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| A Good Yarn (Blossom Street, No. 2) | 
 enlarge | Author: Debbie Macomber
Publisher: Mira
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 6829
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0778322955
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780778322955
ASIN: 0778322955
Publication Date: May 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Pleas join me at A Good Yarn! It's a wonderful little knitting shop in downtown Seattle -- a place of welcome and warmth, of friends old and new. Come and discover how knitting a pair of socks can change your life!
Debbie Macomber Lydia Hoffman owns the shop on Blossom Street. In the year since it opened, A Good Yarn has thrived -- and so has Lydia. A lot of that is due to Brad Goetz. But when Brad's ex-wife reappears, Lydia is suddenly afraid to trust her newfound happiness. Three women join Lydia's newest class. Elisa Beaumont, retired and bitterly divorced, learns that her onetime husband is reentering her life. Bethanne Hamlin is facing the fallout from a much more recent divorce. And Courtney Pulanski is a depressed and overweight teenager, whose grandmother's idea of helping her is to drag her to seniors' swim sessions -- and to the knitting class at A Good Yarn.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 62 more reviews...
 A treasure! Very heartwarming! April 29, 2005
42 out of 44 found this review helpful
There's something so soothing about knitting - the sweet clicking of needles weaving yarn into items made with love. It's a very calming hobby and it's no wonder that the beloved craft has made a resurgence in popularity. So it makes perfect sense for best selling author Debbie Macomber to combine her love of knitting and writing as she takes her readers on a trip back to revisit the lovely little yarn shop on Blossom Street in her latest novel, "A Good Yarn."
Lydia Hoffman opened her shop, A Good Yarn, a year ago as a celebration in her life of overcoming cancer twice in her young life. The shop was met with great success, and Lydia had found contentment in her life as she taught her beloved knitting classes and renewed her friendship with her sister Margaret who came to work with her. She also found love with deliveryman Brad Goetz and they planned to be married one day soon.
But life has a way of throwing monkey-wrenches into the best lives, and Lydia soon finds herself dealing with heartache as Brad announces that he is back on speaking terms with his ex-wife. As Lydia reels from this crisis-of-the-heart, her sister Margaret is also dealing with problems in her own homelife, and their mother is beginning to experience declining health problems that keep both sisters busy dealing with her care. But as always, her optimism for life, her love for and of family and friends, and her knitting carry Lydia through this rough bump in her life.
Customers of Lydia's shop flock to her store to find the best yarns and advice on knitting, but they also find warmth and friendship among the threads. In interweaving stories, three new ladies join Lydia's sock knitting class, and although they are all from diverse backgrounds and ages, they soon find a connection to each other as they click their needles away.
Elise Beaumont has recently retired as a school librarian, but
finds her dreams of owning her own home dashed as a con-artist makes off with her investment money. Forced to move in with her daughter, Elise is dismayed when it is announced that her ex-husband, a gambler who had been out of her life for many years, would be paying the family an extended visit. Would their former affection for each other resurface, or would old wounds still be tender? Elise finds an escape in her knitting and joins the sock class as a way of avoiding the tense situations at home.
Bethanne Hamlin thought she had a perfect life - a wonderful husband, nice home, and great kids. Then her world was turned upside down when her husband leaves her for a younger woman, and the stay-at-home mom must learn to make ends meet. As her daughter rebels and the financial situation declines, Bethanne splurges on a knitting class as a way of saving a little of her sanity. As she becomes acquainted with the class, she finds not only friendship but encouragement to pursue her dreams.
It seemed unusual for a teenager to be enrolled in knitting classes, but Courtney Pulanski's grandmother thought it would be good for Courtney to try this new activity, in addition to the swimming classes with her senior citizens class. The young girl has come to live with her grandmother while her father is working out of the country, and is somewhat depressed and overweight. Courtney soon finds a sense of accomplishment in her knitting and is surprised to find that the swimming and a new hobby of bike-riding is actually helping her physical appearance as well. When she befriends Bethanne's daughter and son, life takes on a new dynamic that makes it more bearable than the teen could have imagined.
The ladies from Macomber's book, "The Shop on Blossom Street," make appearances at the shop, interacting with the new ladies and bringing a sense of continuity to the story that I personally hope will continue in future books. (hint, hint!)
