Yarn Knitting Quotes

SABLE- A common knitting acronym that stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy.

-BDB on the board- Knitter's Anonimous May 8, 2006 Rhage (in his bedroom posting in V's room on the board) Hi, my name is V. ("Hi, V") I've been knitting for 125 years now. (*gasping noises*) It's begun to impact my personal relationships: my brothers think I'm a nancy. It's begun to affect my health: I'm getting a callus on my forefinger and I find bits of yarn in all my pockets and I'm starting to smell like wool. I can't concentrate at work: I keep picturing all these lessers in Irish sweaters and thick socks. (*sounds of sympathy*) I've come seeking a community of people who, like me, are trying not to knit. Can you help me? (*We're with you*) Thank you (*takes out hand-knitted hankie in pink*) (*sniffles*) ("We embrace you, V") Vishous (in the pit): Oh hell no...you did not just put that up. And nice spelling in the title. Man...you just have to roll up on me, don't you. I got four words for you, my brother. Rhage: Four words? Okay...lemme see... Rhage, you're so sexy. hmmm.... Rhage, you're SO smart. No wait! Rhage, you're SO right! That's it, isn't it...g'head. You can tell me. Vishous: First one starts with a "P" Use your head for the other three. Bastard. Rhage: P? Hmm... Please pass the yarn Vishous: Payback is a bitch! Rhage: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh I'm so scuuuuuurred. Can you whip me up a blanket to hide under?

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

It is a peculiarity of knitters that they chronically underestimate the amount of time 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.

it is pure potential. Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be can be almost spiritual

A half finished shawl left on the coffee table isn't a mess; it's an object of art.

It's only knitting and it's one of the few times in your life when there are no bad consequences to a mistake.

It's much easier than I thought it would be." Most things in knitting are, really.

... everyone has to knit when they're here. ... But not every person has to use yarn.

She was a girl held together by knitted yarn and magic.

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.

Given good yarn, good workmanship, and good care, a knitted shawl and outlive its knitter, providing warmth and pleasure to several generations of family and friends.

As usual, the sock yarns have no idea what is going on.

I hate Earl Grey with a passion. It's like drinking stale perfume...

In life, as in knitting, don't leave loose ends. Take the time to thank the people who matter in your life.

You've heard about the knitter's handshake? Two hands go in for the grab-and-shake, but at the last minute, they veer to the closest sleeve or band and grab it instead while we ask, "Did you knit this?

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.

yarn, n. Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once. Knit me a sweater out of your best stories. Not the day's petty injustices. Not the glimmer of a seven-eights-forgotten moment from your past. Not something that somebody said to somebody, who then told it to you. No, I want a yarn. It doesn't have to be true.

I love the way knitting brings people together.

imagine a scarf as an unlimited canvas

How fabulous down was for those first minutes! Down, down, down I'd go until down too became impossible and punishing and so relentless that I'd pray for the trail to go back up. Going down, I realized was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

Some knitters say that they buy yarn with no project in mind and wait patiently for the yarn to "speak" to them. This reminds me of Michelangelo, who believed that every block of stone he carved had the statue waiting inside and that all he did was reveal it. I think I've had yarn speak to me during the knitting process, and I've definitely spoken to it. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, or maybe my yarn and I aren't on such good terms, but it really seems to me that all I say is "please" and all it ever says is "no".

Sweaters need to be imagined, dreamed over.

when men do something, it’s an art, but when women do it, it gets relegated to being a craft. It’s so annoying.

All knitting is choreography.

I'm cashmere, for God's sake," it grumbles. "I deserve better than Rubbermaid.

I guess this is how love is when it comes undone. No matter how tight you knit the stitches, a sharp tug on a loose thread will transform your warm sweater into a mangled heap of yarn that you can't reuse or repair.

Hat head is a sad affliction wherein the chosen hat and the selected hairstyle are grossly incompatible. The unfortunate combination results in a condition that can be hidden only with the application of another hat.

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

Many years ago, when I used to smoke, my lighter was often easier to find than my scissors. If I couldn't find the scissors, or was feeling too lazy to get up, I used the lighter to burn the yarn in one place to break it. Other than the smell, this worked fairly well. Later, when I found my scissors, I would cut off the little charred bits. One day, I was knitting a cotton facecloth and needed to cut the end. I flicked my lighter, expecting to singe the one spot, thus breaking the yarn. I will remember that cotton is highly flammable, and that the knitting Fates punish laziness. I will also remember that a flaming facecloth can be extinguished with a cup of coffee...in a pinch.

