At Knit's End

AT KNIT'S END

Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

S
TEPHANIE
P
EARL
-M
C
P
HEE

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Siobhan Dunn and Deborah Balmuth
Cover design by Kent Lew
Cover illustration © Kent Lew
Text design and production by Jennifer Jepson Smith

Copyright © 2005 by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other — without written permission from the publisher.

For additional information, please contact Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247.

Storey books are available for special premium and promotional uses and for customized editions. For further information, please call (800) 793-9396.

Printed in the United States by Versa Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pearl-McPhee, Stephanie.

At knit's end: meditations for women who knit too much/
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.
       p. cm.
ISBN 1-58017-589-9 (alk. paper)
1. Knitting—Quotations, maxims, etc. 2. Knitters
(Persons)—Quotations. 3. Knitting—Humor. I. Title.

TT820.P373 2005
746.43'2—dc22

2005004007

For Joe, Amanda, Megan, and Samantha,
who have never said one word about all
the yarn. I love them to distraction.

I
n High Park, near my home in Toronto, there is a paved circle with a complex path painted on it, completely surrounded by trees and gardens. Grenadier Pond sits to one side and an elaborate castle playground is nearby. I have walked by it many, many times and my children have always played on it, leaping from one path to another, running the fancy route laid out by the faded painted markings.

When I was finishing this book and had only the introduction to write, I walked through High Park, taking my usual peaceful path through the trees. I was a little angry with myself. I was almost done with the book, and I liked it. Writing the
intro at the end seemed silly and redundant, and I was frustrated that I hadn't had the good sense to write it at the beginning when I should have. Writing the intro at the end was a critical error, like knitting the collar of a sweater first, then trying to make all the other pieces fit. How could I possibly go backward to the introduction?

I walked by the paved circle and absent-mindedly looked over at it. An elderly lady stood outside the circle. She bowed, then deliberately walked the path marked on the circle. I noticed then that the circle was not a maze, as I had thought. It was instead a looped circular path to the center; there were no wrong turns, there was no chance for confusion. She followed the markings to the exact middle of the circle, and she stood there. I waited. What was she doing? She bowed four times, once in each of the four directions, then peacefully and purposefully retraced her steps back out of the circle. She bowed deeply then, and walked into the woods. I was
astonished. She had used this circle in a way that my children and I hadn't imagined. What was a playground to us was clearly a spiritual experience to her.

I walked to the circle and looked around me. A sign that I had never noticed stood nearby. It announced that this was a labyrinth. One walked the route laid out on it, and its quiet, perfect path afforded a chance for spiritual reflection and meditation.

I felt horrible. I had let my children run on it. Here was this incredible, deep, meaningful thing and my children had tramped all over it, laughing and screaming like it was a common plaything. I was mortified. I mentally tried to count how many times we had defiled the thing. Had people who were there to use it for its intended purpose seen us? Were they offended? I turned into the woods to walk home.

That's when it hit me. The labyrinth was like knitting. It was like the book. It was my intro done backward. There was
no wrong way to use it. It was all right for the kids to run on it; it didn't have to be a meditative experience for them. Like knitting, it was okay for everyone to have his or her own experience of the thing. It could be a powerful, spirit-moving experience that gave you a better sense of self, it could be a creative outlet, or it could just be fun, or funny.

There's a lot of humor in knitting, though I know you wouldn't think it to see yarn just sitting there. No matter how it is for you, it is enough that knitting is just there … like the labyrinth. We can each use it in our own way. So take this book and your knitting and do your thing. There are no wrong answers; there is no right way. We are all knitters.

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which
is far above all the quaintness of wit.

— A
LEXANDER
P
OPE

I
t is some kind of miracle that all knitting is constructed of only two stitches: knit and purl. Sure, you throw in some yarn overs, and sometimes you knit the stitches out of order, but when it really comes down to it, knitting is simplicity. The most incredible gossamer lace shawl … the trickiest aran … a humble sock … each just made with knit and purl.

Know these two stitches; Rule the world.

 

Fate laughs at probabilities.

