#knitting

Sometimes, people come up to me when I am knitting and they say things like, "Oh, I wish I could knit, but I'm just not the kind of person who can sit and waste time like that." How can knitting be wasting time? First, I never just knit; I knit and think, knit and listen, knit and watch. Second, you aren't wasting time if you get a useful or beautiful object at the end of it. I will remember that not everyone understands. I will resist the urge to ask others what they do when they watch TV. ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#beauty

Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss? ↗

— Susan Gordon Lydon

#life #loss #zen #life

Advice for New Knitters When choosing a pattern, look for ones that have words such as "simple", "basic", and "easy". If you see the words "intriguing", "challenging", or "intricate", look elsewhere. If you happen across a pattern that says "heirloom", slowly put down the pattern and back away. "Heirloom" is knitting code for "This pattern is so difficult that you would consider death a relief". ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#death

Achieving the state of SABLE is not, as many people who live with these knitters believe, a reason to stop buying yarn, but for the knitter it is an indication to write a will, bequeathing the stash to an appropriate heir. ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#knitting #stash #yarn #death

Dear designer of questionable intent, Please send me a photo of yourself. Please be wearing the knitted pants that you designed. It's not that I don't believe that there is anyone out there thing enough to wear horizontally stripped trousers knit from chunky wool, it's just that I would like to know whether you are deliberately cruel or whether you are the one woman these would look really great on. ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#design

Sweaters need to be imagined, dreamed over. ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#knitting #sweaters #dreams

As long as there has been knitting there have been battles about it. There are self-declared "yarn snobs," who frown on using anything but natural fibers; "gauge snobs", who wouldn't be caught dead with chunky yarn; and "experience snobs", who claim you can't declare yourself a real knitter until you abandon novelty yarns. The truth is that the knitting world is a tiny metaphor for the real world. It takes all kinds. I will not allow myself to feel bad if someone disapproves of my knitting. I will also resist the urge to stuff his mailbox full of chunky acrylic fun fur at 3:00 am. ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#experience

Five things I'd rather do than swatch for my new project 1. Get a spinal tap. 2. Scrub the bathtub after all three of my daughters have come home from "Sandbox day" at the park. 3. Babysit two-year-old triplets while simultaneously diffusing a bomb. 4. Bathe a cat. 5. KNIT MY NEW PROJECT. ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#home

I am to be converted to the joys of knitting,' said Mrs. Ali, smiling at the Major. 'My condolences,' he said. ↗

— Helen Simonson

#knitting #humor

If you were ever dumped after knitting a guy a sweater, consider the possibility that the problem was with the sweater, not you. The recipient probably took one look at the thing, imagined a lifetime of having to pretend to like (and wear) this sweater and others of its like, and saw no choice but to flee into the night ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#sweater #yarn #imagination