Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
From the best-selling author of At Knit's End and Knitting Rules! comes yet another hilarious book of tongue-in-cheek observations on the world of knitting. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off invites knitters of all ages, levels, and persuasions to embark with her on a journey deep into the land populated by those who are obsessed with yarn, needles, and what’s on their needles now.

Using a travel guide format as her launching pad, Pearl-McPhee acts as tour guide extraordinaire, displaying her trademark razor-sharp wit as she describes and critiques every aspect of this land she knows so well — its people, native language, familiar phrases, strange beliefs, etiquette, and cultural customs. Readers will love her timeline of notable dates in knitting history and rarely celebrated knitting heroes, from the samurai warriors of Japan to the "Ter-rible Knitters of Dent." And, while the land of knitting is a peaceful place, it does have its political arguments, such as the acrylic versus natural fi bers and circular versus straight needles debates.

As she's toured (and knit) her way across North America during the past two years, Pearl-McPhee's smart, perfectly timed banter has captured the hearts, minds, and funny bones of thousands of knitters far and wide. No fan is going to want to be left behind as Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off on her latest yarn-bound expedition.

Rating : - Hit or Miss
I am truly disappointed in Pearl-McPhee's "Cast Offs". I'm giving it three stars, instead of two or one, only because if you've never read her material before, I think you'd like it more than I did. However, I've read her three other laugh-out-loud books, and this one dims by comparison. I feel her problem is that she starts off welcoming the knitter/reader to "The Land of Knitting", and writes "Cast Offs" from a travelogue point of view. Her attempt to be a witty commentary on knitting while remaining in this style seems forced for much of the book. Sometimes, it hits, as when she talks about traveling to foreign "embassies" (local knit shops in foreign cities), while other times it misses its mark (talking about different "diseases" a knitter may encounter while in the land of knitting (like "SSS" for second sock syndrome). While these themes work for a sentence or two in previous books, stretching them out for a page or a chapter really didn't work for me. In fact, I had to force myself to finish "Cast Offs" just so I could tell my parents that they didn't waste their money by giving me this book. Really, this book isn't up to her earlier standards. If you've never read her before, you may like it, but I'd more heartily recommend "The Yarn Harlot", over "Cast Offs" any day.