting (wool, yarn, etc.) plays a central role. I’ve had a fun time looking through them and photographing them against a backdrop of some of my knits, and hope you’ll enjoy reading about them.

Let’s start with the one in the picture above. A cosy scene, isn’t it? A cat snoozing in a spot of sunlight, flowers along a windowsill, a stack of knitted sweaters, a basket filled with yarn, and a knitting project on the needles.

The basket looks like my basket of yarn, and the knitting looks like what I have on my needles at the moment, but it isn’t. You can see my knitting in the background. The cosy scene on the book cover is the window of A Good Yarn, a fictitious shop on Blossom Street in Seattle.

A Good Yarn (Dutch e-book title De Wolwinkel) is the second book in a series of thirteen (so far) by Debbie Macomber. I don’t own the entire series, but here are the eight that grace my bookshelves (in reading order from left to right and top to bottom):

In the first book, The Shop on Blossom Street (translated into Dutch as Breibabes), the shop and its sympathetic owner Lydia are introduced. Lydia hosts a knitting class for beginners, with a baby blanket as an easy first project. While the blankets grow, the story about the lives of the people taking part in the class unfolds.

The thread that binds these novels together is the setting, Blossom Street. Lydia is the main character in some, but not all of the books. The variation in protagonists, all with their own stories, makes for lively reading. They struggle with all kinds of things, but on the whole this is a feel-good series.

A nice bonus of these novels is that some of them contain a knitting pattern connected with the story. There are patterns for a baby blanket, a pair of socks, a lace shawl, and a cable scarf. The patterns get more difficult as the series progresses.

And here’s another novel centred around a yarn shop – The Friday Night Knitting Club (Dutch title De Vrijdagavond Vriendinnenclub).

This time it’s a shop in New York City, and the main character is a single mum with a teenage daughter. Again we read about a group of people knitting together. They start out as strangers and gradually become friends (a phenomenon I’ve experienced in my own life again and again.) Again a feel-good novel, although I secretly wiped away a tear or two as well. I know that there is a sequel, but haven’t read it. Have you? Is it worth reading?

The novels I’m writing about here, are all fairly light-hearted, but the next one’s the fluffiest of all – The Great Christmas Knit Off:

When her fiancé decides that he actually prefers her twin sister and, to make matters even worse, something goes terribly wrong at work, Sybil escapes to the countryside. Here a totally unrealistic story (seventy-five Ho-ho-ho Christmas sweaters to be knit within an incredibly short space of time) unfolds.

Okay, it’s a silly story. But reading a silly love story involving heaps of snow, a picture-postcard English village, lots of yarn and knitting, and the rescue of an ailing haberdashery shop can be very therapeutic.

The next novel, Casting Off, is slightly more serious.

Rebecca Moray travels to an island off the Irish coast, together with her daughter, to do research for a book on Irish knitting. She also hopes to forget her painful past by getting immersed in her research.

I read this novel years ago and don’t remember the story very well, nor whether I liked it or not. Leafing through it now, I notice that the chapter titles are derived from knitting stitches and are followed by a definition. Here’s the definition from the chapter entitled ‘Garter’:

‘Garter. 1. The simplest pattern, created by knitting or purling every row, never mixing the two. 2. Doing the same thing over and over again, making progress in time, but never moving forward in spirit.’

Intriguing. Time for a re-read, methinks.

And here’s a borrowed book that I’ve just started reading, Dying in the Wool:

It’s a mystery set in Yorkshire in 1922, about a millionaire gone missing. Kate Shackleton, a young widow with some experience in sleuthing, receives a letter from an old acquaintance asking her to look into this mysterious disappearance. The back cover says that in doing so ‘she opens cracks that some would kill to keep closed.’

I don’t know how wool comes into it yet, but I’m dying to find out!

There must be more knitting-themed novels around. Do you know of any good ones?