The doing and the daring are the magic keys to unlocking the treasure chest.

It turns out that knitting isn't about the yarn or the softness or needing a hat (although we really can't argue with these secondary motivators). It's really about this: Knitting is a magic trick. In this day and age, in a world where science and technology take more and more wonder and work out of our lives , and our planet is quickly becoming a place running out of magic, a knitter takes silly, useless string, mundane sticks, waves her hands around (many, many times...nobody said this was fast magic), and turns one thing into another: string into a hat, string into a sweater, string into a blanket for a baby. It really is a very reliable magic.

I pick up my knitting and wind the yarn around my fingers so I can finish the row. The needles whisper softly as they slide against each other, as if telling secrets.

When I was old enough to take baths in the bathtub, and to know I had a penis and a scrotum and everything, I asked her not to sit in the room with me. "Why not?" "Privacy." "Privacy from what? From me?" I didn't want to hurt her feelings, because not hurting her feelings is another of my raisons d'etre. "Just privacy," I said...She agreed to wait outside, but only if I held a ball of yarn, which went under the bathroom door and was connected to the scarf she was knitting. Every few seconds she would give it a tug, and I had to tug back--undoing what she had just done--so that she could know I was OK.

He wished that he could break out his knitting, but for some reason, people didn’t take you seriously as a warrior when you were knitting. He’d never figured out why. Making socks required four or five double-ended bone needles, and while they weren’t very large, you could probably jam one into someone’s eye if you really wanted to. Not that he would. He’d have to pull the needle out of the sock to do it, and then he’d be left with the grimly fiddly work of rethreading the stitches. Also, washing blood out of wool was possible, but a pain. Still, if he had to suddenly pull out his sword and fend off an attack, there was a chance he’d drop the yarn, and since he’d been feeling masochistic and was using two colors for this current set of socks, there was absolutely no chance the yarn wouldn’t get tangled and then he’d be trying to murder people while chasing the yarn around. And god forbid the tide rose and he went berserk. You never got the knitting untangled after that; you usually just had to throw it away completely.

Some people meditated. Some people ran laps around a track. When I was tense, I turned yarn into socks. Lots of socks. More socks than any sane woman with the standard-issue pair of feet could possibly use in a lifetime.

I love to knit. There's a comfort to it that I can't entirely explain. The repetition of weaving the yarn around the needle and then forming a stitch creates a sense of purpose, of achievement, of progress. When your entire world is unraveling, you tend to crave order and I found it in knitting.

In knitting there’s never a problem that can’t be fixed. It’s only yarn.

If a person knits as you speak of the past, you can become mesmerized. As the yarn unwinds from its skein your memories naturally unfold to their full length.

A plain sock by itself is terribly boring, but it could score points by having a clever stitch pattern, or maybe by being made out of a very beautiful yarn that's an enchantment to work with. (Sadly, it is still infuriatingly true that being beautiful without being clever is almost worth more points than being clever without being beautiful, but such are the rules of life and knitting-they are cruel, but there anyway).

Globetrotting destroys ethnocentricity, helping us understand and appreciate other cultures. Rather than fear the diversity on this planet, celebrate it. Among your most prized souvenirs will be the strands of different cultures you choose to knit into your own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop, and Back Door travelers are weaving the ultimate tapestry.

So. The Erlking brought a mortal to the castle and locked her up. A bunch of straw, a spinning wheel. Easy enough to guess what he wants.” “Indeed. He wants some straw baskets for storing all the yarn that’s going to be spun on this wheel. I think he means to take up knitting.” “He does need a hobby,” said the boy. “One can only go around kidnapping people and butchering magical creatures for so many centuries before it gets tiresome.

It turns out that I will buy any yarn, even yarn I will never use, if the store discounts it by more than 50%. Do not be tricked, not all yarn is meant to be yours. No matter how good a deal it is.

