Read Online Things I Learned From Knitting by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee - Free Book Online Page A

around here. That, my wooly friend, would be wrong.
    You are actually more like my high-priced concubine. I love and cherish you, feed, house,and spend money on you, and in exchange, you’re to give me what I pay for: entertainment, pleasure and silent, nodding assent. I’m the one with plans, and you exist only to please me. I demand that you cease and desist with the following unacceptable stash behaviors.
    â€¢ Stop throwing sock yarn at me just because I’ve finished something. This behavior will not be tolerated. You can also quit wagging your fancypants yarns at me and tossing skeins off the shelf, for I will not be tempted. I am going to finish the socks I have in progress before I want to see even one more label about “hand-painted” anything.
    â€¢ Please leave the door to the stash closet closed the way I left it. I know you force it open sixteen times a day to give me a tempting peek inside because you resent my decision to finish my current sweater before I knit anything else. Having made that decision, I am reminding you that I am simply not the sort of knitter who would open the closet to look at the gray merino sixteen times a day (actually, I was just looking forthe tea towels), so back off. I know it’s you who opens the door to make me look weak, because frankly, I’m better than that.
    â€¢ Immediately stop with the whispering about other projects that would be more fun than everything I have on the go right now. I bought you, I own you, and I will make the decisions here. (You, there — the mouthy laceweight in the back — shut it.)
    I want you to know, my darling stash, that I believe in your basic goodness and that I think you are a reliable and decent collection of yarn. I would never have brought you that nice silk for your back corner if this wasn’t true. I hope this review of appropriate stash conduct helps us continue our long and fruitful relationship. You are a mighty stash, and I admire the way you stick to what you want, but no matter what, you still need to learn … no means no.

the 28 th thing

Make hay while the sun shines.
    I SAVED UP AND BOUGHT A KIT for a sweater I very much wanted. It was knit from two strands of yarn which you alternated back and forth throughout the whole thing. Strand A is a mohair bouclé. That means it’s loopy and bumpy and hairy, which, because you can hardly tell where your stitches are with this stuff, should make it a Class 1 knitting mistake hazard. Strand B is a super-fuzzy brushed mohair, which means that it’s effectively a yarn adhesive. The combination of a Class 1 knitting hazard and a yarn adhesive means the potential for looming disaster with this sweater is painfully obvious.
    Having suffered terrible indignities at the hands of projects like this before, I looked at those two yarns and understood instantly what was at stake. There was going to be no going back. Loopy bouclé yarns don’t rip back well;fuzzy, hairy yarns really don’t rip back well; and loopy bouclé yarns worked together with fuzzy, hairy yarns effectively weld together in the knitting as if they are the yarn equivalent of Super Glue. The stitches stick to each other like Velcro, and the bouclé defeats all attempts to pull it back, forming nasty knots as you go. I knew that once I cast on, I’d better make sure that I was right; there would be no going back and little chance that I could rescue the yarn if it turned out that I had made a mistake. On a good day I make a knitting mistake every ten minutes, so I was a little threatened.
    Sure, you can knit a swatch to help remove some of the risk, you can pay extra attention to the pattern and try to engage in safer knitting, but as you’re gingerly moving forward with expensive yarn that has only one real try in it, the process can become the adrenaline-pumping equivalent of tiptoeing through a minefield (okay — a minefield that blows up yarn