Yarn Love Quotes

I'd always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn't the absence of everything you lost - it was the combination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn. - Florence Day

Love makes cowards of us all.

I'd found love -- only to discover how fleeting it can be.

You humans love mirrors. You have to constantly make sure you still have the same face. Nothing scares you more than if someone changes it.

I love the way knitting brings people together.

Love didn’t deserve the nice reputation it had.

Love is always a prison.

It was hard to let go of love. Once woven, its ribbon was hard to tear, and this one she’d woven quite firmly herself.

Love scared him. It was soft. And vulnerable.

There it was, that familiar fear, love’s terrible price.

Together. Even in death. His fingers tightened their grip around her hand. A double statue of silver. Romantic. What would their faces show? Fear? Or love?

It had always been a myth that it was those who loved you who could see through you. It was those you feared who could see through you most clearly.

Why were love and death such close neighbors?

Lovely, quite girl, no trouble, no trouble at all. You wouldn't even know she was in the house. That is often the yarn twisted around women's wrists.

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.

scraps of love torn and tattered faded, scattered trashed threads of hope frayed and tangled broken, mangled dashed backing, buttons yarn and batting quilted tenderly wrapped up in this warm repair my patchwork family

I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow

Maybe love bore fruit even more poisonous than fear.

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.

And this time he would have said it, right? I love you. So much. Too much. But that was forbidden. For all time. The Elf would take his heart in payment.

To never let the other forget who they are—love is also about that.

Asking a knitter what he or she plans on doing with the yarn he or she just bought is like asking a squirrel what it plans on doing with that nut it just buried under a pile of leaves.

True love, selfless and deep as the oceans in their most fathomless depths." Orlando let the glove run along the thread, which glistened like a ray of sunlight. "But I fear this one is not meant for me. This kind of thread is not spun in mere days." He let his hand drop, and the gold disappeared as though it really had been nothing but a ray of sunlight. "The Golden Yarn… or the inseverable bond, as it is also called. As inseverable as the threads of fate. And there is only one who can spin them and who can cut them.

The rain pummeled the old Dragon bones as though to provide the rhythm to the song of their mortality, but death was not what they had on their minds—or wasn’t love sometimes called the small death?

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.

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.

Life seems to flood by, taking our loves quickly in its flow. In the growth of children, in the aging of beloved parents, time's chart is magnified, shown in its particularity, focused, so that with each celebration of maturity there is also a pang of loss. This is our human problem, one common to parents, sons and daughters, too - how to let go while holding tight, how to simultaneously cherish the closeness and intricacy of the bond while at the same time letting out the raveling string, the red yarn that ties our hearts.

Time, in our experience, is linear, but in truth time is also looped. It is like a piece of yarn, in which each section of the strand twists and winds around every other - a complicated and complex knot, in which one part cannot be viewed out of context from the others. Everything touches everything else. Everything affects everything else. Each loop, each bend, each twist interact with each other. It is all connected, and it is all one. But every once in a while, there are experiences that slice all the other moments apart - stark, singular things that mark the difference between Before and After. These moments are singular, separate from the knot. Separate even from the thread. They can't be tugged at or loosened. They cannot be wound into something lovely or intricate or delicate. They do not interact seamlessly with the fabric of a life. .They are of another substance entirely. Unstuck in time, and out of sync with a life's patterns and processes.

I'd always written how grief was hallow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn't the absence of everything you lost-- it was the culmination of it all, your love , your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

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.

Hand-dyers are never in competition with each other. Rather, we push each other to expand our worlds.

everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

I feel about my yarn stash as I do about my library: It is the record of much of my history, promise, potential, inspiration, learning, and space to dream.

I'd much rather be hold up with a ball of yarn, tucked inside the safety of the house with my mother. Out there, you must come to grips with the rot and bone, bloom and disintegration. It's part of the world, this ruthlessness, this severed leg, this sun-bleached skull. I can't really stand it. All the signs point toward change, and all that means is death. - 140-141

It was Friday, so the farmers' market was in full autumnal swing, a sea of potted chrysanthemums and bushel after bushel of apples, pears, Fauvist gourds, and pumpkins with erotically fanciful stems. On one table stood galvanized buckets of the year's final roses; on another, skeins of yarn in muted, soulful purples and reds. Walter loved this part of the season- and not just because it was the time of year his restaurant flourished, when people felt the first yearnings to sit by a fire, to eat stew and bread pudding and meatloaf, drink cider and toddies and cocoa. He loved the season's transient intensity, its gaudy colors and tempestuous skies.

Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

Nick laughed and pet the Wangdoodle on the head. “Esperto, you silly boy,” he said to the Wangdoodle. “Usually, Esperto only transforms when I’m in danger,” Nick said to Elphaba. “But whenever he’s around Dymons, he loves to play along. Their transformations are to Esperto what a ball of yarn is to a kitten.” Esperto gave out a strange squeaking growl, which Elphaba figured was the Wangdoodle version of a purr. “What the hell is a Wangdoodle?” Elphaba whispered. “I haven’t a clue,” Nick laughed.

If you aren’t paying attention, it’s easy to miss when love changes. Sometimes it’s gradual—unravelling slowly like a ball of yarn rolled across the floor. Other times it’s lightning fast, triggered by something so powerful it cannot be quieted or undone.

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

There’s a theory,” said Anna, handing him a cup of tea as she climbed back into bed, “that we are all Atlanteans.” “Who?” “Us. San Franciscans.” Edgar grinned indulgently, bracing himself for another yarn. Anna caught it. “Do you want to hear it … or are you getting stuffy on me?” “Go ahead. Tell me a story.” “Well … in one of our last incarnations, we were all citizens of Atlantis. All of us. You, me, Frannie, DeDe, Mary Ann…” “Are you sure she’s out of the building?” “She’s gone to her switchboard. Will you relax?” “O.K. I’m relaxed.” “All right, then. We all lived in this lovely, enlightened kingdom that sank beneath the sea a long time ago. Now we’ve come back to this special peninsula on the edge of the continent … because we know, in a secret corner of our minds, that we must return together to the sea.” “The earthquake.” Anna nodded. “Don’t you see? You said the earthquake, not an earthquake. You’re expecting it. We’re all expecting it.” “So what does that have to do with Atlantis?” “The Transamerica Pyramid, for one thing.” “Huh?” “Don’t you know what dominated the skyline of Atlantis, Edgar … the thing that loomed over everything?” He shook his head. “A pyramid! An enormous pyramid with a beacon burning at the top!

Conspiracy theories—feverishly creative, lovingly plotted—are in fact fictional stories that some people believe. Conspiracy theorists connect real data points and imagined data points into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality. Conspiracy theories exert a powerful hold on the human imagination—yes, perhaps even your imagination—not despite structural parallels with fiction, but in large part because of them. They fascinate us because they are ripping good yarns, showcasing classic problem structure and sharply defined good guys and villains. They offer vivid, lurid plots that translate with telling ease into wildly popular entertainment.

I'd always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn't the absence of everything you lost - it was the culmination of it all, your love , your happiness, your bittersweet wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

When you love, you remember everything. The way his eyes rested on me for the first time. The yarns he held in the market, fluttering now in hidden places in my body. The sound of his voice on my skin. The thought of him like a diving bird in my belly. I loved others—Yaltha, Judas, my parents, God, Lavi, Tabitha—but not in this way, not with ache and sweetness and flame. Not more than I loved words. Jesus had put his hand to the latch and I was flung open. I set it all down. I filled the papyrus. When the ink was dry, I rolled it up and slid it into the bundle beneath the bed. The air in the room felt dangerous. My writings could not remain in the house much longer.

I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn. The

kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic. To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey’s tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna’s smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory. He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart. The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three it has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mask and swirling skirts.

I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that I had certainly suffered a good deal especially in mind. Further, on this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The difference between her and me might be figured by that between the stately ship cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old, dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide between them the rule of the great deep. No, the "Louisa Bretton" never was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, and spins no yarns.

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

He learned that people actually love it when he lies. He loves it because he gets stories about his prowess—whether it be sexual, business, or political—in the press. The media loves it because it keeps people reading the papers, watching their shows, and clicking their links. And his enemies love it because they keep thinking that this time will really, finally, truly be the time Trump does himself in with his jaw-dropping yarns. We’re all suckers.

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.

Let the systematic theologian spell it out. Let the artists throw out thoughts and slants, maybe even slants no one else has thought of. They should give another view of something familiar to help us learn more about it. They should deal with love, life, good, evil, God, the world and faith. Many of the biblical writers were poets more than they were theologians. Poets and prophets ranted and raved, and storytellers wrote great yarns that all had different slants on God and life and faith. Perhaps the poet's absence from the Church for many centuries has left it deprived of much insight.

Sunday after church, all the sisters, sisters-in-law, wives kissing and patting, swatting at each other's children and at the same time loving them and rubbing their little round heads, women comparing and swapping babies, and all the men gathering and talking business, wool, yarn, lengths, shipping, bloody Flemings, fishing rights, brewing, annual turnover, nice timely information, favour-for-favour, little sweeteners, little retainers, my attorney says … That's what it should be like, married to Morgan Williams, with the Williamses being a big family in Putney … But somehow it's not been like that. Walter has spoiled it all.