"A Good Yarn" is a heart-warming book that evokes laughter and tears. Macomber is a wonderful storyteller with legions of fans both in the reading world and now in the knitting world. This book includes patterns for knitting socks and sage advice from knitting experts sprinkled throughout, tying the story together as neatly as knit one, purl one. Knitters and lovers of women's fiction will find a treasure in among the stitches of this tale.
Sharon Galligar Chance
Wichita Falls Times Record News
A true feel-good book with a good mix of characters. July 20, 2005
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
This is only the second Macomber book I've read, the first being The Shop on Blossom Street (See review of June 22, 2005). A Good Yarn is a continuation of the story set in a yarn shop on Blossom Street in Seattle opened by Lydia Hoffman, two-time cancer survivor. This book is about a new knitting class Lydia decides to offer. This one is for making socks (guess what my family members will get this year for Christmas? Last year it was scarves).
In A Good Yarn we meet three new ladies. Elise Beaumont, bitter long-time divorcee with a grown daughter and two adorable grandsons, Luke and John. Her ex is about to turn up after thirty-seven years. She's not at all happy about that, especially since he'll be staying with their daughter where Elise, herself, is living. Bethanne Hamlin's husband tells her on Valentine's Day he no longer loves her and has a new honey...well, they've been having an affair for one-and-a-half years, but who knew?...everyone but Elise. Bethanne has two great kids, Andrew and Annie, but Annie is VERY ANGRY with dear old dad and young Tiffany and isn't afraid to show it. Then there's Courtney Pulanski who's had to come to Seattle to live with her grandmother while her dad is in Brazil as a bridge architect. Courtney's mom died a few years back and she and her older sister and brother have been dealing with that tragedy. Since Courtney's siblings are both in college, Courtney had to leave her school and friends in Chicago for her senior year in high school while her dad was away. Add to those woes the fact that she's gained about twenty-five pounds and you get the picture as to her emotional state.
These three very different ladies of widely varying ages come to Lydia's class and over the course of time and events become friends as did Jacqueline, Carol and Alix in The Shop on Blossom Street. There are some good men in this book, too, and one real jerk...you'll figure that out when you read it. I love these stories. They've helped rekindle my interest in knitting and, while the outcome in every character's situation is almost completely predictable, I was eager to read on until I found out exactly what happened in the lives of each.
Macomber has a very easy writing style, and her characters, while purely fictional (as she takes some pains to say), are very real. We all know people much like those in A Good Yarn; and the storyline is well-crafted with each chapter about one or the other of the primary characters. Maybe if we exported more stories like A Good Yarn, the other good people of the world would see a more realistic picture of everyday Americans, people like Lydia, Elise, Bethanne, Courtney, Andrew, Annie, Brad, Maverick, Matt, David, et al. Who knows, the good feeling might even be catching. One can only hope.
Carolyn Rowe Hill
She's done it again! July 22, 2005
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
This book just left right off and I couldn't have been more pleased. Truly money well spent on such a wonderful story about friendships, love, and family. Although once again you can guess for the most part what is going to happen, there are a few surprises.
This book tells us what is going on with Lydia and Brad, a little bit about our first three friends and of course Margaret. This book deals quite a bit more about Margaret in fact. The sisterly bond strengthens and parents get older.
We also meet three new people, whom of course become the best of friends, all the while dealing with life's curve balls.
Enjoy!
Sweet May 23, 2005
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
What a sweet and delightful novel this one is. Very romantic, full of love and generosity....as well as the women in the knitting class. Debbie Macomber has given us a delightful read. One in which i did not want to put down
also read: Full Bloom by Janet Evanovich and the hot-Fire In The Ice by Katlyn Stewart
 Predictable and Bland May 2, 2005
10 out of 16 found this review helpful
I found the characters in A Good Yarn rather cliche: the divorcee who is still in love with her gambling ex-husband; the gambling ex-husband with a heart of gold; the woman who finds courage to start a career when her husband of 20-odd years dumps her for a younger woman; the rebellious teenager; the wise grandmother, ad nauseum. The plot was predictable: of course the teenager loses the weight and ends up going to the homecoming dance with the football teem quarterback/Homecoming King; of course the goodhearted ex-husband gambler is dying of cancer and mostly reformed. The best that can be said of the writing was that it was redundant; for example, Macomber writes how the gambler's luck at the casinos influenced his moods, and then tells us in the very next sentence that he was happy when he won and depressed when he lost, as if it would have been the other way around. I didn't particularly sympathize with any of the characters or their situations.
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