Even when it isn't going well, knitting can be deeply spiritual. Knitting sets goals that you can meet. Sometimes when I work on something complicated or difficult - ripping out my work and starting over, porong over tomes of knitting expertise, screeching "I don't get it!" white practically weeping with frusteation - my husband looks at me and says, "I don't know why you think you like knitting." I just stare at him. I don't like knitting. I LOVE knitting. I don't know what could have possible led him to think that I'm not enjoying myself. The cursing? The crying? The forteen sheets of shredded graph paper? Knittong is like a marriage (I tell him) and you don't just trash the whole thing because there are bad moments.

By 7:28, all the guests had arrived, and there were three empty seats: one for Eve, who had yet to show up, another for John, who would have a seat after he gave his daughter away, and a third that would remain empty, save for the ball of soft white yarn with two silver knitting needles in it.

I think my personal minimum score for anything I'm thinking about doing--knitting or not--is about a seven on the interest scale. If something's scoring a five, like a movie, then I need to add at least two points of knitting to do it for me to be able to hang in. If it's something gripping, like a conversation with a charming and entertaining friend, I may not need to add much knitting at all. If my friend scores a nine, I might only toss in a plain sock, with no patterning or anything, just round and round on autopilot while we visit. (I can only think of one thing I do with another person that really has no room to add any sort of knitting to, but let's not discuss it here.)

A spinning stash is much more complex than a knitting stash. It is like the first mother goddess. Everything comes from it, and nothing happens without it. You can't have yarn without the fiber. (From the essay 'Spinning Stash')

I thoroughly enjoyed their company. I loved how open and supportive and nonjudgemental they were. There is just something about women who spend hours and hours knitting a sweater with mind-glowingly expensive yarn, when they could just buy a sweater for a fraction of the price - not to mention the time saved doing so - that lends itself to acceptance and patience of the human condition.

Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash...in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful.

Earlier today Brigid visited her favorite shop, Knit One Purl Too. She was running out of the fabulous purple Shibui yarn she’d bought last time. The minute she walked in the door and saw all the colorful skeins of yarn bundled along the walls, almost up to the ceiling, she felt her spirits lift. So much color, so much texture—such unlimited possibilities!

She’s wearing this backpack with yarn coming out of it, so she can knit while she’s standing.

It was discouraging how quickly the beginnings of a sweater turned into a loose pile of yarn.

We get so busy that it’s easy to let some things slide. We can either pick them up again, or let them stay lost.... I never thought about knitting like that, though.

What if I’m addicted to knitting and blew all my money on extremely high-end yarns?” “I have savings. And I look amazing in sweaters.

We wanted to see the baby!” Hope cries. “Yeah. The whole point is for you to bring Jamie so we can coo over her. I’m almost done with the booties.” Carin pulls out a mess of yarn that looks nothing like a shoe or even a sock. “What is that thing?” I lay down the menu to get a better view of the object she’s holding up. It’s kind of like the wool equivalent of Logan’s horrifying teddy bear. “It’s a sock. Is it too big or too small?” She stretches it out and I vaguely see something shiplike in the mess. “It’s…are you sure that’s a sock?” Hope giggles behind her menu. Carin scowls at me. “Have you ever tried knitting? It’s hard as fuck, thank you very much.

Maybe, just maybe, those six balls are a scarf and hat that get tucked away for years and long after I’m gone someone pulls them out and says, “Remember how Grammy was with all the wool? Remember how she knit all the time?” fingering the soft wool and pondering who I was and what I did while I was here.

Little did Crystal know that once you got hooked on knitting you would not merely “like the yarn you were working with,” but become obsessed with the stuff, craving it, longing for it, fascinated by yarn as if you were under a spell. You’d see a skein of yarn somewhere and feel you just had to have it . . . or die.

I’d like to go to all the knitting shops,” Doria said. “I want to see some rustic, hand-pulled yarn. I would also like to see some colonial fabrics, and, if possible, I would like to have some contact with a loom.

Yes, it is.” Bennett blew out his breath. “You can’t expect me to…sit in the morning room and chat about the weather with her mother, and hold her yarn while she knits, and…wait five weeks before I attempt to hold her hand.

The repetition of weaving the yarn around a needle and then forming a stitch creates a sense of purpose, of achievement, of progress. When your entire world is unraveling, you tend to crave order, and I found it in knitting.