It comes down to what is language? Up to now, until this age of mass literacy, language has been something spoken. In utterance there’s a minimum of slowness. In trying to treat words as chisel strokes, you run the risk of losing the quality of utterance, the rhythm of utterance, the happiness. A phrase out of Mark Twain—he describes a raft hitting a bridge and says that it “went all to smash and scatteration like a box of matches struck by lightning.” The beauty of “scatteration” could only have occurred to a talkative man, a man who had been brought up among people who were talking and who loved to talk himself. I’m aware myself of a certain dryness of this reservoir, this backlog of spoken talk. A Romanian once said to me that Americans are always telling stories. I’m not sure this is as true as it once was. Where we once used to spin yarns, now we sit in front of the tv and receive pictures. I’m not sure the younger generation even knows how to gossip. But, as for a writer, if he has something to tell, he should perhaps type it almost as fast as he could talk it. We must look to the organic world, not the inorganic world, for metaphors; and just as the organic world has periods of repose and periods of great speed and exercise, so I think the writer’s process should be organically varied. But there’s a kind of tautness that you should feel within yourself no matter how slow or fast you’re spinning out the reel.

I wondered how in the world I could possibly sleep now, knowing a wonderful girl who loved me was just down the hall. Slipping into Johnny's pajamas, I figured I might as well see what Perry and Della were up to. The detective yarn was good enough to distract me from a million questions I had no answers to, and in a short while my eyelids grew heavy. I barely managed to mark my place before exhaustion overcame me. It had been the most eventful day in my memory, and that included the War. I had wrecked — though not seriously — my new Packard, bought a lovely home by the sea, met a girl who was supposed to be dead but wasn't, fallen in love with said girl, made a new friend named Carol, and went on an unexpected ghost hunt. I wondered what tomorrow would bring…

I need everyone to love me. My feelings of inadequacy and lack of parental attachment have made me one of those sick bitches who can't tolerate being ignored. My parents say all the right things when they are pretending to listen to me. But the truth is, they are more like cats. They accidentally had a litter of kittens, and then emotionally moved on to whatever ball of yarn rolled past their line of sight. When self-obsessed people breed, they make empty people like me who spend the rest of their time on earth trying to gain the love and approval they didn't get as children. This doesn't excuse my behavior. It's just to say, if my parents had actually noticed me, I probably wouldn't care so much about whether everyone else on the planet adored me. Unfortunately, I'm a bottomless pit of need.

We immoral ones!— This world which we're concerned with, in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible and inaudible world of sophisticated commanding, sophisticated obeying, a world of “almost” from every way of looking at it —entangled, embarrassing, cutting, and tender— yes, this world is well defended against clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! We have been woven into a strict yarn and shirt of duties and cannot get out of it — in that respect we are simply “men of duty,” we as well! Now and then, it's true, we dance happily in our “chains” and between our “swords.” More often, it's no less true, we gnash our teeth about it and are impatient with all the secret hardness of our fate. But we can do what we like: the fools and appearance speak against us: “They are men without duty.” —We always have fools and appearance against us!

I readily admit that I am not a minimalist. I find solace in the fact that the traditional Japanese minimal aesthetic was made possible by the equally traditional kura (storehouse) where the items not in use or on display in the home would be kept. I like being surrounded by things that inspire me and allow me to start new projects instantly. I know it’s wrong, but I do judge people. An obsession with minimalism has always smacked to me of a romanticism of poverty (and potentially an outdated one at that) from a wealthy perspective. I think of Marie Antoinette having a little farm built on the castle grounds so that she could play at being a peasant shepherdess. Considered minimalism in this day and age is generally a pastime for those with the affluence to buy (or rebuy) what they need, when they need it. The considered minimalist needn’t be as resourceful about keeping things around “just in case,” because, at any moment, he or she can replenish the shelves with abundance.

I am not Seamus, who tacks emotions to the outside of his skin and whose words charge from his mouth on horseback. No one sees through me, except Xavier, and he does so not because I choose to give him access but because he knows himself. I will have to offer myself to Seamus, if I want something 'more' with him. Part of me can't believe I'd contemplate it, even for a moment. What do I have in common with an oversized, yarn-spinning, bread-mauling, divorced deliveryman attached to a seven-year-old? The rest of me doesn't know if I remember how to be close to another person. I practice mimicry, a Viceroy butterfly masquerading as a Monarch, a Superb Lyrebird echoing the calls of everything from chickadees to chain saws. I practice stories of my past, telling this sad memory or that scary one, and people feel I'm confiding in them because the words touch their deepest wounds, not because the tales hold any emotional resonance for me. My intimacies, the ones that have become my Sisyphus stones, long-term romantic relationships, the college one, ended with the nice young man shocked when I said I didn't love him and we had nothing in common. "We've spent two years talking about everything," he said. Yes, mimicry.

