Audiobook Review: The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting by Clara Parkes

Listening to The Yarn Whisperer feels a bit like sitting down for tea with your favorite knitting friend—the one who can turn a tangle of yarn (or life) into something comforting and meaningful. Clara Parkes doesn’t just write about knitting; she speaks it, and hearing her tell her own stories brings a warmth and intimacy that the printed page can’t quite capture.

Her voice is calm, expressive, and familiar—like she’s reading aloud from her heart rather than a script. Each essay unfolds with gentle humor and insight, connecting everyday moments to the quiet rhythm of knitting. She talks about dropped stitches and lost love, about finding patience in fiber and peace in imperfection. There’s something wonderfully meditative about listening to her words while your hands are busy with your own project.

Unlike most craft books, this isn’t about patterns or technique—it’s about the soul of the knitter. Parkes explores how yarn connects us to memory, creativity, and resilience. Her phrasing and pacing are spot-on for audio; you can easily drift along with her storytelling while folding laundry, commuting, or settling into your favorite chair with needles in hand.

The production is clean and simple—no dramatics, no background distractions—just Parkes and her storytelling. It feels personal, genuine, and deeply human, like a one-on-one chat in the corner of a cozy yarn shop.

Verdict:
An audiobook that wraps around you like a hand-knit shawl—warm, thoughtful, and beautifully spoken. Ideal for knitters who love to pair storytelling with stitching.

5 out of 5 – The perfect companion for quiet evenings, long car rides, or hours lost in yarn.

Next Pattern:

I don’t even know what to say about this amazing knitting pattern. The Bestiary Scarf from Monstra & Mirabilia is so full of details it’s a little intimidating to talk about.

It features, as the designer describes it, an “artistic encyclopaedia of Western mythical creatures.”

The pattern includes a dragon, harpy, Medusa, chimaera, centauress, phoneix, kraken, mermaid, sew serpent, cyclops, wyvern, Pegasus, amphiptere and amphibaena. (It’s a good thing there’s a photo of the proejct with everything labelled because I definitely didn’t know the names for everything.) It’s also designed like a landscape, with water and land creatures toward the bottom ends and sky creatures toward the top.

The dragon is at the center and is worked sideways so it will show as upright when you wear it.

The scarf is worked in double knitting, so the colorwork appears in the opposite colors on the other side.

It’s worked in light fingering weight yarn (on size 0 US or 2mm knitting needles) and the colorwork is shown in charts. The pattern also includes some video tutorials and written instructions to help you along. The designer says the pattern is for intermediate knitters, and “advanced beginners may succeed with patience and the help of the video tutorials.”

When I was an advanced beginner this kind of a pattern would have brought me to tears, but if you love a challenge, and a project that you’ll wear and get tons of astonished reactions every time, this is the project for you. And of course if you have a few double knitting projects under your belt and are comfortable reading charts, this project shouldn’t be hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s fast. But lots of great things take time, and that’s never stopped us before, right?

You can get a copy of this pattern from Monstra & Mirabilia on Ravelry.

[Photo: Monstra & Mirabilia ]

Next Pattern:

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