in the spring of 2005, i was out of graduate school and finally ready to read again. my work project had just gone up in smoke (literally!) and i needed a literary escape!

i was at DeGrey State Park for the Arkansas Historical Association Annual Meeting and a group of us drove up to Hot Springs for dinner. we stopped at Books A Million for a little shopping. strolling through the aisles of fiction/literature, i spied this…

i picked it up and looked at the synopsis on the back cover. i thought “i’ll give it a try.” historical fiction, a little sci-fi (time travel), and romance. sounds like a good escape!

a few weeks later i got around to picking it up off the bedside table and started reading. i think it is safe to say that i was hooked from the first chapter. you never know when that is going to happen!

now let me tell you – i’m not a fast reader. i’m not even an average reader. i’m a slow reader. i love to savor the words. i daydream. i imagine the scene.

but with this 640 pages, i flew through it. i read it in days (not my usual weeks). when i was about 50 pages from the end of the 1st book, i went to the library to check out book 2. why buy it when you can rent it, right? and plus the 2nd book can’t be as wonderful as the first book!

but it was! so about 50 pages from the end of book 2, i went to barnes & noble to buy the third book. this continued for the next 6 weeks. at times i had to check my bank account to make sure i had the $15 to purchase the next book. i was just out of graduate school after all and didn’t have much money!

all i did was read these books. i’d get up in the morning and read for a few hours before work. i read at lunch. i went straight home and read until 2 or 3 in the morning. and i’m not a night owl! i need my sleep! my social life dissolved. read. work. read. sleep. that was my life.

one night (about 2am) i go to a particularly troubling part. i stayed up all night because i couldn’t sleep until the LONGHAIR situation resolved itself! for those of you that have read the books, i think you will know what i’ve referring to but i don’t want to spoil it for those who have not read them!

how did i miss these books? the first one was published in 1991. i was in high school but this would have been right up my alley! how did i make it to 2005 without jamie and claire in my life?

by june 2005 i had read every outlander book that had been published (5 at the time). i convinced my friends to read them so i would have someone to talk to – all i wanted to do was talk about jamie and claire! i scoured the internet for information about the books, the author, the characters, others who were outlander obsessed! i was in love with these characters. and then i had to wait until the sixth book was released!

what to do? well the obvious next step is to find a new obsession! and what was that you ask? well knitting of course! with my hands empty until Herself finished writing book 6, i needed something to fill my time. so off to a local big box craft store to get something to fill my time! i think i went for watercolor or cross stitch (things i had tried before) but came out with a knitting book, some needles, and a ball of yarn.

and the rest is history. i love the outlander tv show as much as the books (a first for me). and in the world of knitting, i found a community of outlander lovers as well. just type outlander into ravelry and see what comes up! cowls, fingerless mitts, boot tops & shawls. there’s even a series of dishcloth with phases like “dinna fash sassanach” and “je suis prest.”

so if you haven’t read the outlander series, give it a try. yes there is a little heaving bosom but we all need that in our lives from time to time.

happy knitting!

h.