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.

Captain Hank Bracker’s book, Salty and Saucy Maine, should have been titled Salty and Saucy Hank Bracker. Yup, Hank’s stories are definitely saucy and salty. The book is full of stories about Hank’s time at Maine Maritime Academy. There are plenty of tales that will make you laugh, a lot of interesting history, and then there are those stories I’d label ribald. Hank worked for many years, after graduating from Maine Maritime, in the maritime industry, including the navy. And he’s written four other books, with lots more stories. “More than anything,” writes Hank, “it was my time at the Academy that built the foundation for what evolved into an adventurous, exciting career and life.” He describes this book as “a young man’s coming-of-age book,” and it is surely that. “Not surprising, by nature I am a free spirit, who loves the company of most animals and some people. You might say that I love to laugh, hold center stage, and tell my yarns the way I remember them. For years, friends have encouraged me to write these tales as short stories. This is part of that effort! All I can add is that Hank’s wife of almost 60 years, Ursula, must be a saint!

That even in grief, we must take tentative steps back into the world. That even in grief, we must eat. And that when we share that food with others, we are reclaiming those broken bits of our lives, holding them out as if to say, I am still here. Comfort me. As if with each bite, we remember how it is to live.

I do love a good yarn, fiction and fiber. The only thing that equals my joy in knitting is the pleasure of reading!” —Priscilla

Mini-Journal Click here for the image to this craft! Materials   ● Plain card stock ● Construction paper ● Patterned paper ● Protractor ● Tapestry needle ● Ruler ● Yarn Directions

…It is a blank wall, an old wall― a heart burdened by drought and clay: write your name here, but don’t pierce it with nails. Be careful with his limbs: mend him with fine yarn and don’t rip his hem, gather up his stray threads, and squeeze him gently when he is wet― even if he seems like just an old shirt, really, he is a heart. Like a flag flying in a free country you are waving in my heart. Who wept on the breast of the other? Only the wet shirt knows the answer.

Men are always on the side of power. Even the Dark Fairy had to learn that. They will always betray us for power, so why shouldn't we do the same? If only it didn't make our hearts so cold.

You can cry, you can scream, you can be your feelings, and I will love you just the same.

You are the boss of your knitting and can do what you like; there is no “wrong” in knitting as long as you are pleased with the results.

When it is all over, when the socks are done, a knitter will have invested an average of twenty thousand stitches in the name of love and warm feet, knowing full well that the socks will wear out.

WAY PAST ALL OUR BEDTIMES and loving it, the kids and I were soaked to the skin and shivering around the bonfire. I heard Seamus clear his throat to tell one of his famous ghost stories. I remembered them from when I was a kid. Run-of-the-mill ghost stories were for pansies. Seamus’s tales were H. P. Lovecraft–inspired yarns about fish creatures so horrifying, just the sight of them made people go insane. I mean, anyone can scare a little child. Few can introduce them to cosmic horror.

As the world continues to find new ways to tear itself apart, humans still love, hate, feel rejected and yarn to be close to someone.

Hi, Mad,” Piper’s voice sang out in her ear. “Oh, it’s you,” Madison said, falling back on the pink brocade duvet covering her double bed. “Of course it’s me. I always call you at this time,” Piper said. “Who’d you think it was?” “I thought you were Blue,” she said with a giggle. “But that’s, of course, impossible, since Blue doesn’t even know my name.” “Just what are you talking about?” Piper demanded. “And who is Blue?” “Blue”--Madison grabbed one of her pink furry pillows that lined her headboard and hugged it to her chest--“is my Heart-2-Heart partner. And I think I’m in love.” “What?” Piper screeched into the phone. “We were just assigned our partners yesterday. I have spent almost every spare minute with you, except for a few hours last night and the two hours since we left Giorgio’s. When could you possibly have found the time to fall in love?” “Okay,” Madison said, rolling over onto her stomach. “Maybe not love with a capital L. But a very strong like. Blue is funny and smart--he knows how flies land on the ceiling upside down. And talented--he can do a backflip. Or at least he could when he was nine at his cousin’s house in Issaquah.” “He put all that in one letter?” Piper asked. Madison giggled. “Of course not. We’ve e-mailed several letters. In fact, I’m expecting one now.” “Geez,” Piper said a little wistfully. “I haven’t even checked to see if my Heart-2-Heart pal wrote back.” Madison plucked at the fuzzy strands of yarn on her pillow. “You should. I love this program! We can tell each other anything. It’s so great!” “And this guy’s name is Blue?” Piper’s voice sounded doubtful. “I don’t remember any kid at school named Blue. There was that one guy we called Green in our chem lab, remember? But I think we called him that because his last name was Green and we could never remember his first name.