— E
UGENE
A
RAM

T
he chances of running out of yarn on a project are directly related to the difficulty that you will have getting more. For example, if you purchased the yarn for a dollar at your local yarn shop, and the owner has set aside an extra 10 balls for you, you are going to have plenty, even without going back. If, however, you purchased the yarn in Italy on a once-in-a-lifetime trip and it was very expensive, you are absolutely going to run out, regardless of careful planning.

I will always buy extra yarn. I will not try to tempt fate.

construction of a fabric made of interlocking
loops of yarn by means of needles.

— The Columbia Encyclopedia,
Sixth Edition, 2001

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

I will resist the urge to underestimate the complexity of knitting.

 

No, it wasn't an accident, I didn't say that.
It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest
mechanical and emotional detail.
But it
was
a mistake.

— N
EVIL
S
HUTE

E
veryone has one — a knitting monstrosity. It is not a surprise to me that everybody has one of those “What was I thinking” sweaters, because I have several. What is a surprise is how long the knitter must have ignored the writing on the wall. To get a finished monstrosity, hours and hours of patient denial must be put in. It is a knitter's unfailing and remarkable ability to believe, even when something begins to look monstrous, and keeps looking that way through all the knitting, that somehow it can overcome anything and will be beautiful in the end … that is the real surprise.

Not every project is meant to be.

 

What we love to do we find time to do.

— J
OHN
L. S
PALDING

E
verybody tells me that they would love to knit, but they don't have time. I look at people's lives and I can see opportunity and time for knitting all over the place. The time spent riding the bus each day? That's a pair of socks over a month. Waiting in line? Mittens. Watching TV? Buckets of wasted time that could be an exquisite lace shawl. Eating, sleeping, and laundry? Sweaters.

There is practically no activity that cannot be enhanced or replaced by knitting, if you really want to get obsessive about it.

 

I just thought of something funny…
your mother.

— C
HEECH
M
ARIN

T
here is absolutely no escaping it. The daughters who once thought me clever, beautiful, and fun-loving have finally reached an age where they care about what their mother is doing in public. They ask me if I really need to wear “that” or if I could try not to speak to their friends. They have concerns about the way I laugh and my “dorky” shoes. The worst thing, worse even than the coffee spilled on my jeans or the way I forgot my lipstick again, the proof that I care nothing for their social standing is the knitting.

“Mother,” my 15-year-old groans as I take out my sock at the concert. “Could you pretend to be normal?”

I will continue to freak out my children by knitting in public. It's good for them.

 

I love deadlines. I especially love the
whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

— D
OUGLAS
A
DAMS

I
t is a peculiarity of knitters that they chronically underestimate the amount of time that it takes to knit something. Birthday on Saturday? No problem. Socks are small. Never mind that the average sock knit out of sock-weight yarn contains about 17,000 stitches. Never mind that you need two of them. (That's 34,000 stitches, for anybody keeping track.)

Socks are only physically small. By stitch count, they are immense.

When confronted with a birthday in a week I will remember that a book can be a really good present, too.

 

Any activity becomes creative when the doer
cares about doing it right, or doing it better.

— J
OHN
U
PDIKE

L
ooking at the work in the gallery I am quietly astonished. The work is so beautiful that I am stunned into standing quietly in front of it for some time. It is a wall hanging by knitter Debbie New, and it depicts the Madonna and Child. It is not knitted in rows, but in a breathtaking spiral freeform technique. The colors and textures of her yarn are applied in a way that makes oil paints look limiting. Debbie New's work answers the question “Is knitting art or craft?” Standing in front of it, with my lowly sock project in my pocket, I am torn between striving to elevate my own work and dropping it into a trash can on the way out.

Knitting is a unique practice in that its artistic value rests only in its application.

 

Not all who wander are lost.

— J. R. R. T
OLKIEN

I
t is a little known fact that much like birds, who can always find north, knitters can always find yarn. They can often be found seemingly wandering a store, with no clear goal, driven only by the vague feeling that there is something good nearby. Similarly, when driving through a town that they have never been in, they are often moved by forces unknown to stop for coffee or a restroom break eerily close to the only yarn shop for a hundred miles.