Fancy finding you here," he said jauntily. Nothing about it was fanciful, and she suspected he might have followed her. Why else would he be there? "You've taken up knitting, have you?" she countered as she walked to the yarn section of the shop. "No,I've taken up finding you alone. Nice of you to accommodate me." His answer pleased her more than she could say, but she warned him, "I'm not alone." "For the moment you are.

There is just something about women who spend hours and hours knitting a sweater with mind-blowingly expensive yarn, when they could just buy a sweater for a fraction of the price—not to mention the time saved doing so—that lends itself to acceptance and patience for the human condition.

Going down, I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you’d just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

We're all made to the same pattern. Knitted up like a thrifty housewife's sock from scraps - random unravelled bits of yarn that used to make someone else, chance combinations from the hand-me-down wardrobes of dead strangers. But surely the execution must have an effect? After all, some knit better than others. I could never master it myself.

Most of us knit these garments for someone special. In doing so, we let our love and loving thoughts for one another grow, a single stitch at a time.

The addition of knitting needles and twirling yarn made Beckett’s forearm ink the exact replica of the tattoo on Mouse’s chest. “He was my friend and my brother.

Without an engine, Beebe's bathysphere dangled helplessly from the topside support ship like a ball of yarn suspended from knitting needles.

I must try to remember that Art with Small Boys is best left to professionals, or people with ready access to tranquilizers.

she focused on the pale blue yarn and the way the knitting needles dove in and out of the soft strands, creating every moment something that hadn’t existed before.

my yarn stash expands to fill all the storage in my house,

Remember that you need two socks. How to achieve this feat? Knit both at the same time, and release the idea that they need to be identical!

Oh, shit! Sandra! Is that the Madelintosh Aran limited dye lot yarn you just stuffed into that asshole’s mouth? You know I can’t replace that!

...I felt joined to all the men and women across cultures down through the ages who'd done something useful with their hands, who'd made essential things from whatever was in front of them.

As he talked, Aphros drew some wicked-looking metal spikes from his belt. Leo was afraid he had said something wrong, but Aphros pulled some seaweed yarn from his pouch and started knitting. “Go on,” he urged. “Don’t stop.

I have not yet formulated a plan to force people to knit that is likely to be successful, but the one where I locked resistant people in a freezer filled with yarn and needles has promise, if I can work out the ethical issues.

Nothing can stop the words so well as the mute alphabet of knit and purl. The curl of your cupped hand scoops up long drinks of calm. The rhythm you find is from down inside, rocking cradle, heartbeat, ocean. Waves on a rockless shore.

If you would like to help with knitting, Miss Bingley,” Kitty Bennet suddenly piped up, “I am certain we can find more yarn! We can always use more scarves.” “I do not know how to knit,” Caroline said coldly. “What a pity,” Kitty said innocently.

AS ONE WOULD gather from the name, the Knit-Wits began as a knitting club. Twenty-five years ago, a handful of Sowell Bay women met to swap yarn. Eventually, it became a refuge for them to escape empty homes, bittersweet voids left by children grown and moved on.

Most of my yarn is for knitting, but some of it has a more complicated destiny as support staff: It is there to make me want to knit. It’s absolutely possible that I need the green Merino to inform how I’ll use the blue alpaca, and that ball of gorgeous variegated yarn? You bet

When you put beads in your knitting, you are really putting bits of light in your knitting. The gleam and color-play of beads add a whole other dimension that could be demure or outrageous, as you please. Your choice of beads and yarn uniquely expresses your personality. —Sivia Harding, designer and teacher

although we know an awful lot of those embroidered, quilted, crocheted, and knitted visions are unrealistic,” Ardis said, “there’s nothing wrong with embellished dreams and hopes. We all have them. I have them. And I need them. They give me respite—from reality, from the world, from Daddy’s increasing infirmity. They give me strength.

Sometimes I think these scarves aren’t sent to the Angels at all, but unraveled and turned back into balls of yarn, to be knitted again in their turn. Maybe it’s just something to keep the Wives busy, to give them a sense of purpose. But I envy the Commander’s Wife her knitting. It’s good to have small goals that can be easily attained.