I haven’t even checked to see if my Heart-2-Heart pal wrote back.” Madison plucked at the fuzzy strands of yarn on her pillow. “You should. I love this program! We can tell each other anything. It’s so great!” “And this guy’s name is Blue?” Piper’s voice sounded doubtful. “I don’t remember any kid at school named Blue. There was that one guy we called Green in our chem lab, remember? But I think we called him that because his last name was Green and we could never remember his first name.” Madison giggled even more. She was feeling like a fizzy soda pop, bubbly all over. “Oh, Piper, his name isn’t really Blue. That’s just his nickname.” “Do you have a nickname?” “Of course,” Madison said. “But I don’t want to tell you what it is. You’ll think it’s ridiculous.” “I can’t believe you won’t tell me,” Piper protested. “I’m your BFF. We share everything!” “I know…”” “Come on, tell me!” Piper pleaded. “Look, I told you about the time I wet my pants in second grade, and that I had a total crush on Mr. Proctor, our fifth-grade teacher. And last year, when I--” “This is different, Piper,” Madison tried to explain. “We can tell our deepest secrets to our Heart-2-Heart pal because they don’t know who we are.” “I just can’t believe this,” Piper continued in a really hurt voice. “Didn’t I tell you about that D I almost got in Algebra I and the secret tutor I had to hire to bring up my grade? God, I even told you about that mole on my butt that I had to have removed. If that’s not a deep secret, I don’t know what is.” “Okay, okay!” Madison sat up. “I’ll tell you. It’s Pinky.” There was a long pause. “Pinky? That’s ridiculous.” “See?” Madison shouted into the phone. “I knew you’d say that.” She got up and crossed to her vanity mirror. She tousled her hair with one hand to make it stand up. “It had to do with dyeing my hair pink.” There was an even longer pause. “You’re not going to do that, are you?” Piper asked quietly. “Because I don’t think it will help the campaign. Oh, it might steal a few votes from Jeremy--but do we really need them? I’m not sure.” “Piper, relax,” Madison said. “I was just joking about doing it.

Life seems to flood by, taking our loves quickly in its flow. In the growth of children, in the aging of beloved parents, time's chart is magnified, shown in its particularity, focused, so that with each celebration of maturity there is also a pang of loss. This is our human problem, one common to parents, sons and daughters, too--how to let go while holding tight, how to simultaneously cherish the closeness and intricacy of the bond while at the same time letting out the raveling string, the red yarn that ties our hearts.

It's why a song such as John Lennon's "Imagine" continues to resonate—it's lovely to daydream about a world no longer plagued by the threat of famine, violence, war, or death. As long as these visions exist as a distant utopian fantasy, a counterbalance to a good zombie yarn, they don't threaten us—but neither do they really inspire us.

fall out of a pocket or a fold of towels. In her heart, the bit of colorful yarn her husband had tied around her finger more than replaced it. Love, after all, was often made not of shiny things but practical ones. Ones that grew old and rusted only to be repaired and polished. Things that got lost and had to be replaced on a regular basis.

I loved how open and supportive and nonjudgmental they were. 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.

I'd always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn't the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweet, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

Three years. I still remembered that day, the feel of it, the pain. It was as if I was a ball of yarn, and that was the day I’d become completely unraveled, my string frayed and worn. Over the past three years, I’d slowly pulled myself together, forming the same ball of yarn I’d been before yet one that was wound differently. I was almost okay again. Almost.

