Knitting Rules! (12 page)
Authors: Stephanie Pearl–McPhee
They taste (not that I'm suggesting eating them) very, very bad, so don't hold one in your mouth.
Knitting needles continue to surprise me. Some come with moral problems, like ivory, tortoiseshell, and walrus tusk needles, all of which are now illegal to buy or produce. If you have some, passed down from a knitter who didn't know better or a time when they weren't illegal, guard them with your life; they will not pass this way again and are an interesting footnote in knitting's history. There are bone needles, which may be an issue for some knitters. (Frankly, they creep me out.) There are beautiful glass needles, more for show than go, and hand-painted wooden ones. For a mere $1,800 you can have solid gold needles, but I shudder to think what you'd be compelled to do when you inevitably lost one.
The Top Ten Reasons to Carry a Knitting Bag
Done right, you'll always have everything you need. This works only if you regard the knitting bag as a sacred carrier of knitting notions that never go anywhere except in the bag. You take something out, you put it back in. (This was one of the barriers to effective knitting bag use. I would take out the tape measure while I was home, because I couldn't find one of my 72 others, and fail to put it back in. It would then enter the tape measureâsucking void that is my home and I'd never find it again.) Do not, I repeat,
do not
put the stuff on the kitchen counter. This way lies madness.
If there were some sort of emergency, like an earthquake or a house fire, you could pick up your knitting bag from its spot by the door and flee with it into the night. I bet you'll be the only person at the shelter with something to do.
If you put everything you need to accomplish the project in the bag when you begin the project, you'll never again lose six hours and 35 minutes of your life
shredding the stash looking for the last ball of blue merino you need to finish the sweater.
Unlike when you jam a project into your purse, you won't need to spend your knitting time untangling lace weight from house keys.
The breath mints you keep in your purse won't have yarn fuzz on them. Just regular purse lint.
Your 2 mm DPNs won't poke a hole in your juice box. (This is more likely than you think. Before I succumbed to a knitting bag, I had to give up grape juice. It really stains.)
You'll have more room to carry knitting stuff, as it doesn't have to compete with your purse contents.
You can take only your knitting bag into the yarn shop when you're going in to knit with your friends or to get help with a project. This means that when you inevitably decide to buy yarn, you will have to go back to the car to get your wallet. This won't prevent you from buying yarn, but at least it adds exercise to your day and may slow up impulse buying.
It gives you another place to keep yarn.
Knitting bags have a sturdy inside layer to keep sharp knitting needles from poking through. The same apparently can't be said for my purse, which always resembles a dangerous steel porcupine.