The impact on your garment of good finishing versus bad finishing can mean the difference between Ann’s definitions of handmade and homemade. One — handmade (skilled craftsmanship)  — is to be treasured; the other — homemade (uneven execution) — is not up to snuff in Ann’s book.   “Handmade is not homemade. Do it right and wear it with pride!

she’s too quiet about it.” “Isn’t that the point of leading by example?” Kat frowned at her ball of yarn, more of a tangled mass of yarn than a ball. “Yes, mostly. But if you don’t ever say anything, then how can others follow your example? All the good works get lost in the background noise. I think there are two parts to leading by example: do what you say, and say what you do.

Knit me a sweater out of your best stories. Not the day’s petty injustices. Not the glimmer of a seven-eighths-forgotten moment from your past. Not something that somebody said to somebody, who then told it to you. No, I want a yarn. It doesn’t have to be true. “Okay,” you say. “Do you want to know how I met you?” I nod. “It was on the carousel. You were on the pink horse, I was on the yellow. You

Wait." Walter went to the basket, taking what was a gray sleeve, drawing it out fro the middle of the heap. "Oh," He said. He held the shapeless wool sweater to his chest. Joyce had knit for months the year Daniel died, and here was the result, her handiwork, the garment that would fit a giant. It was nothing more than twelve skeins of yarn and thousands of loops, but it had the power to bring back in a flash the green-tiled walls of the hospital, the sound of an ambulance trying to cut through city traffic in the distance, the breathing of the dying boy, his father staring at the ceiling, the full greasy bucket of fried chicken on he bed table. "I'll take this one," Walter said, balling up the sweater as best he could, stuffing it into a shopping bag that was half full of the books he was taking home, that he was borrowing. "Oh, honey," Joyce said. "You don't want that old scrap." "You made it. I remember your making it." Keep it light, he said to himself, that's a boy. "There's a use for it. Don't you think so, Aunt Jeannie? No offense, Mom, but I could invade the Huns with it or strap the sleeves to my car tires in a blizzard, for traction, or protect our nation with it out in space, a shield against nuclear attack." Jeannie tittered in her usual way in spite of herself. "You always did have that sense of humor," she said as she went upstairs. When she was out of range, Joyce went to Walter's bag and retrieved the sweater. She laid it on the card table, the long arms hanging down, and she fingered the stitches. "Will you look at the mass of it," she exclaimed. "I don't even recall making it." ""'Memory -- that strange deceiver,'" Walter quoted.

A big stash allows me to have a fluid sense of creativity - a looseness that is very much like playing. It opens me up, unlocks things. The creative bit takes all the other pieces - the possibility, the abundance, the connections, and the actual work of making yarn - bundles them, and explodes like a glitter bomb. It gets everywhere, it makes me smile, and a I can't escape it. My stash is the spark. Even if I haven't spun for days or weeks, even when I'm feeling dull-witted or anti-craft, I still spend time with my stash. It pulls on doors that have been locked, slides under the crack and clicks them open from the inside. After an hour tossing my fibers around, I am revitalized for making yarn, yes, but for things well beyond that, too. My sash fees like an extension of me that I sometimes forget about: the part that plays, that connects things that don't seem to go, that experiments and makes things.

People knit for their own reasons, but some of the most intense knitters I know are the ones who used it to help them quit smoking. It’s a perfect plan, really; knitting keeps your hands busy, and it is relaxing and repetitive enough to hold off most of the urges to smoke. You get to spend your cigarette money on yarn, a powerful motivator, and two weeks after you quit you have four sweaters, three hats, and several really big afghans. Knitting can be a useful tool for self-improvement.

It starts with a craving to fill the long evening downslant. There will be whole wide days of watching winter drag her skirts cross the mud-yard from east to west, going nowhere. You will want to nail down all these wadded handfuls of time, to stick-pin them to the blocking board, frame them on a 24-stitch gauge. Ten to the inch, ten rows to the hour, straggling trellises of days held fast in the acreage of a shawl. Time by this means will be domesticated and cannot run away. (In Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting)

I am quite safe, I assure you. But, even if I were not, I have the habits of a lifetime to protect me. And Lacey.” “Lacey?” I could not keep incredulity from my voice nor a grin from my face. I turned to exchange a wink with Lacey. Lacey glared at me as if affronted by my smile. Before I could even unfold from the hearth, Lacey sprang up from her rocking chair. A long needle, stripped of its eternal yarn, prodded my jugular vein, while the other probed a certain space between my ribs. I very nearly wet myself. I looked up at a woman I suddenly knew not at all, and dared not make a word. “Stop teasing the child,” Patience rebuked her gently. “Yes, Fitz, Lacey. The most apt pupil that Hod ever had, even if she did come to Hod as a grown woman.” As Patience spoke Lacey took her weapons away from my body. She reseated herself, and deftly rethreaded her needles into her work. I swear she didn’t even drop a stitch. When she was finished, she looked up at me. She winked. And went back to her knitting. I remembered to start breathing again.