…I am a storyteller. From barstools to back porches, from kitchen tables to campfires, from podiums to park benches, I have spun my yarns to audiences both big and small, both rapt and bored. I didn’t start out that way. I was just a dreamer, quietly imagining myself as something special, as someone who would “make a difference” in the world. But the fact is, I was just an ordinary person leading an ordinary life. Then, partly by design, partly by happenstance, I was thrust into a series of adventures and circumstances beyond anything I had ever dreamed. It all started when I ran away from home at eighteen and hitchhiked around the country. Then I joined the Army, became an infantry lieutenant, and went to Vietnam. After Vietnam, I tried to become a hippie, got involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and became a National Coordinator for the organization. I was subsequently indicted for conspiracy to incite a riot at the Republican Convention in 1972—the so-called Gainesville Eight case—and one of my best friends turned out to be an FBI informant who testified against me at the trial. In the early eighties, I was involved with the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, which built a memorial for Vietnam veterans in New York City and published the book Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. In the late eighties, I was part of a delegation of Vietnam veterans who went to the Soviet Union to meet with Soviet veterans of their Afghanistan War. I fell in love with a woman from Russia, married her, and spent nine years living there, during which I fathered two children, then brought my family back to the U.S. and the suburban middle-class life I had left so many years before. The adventures ultimately, inevitably perhaps, ended, and like Samwise Gamgee, I returned to an ordinary life once they were over. The only thing I had left from that special time was the stories… I wrote this book for two reasons. First and foremost, I wrote it for my children. Their experience of me is as a slightly boring “soccer dad,” ordinary and unremarkable. I wanted them to know who I was and what I did before I became their dad. More importantly, I hope the book can be inspiring to the entire younger generation they represent, who will have to deal with the mess of a world that we have left them. The second reason is that when I was young, I had hoped that my actions would “make a difference,” but I’m not so sure if they amounted to “a hill of beans,” as Humphry Bogart famously intoned. If my actions did not change the world, then I dream that maybe my stories can.

What he found was astonishing. Every wall was plastered with posters and flyers. Some were like the ones he'd seen on the brick wall at King's Cross; others seemed to advertise specific market traders. Some were old and faded; some seemed much more recent. Some sounded quite ordinary-- Cocksfoot & Sable: Fine Ales and Cheeses; Clancy's Rustic Furnishings-- and some were more unusual. Tom frowned over Yellow Belle's Night-Woven Yarns, and felt his heart beat faster at Spindle Ermine's Love Spells. What kind of a market was this? He thought he understood Bird-Cherry's Flowers and Fruits, or Straw Dot's Most Accurate Timepieces, and even Scarlet Tiger Sleeve Tattoos-- but what was he to make of Pretty Pinion Wing Repairs or Mother Shipton, Laundress of Dreams, or Pale Eggar's Glamours and Charms, or Dusky Sallow's Evercoats?

Anyhow, I've begun on the story we discussed. I will not refer specifically to what you said, but I've decided that it will have as its author Hawthorne Abendsen, the novelist in my novel MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE who wrote THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY. I wrote & wrote . . . after all, I wrote my 4th novel EYE IN THE SKY in two weeks, so this merely shows I'm in love with what I'm doing. The title of Abendsen's yarn is, "A Man For No Countries," because he is unwanted in the USA where the Asshole Axis rule, and certainly not in Europe where Germany rules from . . . I did bio notes, the uncorrected carbons of which I'm enclosing; they were improved in a second draft, and can/will be cut as needed. And, as to the story, I finished the holographic first draft last night about the time our tomcat Pinky wants indoors to be fed, which is quite late, and at which time nothing, even Pinky, gets me out of bed. It is a short story, but I think a lot of it, Phil. I really do, and when I turn out a lousy one I usually know it and the other way around. I'll send you a carbon of the final, not of the rough, since the rough is in holo. Now, a technical problem. To whom do I send the yarn when I'm done? By contract, it must be to Scott Meredith; that is determined by law. But my own name must be on it, on the far left upper corner, not under the title, so he can see who sent it, and hence pay me. That is, receive pay. Who does pay, by the way? Ed Ferman or whoever buys it (if anyone)? Does it just go onto the market like all stories, OR—and this is crucial, maybe—should I mention to Scott Meredith that you should be involved . . . without mentioning certain details held in confidence between us? How do I handle it? I will sell it, in any case; I wrote MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in 1961 and ever since "they" have begged (well, asked me) to do more as a sequel. This story is in fact a follow-up, of Abendsen's life since, besides being an intrinsic plot-idea-theme story. So it'll sell, and Ed Ferman does like my stuff; he has commissioned a set of three stories from me, the last three I have done, including one for FINAL STATE or EDGE or whatever with Malzberg, and so would tend to want to buy it. So advise me, as I type up the final. And thanks for getting my literary ass in gear; God bless, Phil. [The story was never completed or published.]

