Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Knitting Revelations

Just because I bought a bag of ten balls of yarn for a sweater, I don't have to plan for a sweater that uses up nine and half of those ten balls. The knitting gods will forgive me if I use three balls for a baby sweater and two balls for a hat. The leftover will survive just fine in the stash.

I don't have to wear something butt ugly just because I knitted it. I should not force my child wear something just because I knitted it for him even if he pointed out the pattern in the magazine and shopped my stash for the yarn.

The purpose of keeping yarn in clear plastic containers is so I can see them and keep track of them. 50,000 skeins of yarn tend to hide behind each other and each other's clear plastic boxes.

Not knowing what's in my stash is bliss. I never feel guilty buying new yarn. Discovery its twin a few months later is rather pleasant.

Upon seeing a new pattern I gasp, "oh you'll go so well with that variegated baby alpaca", and promptly put them together. They will be in my knitting queue. It's a guarantee that I won't be knitting it for years.

I brag about my knitting, a lot. On Monday at least five people told me "What a lovely sweater that is! Did you knit it?" The little white mohair top with delicate criss cross stitches and ribbon embroidery was from the flea market, for $1.

The traditional four-piece sweater (front, back, two sleeves) remains the simplest and most elegant, most versatile way for making the best fitting and most comfortable sweater. What else can you ask for?

The knitting gods will be pleased if a knitter is a forever “advanced beginner” and knitted 3,000 baby blankets in the same stitch pattern in her eighty years of knitting life. They would not have cared if she never created a masterpiece of cashmere lace shawl or a fine-gauged Norwegian Fair Isle jacket that required three steeks.

If one sleeve is six inches longer than the other, it doesn’t matter if you used the right increases.

Every other knitter is using two circular needles to knit socks and my socks still fit my own two feet and my Clover bamboo double points still work just fine. Thank you very much.

Knitting will never make you rich, talking about it does.

3 comments:

Diane said...

Well said! And seriously my trusty double point clovers may not be the snazzist things to make socks with but they make me smile. Knitting isn't just about the finished produce; it's the process to get there.

Jocelyn said...

Maybe this post should be called knitting oxymorons...at least for me, as the pleasure in knitting is derived from, maximizing stash per product, being able to wear what I knit, seeing others wear what I knit, seeing all my stash and knowing what's there, not discovering that a recent purchase was moot, and learning to knit in non-traditional ways with non-traditional implements. Will the knitting gods strike me for not knitting for charity?

Lesley said...

You are going to give the Yarn Harlot a run for her money....