Returning to my yarn stash, I select a pair of ebony needles and a lustrous ball of handspun alpaca. Then I quickly cast on to create a light, resilient fabric. We don’t have much time before the students get back, which means the gauge has to be right the first time around. When you’re weaving or knitting enchanted fabrics, gauge is critical. Gauge—the relative density of the fabric—determines the degree to which a magical object can utilize or redirect fields of energy. But magic often requires a mix of skill and sacrifice. It’s not enough to knit a pattern without making a mistake: you also have to give up something of yourself. A heart shroud is a complex spell, filled with twisty cables mimicking the structure of the human heart.

Do you have a dream? If you do, what is it? Is your dream similar to mine? I hope that even more people dream the same dream as me, because my dream is so big I couldn't handle it by myself. If you are someone who has the same dream as me, this is what I have to say to you. Right now, you are planting a single tree. Right now, you are sowing a single seed. And you are beginning to knit something with one strange of yarn. The first step or two are nothing, but imagine that you continue that work for ten years. One tree becomes a forest, one seed becomes a field, and that single thread becomes a beautiful cloth. Believe in the life inside you, believe in the great and holy mind within you, and push forward with the dream you have chosen until you make it.

Lambspun’s Whodunnit Shell   Very Easy Knit with Bulky Yarn GAUGE: 2 sts/in   MATERIALS: US size 15 needles (or size to obtain gauge), 14-inch straight Very bulky yarn with gauge of 2 sts per inch   INSTRUCTIONS:     BACK: With yarn required for gauge, CO 40, 44, 46, 50, 52 sts. Work in garter stitch, (knit every row) or if you like an edge that rolls, work in stockinette (knit one row, purl one row) throughout garment. Continue in garter or stockinette until piece measures 8, 8.5, 9, 9, 9 inches or desired length to armhole. At armhole edges BO 3 sts once, 2 sts once, 1 st once. Work on remaining 28, 32, 34, 38, 40 sts until piece measures 14.5, 15, 15.5, 16, 16.5 inches.   NECK SHAPING: Work 11, 12, 12, 14, 15 sts. Join second ball of yarn and bind off center 6, 8, 10, 10, 10 sts. Work remaining sts, turn. Working both sides at once, bind off 1 st from the neck edge 3 times. Continue working on reaming sts until piece measures 17, 18, 18.5, 19, 19.5 inches. Place remaining 8, 9, 9, 11, 12 sts on holders.   FRONT: CO 39, 43, 45, 49, 51 sts. Work in garter stitch, (knit every row) or if you like an edge that rolls, work in stockinette (knit one row, purl one row) throughout garment. Continue in garter or stockinette until piece measures 8, 8.5, 9, 9, 9 inches or desired length to armhole. At armhole edges BO 3 sts once, 2 sts once, 1 st once. Work on remaining 28, 32, 34, 38, 40 sts until piece measures 14.5, 15, 15.5, 16, 16.5 inches.   NECK SHAPING: Same as for back.   FINISHING: Join shoulders with three-needle bind off. Single crochet around every edge. Hand seam sides together. Pattern courtesy of Lambspun of Colorado, Fort Collins, Colorado.

Dinner was a family affair. And oh, how she enjoyed it! Who knew there was so much to talk about each day? She loved when the men shared stories about their work in the mines, while she often regaled them with stories about life in the castle when she was a small child or about the types of birds she spotted from the window. And then there were the questions. She found she had many! After staying silent for so long, there was much she longed to know, and she was always interested in learning more about the men and their lives. She wanted to know who had carved the beautiful wooden doorways and furniture around the cottage, and why the deer and the birds seemed to linger at the kitchen window while she prepped meals. "They must adore you, as we do," gushed Bashful. "And I you!" Snow would say. She found she could talk to them till the candle burned out each night. It felt like she was finally waking up and finding her voice after years of silent darkness. And while she promised the men she would not do more than her share of the housework, she couldn't help trying to find small ways to repay them for their kindness when she wasn't busy strategizing. Despite their protests, she prepared a lunch basket for them to take to work each day. She mended tiny socks. And secretly, she was using yarn and needles she had found to knit them blankets for their beds. It might have been summer, but she couldn't help noticing they had few blankets for the winter months.