You know, I could have made the arduous journey next door to leave your order with the doorman,” I said as I counted out the skeins to make sure they were all there. Nico and Elizabeth lived in one of the condos in the building above the shop. In fact, it was Elizabeth who’d suggested this location to me when the retail space became available. Nico’s grin grew flirtatious. “I know, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to fondle your yarn—and you know how I love to fondle your yarn.” I flicked my hand at him, shaking my head in amusement. “Fondle away.” Nico wandered off to browse the in-stock yarns, and I smiled as I watched him reach out to squish a particularly cuddly alpaca blend.

I loved my yarn winder. It was made of high-quality maple with Swiss gears. Sturdy, ergonomic, quiet, and fast, it was worth its weight in gold. As a hobbyist knitter, I’d coveted a winder like this for years but hadn’t been able to justify the cost until I’d opened my shop.

A withered woman sits in a chair hardly moving, her face red and swollen, her eyesight almost gone, her hearing gone, her breathing scratchy like the rustle of dead leaves on stones. Years pass. There are few visitors. Gradually, the woman gains strength, eats more, loses the heavy lines in her face. She hears voices, music. Vague shadows gather themselves into light and lines and images of tables, chairs, people’s faces. The woman makes excursions from her small house, goes to the market, occasionally visits a friend, drinks tea at cafés in good weather. She takes needles and yarn from the bottom drawer of her dresser and crochets. She smiles when she likes her work. One day her husband, with whitened face, is carried into her house. In hours, his cheeks become pink, he stands stooped over, straightens out, speaks to her. Her house becomes their house. They eat meals together, tell jokes, laugh. They travel through the country, visit friends. Her white hair darkens with brown streaks, her voice resonates with new tones. She goes to a retirement party at the gymnasium, begins teaching history. She loves her students, argues with them after class. She reads during her lunch hour and at night. She meets friends and discusses history and current events. She helps her husband with the accounts at his chemist’s store, walks with him at the foot of the mountains, makes love to him. Her skin becomes soft, her hair long and brown, her breasts firm. She sees her husband for the first time in the library of the university, returns his glances. She attends classes. She graduates from the gymnasium, with her parents and sister crying tears of happiness. She lives at home with her parents, spends hours with her mother walking through the woods by their house, helps with the dishes. She tells stories to her younger sister, is read to at night before bed, grows smaller. She crawls. She nurses.

We are a walk-in barbershop with no appointment needed. We aspire to continue providing prestige services in men's grooming while having that laid back vibe, we love a yarn & a nice cold brew.

Asha leans forward. “Hello.” She waves to Ian. “Hey there.” “Asha, my agent,” Lark says, “Ian, my old buddy. He owns the yarn and tea store.” “That sounds unbearably charming,” Asha says. “It’s painfully twee,” Ian agrees. “I fucking love it.

When Lad died, in September of 1918, I collected the ten or twelve yarns I had written about him, and I tried to sell the collection as a book under the name, Lad: A Dog. I was told that there had been no worthwhile dog books since Bob, Son Of Battle and The Call Of The Wild and that the public did not want that kind of fiction. There was no demand; there was no possible profit. Any volume with a canine hero was foredoomed to fall flat.

I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing. But I was wrong. Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

Sometimes I wonder what it is I could tell you about her for my job here to be done. I am looking for a shortcut - something I could say that would effortlessly untangle the ball of yarn I am trying to untangle here on these pages. But that would be asking too much from you. It wasn't you who loved her, or thought you loved her.

A. W. Tozer saw entertainment creeping into the American church half a century ago when he warned: So today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven. Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God. Many churches these days have become little more than poor theaters where fifth-rate “producers” peddle their shoddy wares with the approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defense of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it. The great god Entertainment amuses his devotees mainly by telling them stories. The love of stories, which is characteristic of childhood, has taken fast hold of the minds of the retarded saints of our day, so much so that not a few persons manage to make a comfortable living by spinning yarns and serving them up in various disguises to church people. What is natural and beautiful in a child may be shocking when it persists into adulthood, and more so when it appears in the sanctuary and seeks to pass for true religion.12 Enough already. Let’s prove A. W. Tozer wrong. Let’s raise our voices against these “fifth-rate peddlers.” Fleeting fads, worldly trends, and pastors who believe that Jesus needs help have to stop.

the bit of colorful yarn her husband had tied around her finger more than replaced it. Love, after all, was often made not of shiny things but practical ones

SABLE—Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy.

And really, does anybody believe that Michelangelo just decided to carve the David one day and went out and bought a slab of marble?

We spend so much of our grief looking for answers to explain what cannot be explained.

All my life, I’ve loved stories. My children did too— is there a child who doesn’t? Through the years, I read aloud all the books of the Narnia Chronicles, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings to my kids. Curled up on the couch or on their beds, we got lost together in those fabulous tales. We read Kidnapped, The Black Arrow, and Treasure Island. On a driving trip through Nebraska, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, down through Utah and into Arizona, we plowed through a slew of Louis L’Amour’s books as the very landscape of those punchy little cowboy yarns slid past the van windows.

To set the scene: Madzy Brender à Brandis was a young mother with two small children, trying to survive through years of hardship and danger – and some unexpected pleasures. In May 1942, after her husband was suddenly taken prisoner and sent to a German camp, she began writing a diary to record the details of her life – for her husband to read when he returned, if he returned. She called it “this faithful book.” Here are some passages: 28 October 1944 [when the electricity was cut off because of lack of fuel for the generating plants]: “We have to use the daylight to its utmost, and we figure this out already in the morning. [At the end of the afternoon] We flew faster and faster to use the last bits of daylight, lay the table, lay everything ready so that at 5:30 we could eat in the dusk until we couldn’t find our mouths any more. Blackout and one candle, finished eating and washed the dishes. Read to children in pyjamas and then they to bed. Then unraveled a knitted baby blanket [so that the yarn could be used to knit other things] and at 9:00 blew out the candle and continued by moonlight. But now I’m going to bed, tired but satisfied with my efforts, though very sad about all the misery.” 1 November 1944 [after a threat of having the house demolished]: “Well, our house is still standing. I filled a laundry bag with many things, and everything is standing ready [in case there was a need to evacuate]. Because there is much flying again. At one moment an Allied fighter plane flew over very low; just then three German soldiers were walking past our house and one, “as a joke,” shot his gun at the plane. Tje! What a scare we had!” 24 December 1944 [addressing her husband, still in the camp]: “The whole house is in wonderful peace and I’m sitting by the fire, which gives me just enough light to write this. [The upper door of the small heater, when opened, gave a bit of light.] My Dicks, I don’t have to tell you how very much I miss you on this evening. It is a gnawing sense of longing. But beyond that there is a sorrow in me, a despair about everything, that pervades my whole being. Besides that, however, I’ve already for days seen the light of Christ coming closer and in these days that gives me hope. So does the waxing moon, the hard frost, the bright sun – in a word, all the light in nature after that endless series of misty, rainy, dark days. And so I sit close to my unsteady little light, that constantly abandons me, and think of you. It’s as though you are very close to me. I’m so grateful for everything that I have: your love, the two children, and everything around me.” 12 February 1945 [during the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45, after one of her trips to forage for food]: “Today I went to Rika in Renswoude: 1¼ hours cycling there, 2½ hours walking back pushing a broken-down bicycle and with 25 pounds of rye [the whole grain, not flour] through streaming rain, while there was constant booming of artillery and bombing in the distance.

The hat was finished four hours later. I am a super-fast knitter, and bulky weight yarn works up quickly.

If you know this as a woman, you will be his peace: Men were made in the image and glory of God to subdue and rule over the world. Women were made from the glory of Man for the man to be his companion, help meet and peace in times of distress. This makes the woman answerable to one man and it's expected that a man is contended with one woman for this reason, a man will leave his family and cleave to his wife. WHY? The day a woman is married away from her father's house, she cease to remain a part of her house house without inheritance and identification. She takes cover and upon herself inheritance of her husband's house and name of her husband's family. Check yourself, if you are still unmarried, please leave witches alone, they are only good and killing. What is responsible for your inability to marry might be responsible for your inability to keep a husband. It could be the way you dress, the smell of your dirtiness, the way your tongue is unbridled, your commitment to people maybe the way you where brought up by your parents. The world created and changed gradually not by leaders or governments or religion but by the family. And the reason we have rivals is the woman. A man will love all of his children equally, but a woman will love one than the other. These rivalry creates turbulence in the subconscious minds of out children and they end up been social vices, bad politicians, untrained husbands, and disrespectful wives. If my errors in marriage can not be a lesson then I am failed person, hence I can boldly say I have experience in marriage. A young lady may respond to this post, saying "I am happy in my marriage and my husband loves me" well I will say no. Cause if you are truly a wife example you agree with all I have said above because that is the yarning of your husbands expectations. You are happy in your marriage because a Side-chick is giving him the peace you can not. Look, when you win every argument with your husband, just know someone else is losing argument with him.

You’re a fire witch, my dear.”  Moira looked up, tea preparations on automatic pilot.  “Not all fire witches are the same, of course, but you tend to share affinities.  Spicy things to tease your palate, warm colors to soothe your eyes, a ball of lovely yarn under your fingers, and of course a need for light and warmth…