Knit me a sweater out of your best stories. Not the day’s petty injustices. Not the glimmer of a seven-eighths-forgotten moment from your past. Not something that somebody said to somebody, who then told it to you. No, I want a yarn. It doesn’t have to be true. “Okay,” you say. “Do you want to know how I met you?” I nod. “It was on the carousel. You were on the pink horse, I was on the yellow. You were two horses ahead of me, and from the moment you got in the saddle, I wanted to draw up right next to you and say hello. "Around and around we went, and I kept waiting for my horse to pull ahead. I sensed it would know when I was ready, and it was waiting for that moment. You rose and you fell, and I followed, and I followed. I thought my chance would never come. But then, like magic, all the power in the entire city went out at once. It was darkness, utter darkness. The music stopped, and there were only heartbeats to be heard. Heartbeats. I couldn’t see you, and worried that you’d left. But right at that moment, the moon came out from behind the clouds. And there you were. I stepped off my horse just as you stepped off yours. I turned right and you turned left. We met in the middle.” “And what did you say?” “Don’t you remember? I said, ‘What a lovely evening this is.’ And you said, ‘I was just thinking the same thing.’” As long as we can conjure, who needs anything else? As long as we can agree on the magical lie and be happy, what more is there to ask for? “I loved you from that moment on,” I say. “I loved you from that moment on,” you agree.

Since the popularity of both knitting and crocheting exploded in the 2000s, materials and patterns have never been so accessible and so varied. A search for crochet hat patterns on the knitting and crocheting website Ravelry, for example, returns over 17,000 results as of 2014. Crochet hooks have been raised to artistic pieces in their own right; Furls, a leading luxury hook manufacturer, offers hand-carved, ergonomically designed hooks that not only promise smooth, even stitches but also come with a ‘hand health’ guarantee. New crocheters needn’t be overwhelmed, though; simple materials available at most big-box craft stores are fine for the purposes of starting out and learning. Most fiber crafters learn which materials they prefer over time as they try more new types of hooks, yarns, and patterns, so choosing materials, much like

I have to keep my stuff in a big plastic tub with a lid to prevent my cats from getting my yarn and having a party.

Lucia's abuela chortled, and her mother gave him a playful smack on the arm. But he could see both were pleased. They flanked him as if to escort him to the table. But before they could herd him in that direction, he politely asked permission to give Sanchia the present he'd brought. Identical curious looks sprang into each of the women's eyes, and they stepped back, but crowded behind him to watch the show. Pepe wove through the press of people to kneel before Sanchia and held out the dolly, wrapped in the colorful knitted blanket. Since receiving it, he hadn't peeled back the covering to see Senora Thompson's handiwork, and he was almost as curious as the child. With one finger, the girl traced a line of yellow yarn knitted into the blanket, as if she'd never seen anything so sunny. She looked up at her sister for permission to open the present. At Lucia's nod and encouraging smile, she slowly unwrapped the bundle. The baby lay in splendor, wearing a pink gown and a matching cap and booties. Wonder brightened the little girl's thin, solemn face. She whispered in Lucia's ear, too softly for Pepe to hear. But Lucia's gentle, "Si Sanchia" made her grab the doll to her chest and rock her back and forth.

For lack of a better phrase, knitting is knit together into who I am, and coming back to knitting meant coming back to myself, and myself was such a crazy place to be right then that I didn’t want to go there.

You can think of your life as being a little like knitting. When you first begin, there is no shape to it, but you keep knitting with some goal in mind—to make a sweater, a sock, or whatever. Every stitch is like a thought that you add to the overall shape of your life. Eventually, thoughts lead to action and the form will emerge, if you can only keep your intent in mind. If you have no clear vision, however, you will end up with a random pile of knotted yarn