Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter

176 Pages·2005·0.79 MB·English

by  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Yarn Harlot copyright © 2005 by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, an Andrews McMeel Universal company,
1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.
E-ISBN: 978-0-74078901-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005048052
www.andrewsmcmeel.com
Cover design and illustration by Erica Becker
Book design by Holly Camerlinck
Attention: Schools and Businesses
Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational,
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[email protected]
This one is for my grampa, James Alexander McPhee. He
was the first writer I knew.
contents
Introduction
one
The Red Wool of Courage:
Or, Projects I Have Known and Loved
The Green Afghan
The Wedding Sweater Saga
The Cardigan Letter
The Thing About Socks
The Sheep Shawl
The Entrelac Socks
two
Twenty Thousand Skeins Under the Bed:
Or, Stash and Why You Want It
The Beast
Cracking the Whip
Nothing in My Stash
Mine, Mine, All Mine
If You Have a Lot of Yarn…
The System
Moth
three
Dangerous Liaisons: Or, Yarn Can Be Addictive
Archaeology
Spring Is Sprung
How to Succeed at Knitting (Without Really Trying)
Yarn Requirements
“IT”
Sour Grapes
Socks for Sinead
four
War and Pieces: Or, You Can’t Win Them All
What Her Hands Won’t Do
Freakin’ Birds
Operation: Cast On
I Can Do That
One Little Sock
What Passes for Perfect
Veni Vidi Steeki
Good Morning, Class
five
My Family, and Other Works in Progress
The Rules
What She Gave Me
Ten Ways to Anger a Knitter
This Makes More Sense
Three Blankets
Resister
Parents and Knitters
Is This a Test?
DPN
Acknowledgments
introduction
I
am a person who works well under pressure. In fact, I work so well
under pressure that at times, I will procrastinate in order to create this
pressure. Naturally, as with all human failings, this system of
procrastination occasionally backfires and creates more pressure than I
had really intended. Such was the case a week before the manuscript for
this book was due. I had accidentally created a little bit more pressure
than was really wise, and as a result had been reduced to writing day
and night, only stopping to complain to my family (who were pleased as
punch that it had come down to this again) about having to write a book
day and night.
At about the time that I had started to order pizza for several meals in
a row and the family began to ask me ever so delicately if I ever
intended to do a load of laundry again, I took my laptop (and a glass of
decent merlot—though perhaps we should forget that) up to my
bedroom. After a hot bath, I ensconced myself, delirious and exhausted,
in my bed to write the introduction to this book.
I began to type then—it was something completely trite, I’m sure,
though I’ve now forgotten. The next thing I remember was my lovely
husband gently waking me up by pulling my sleeping face off the laptop.
The next morning, when I returned to the screen, I discovered that
somehow, as I slept with my face on the keyboard, my nose had typed
seventeen pages of the letter Y.
Initially I didn’t see the poetry in that. Perhaps if I had somehow
managed to fill seventeen pages with J, I would still be stuck. But now, I
see the gift my slumbering nose presented. There is Meaning here. There
is Significance.
“Why” indeed? Why was I killing myself over a book about the joy of
knitting? Why have I had, over the course of decades, a love affair with
knitting that consumes me so completely? Why would any sane person
give up so much closet space and money to a craft that seems simple and
silly?
The answer: Because knitting is more than it seems. Knitting is a
complex and joyful act of creation in my everyday life.
It really does seem so simple. Knitting is only two stitches, knit and
purl, yet with those two ordinary acts we knitters can take a ball of yarn
and a couple of pointy sticks and create something useful and beautiful.
An average sweater takes God-only-knows-how-many stitches to make,
each one of them a simple act. Wrapping yarn around needles over and
over and over again disconnects me from my cares. Knitting makes
something from nothing, and it’s usually such an interesting something.
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, poring
over tomes of knitting expertise, screeching “I don’t get it!” while
practically weeping with frustration—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 possibly
led him to think that I’m not enjoying myself. The cursing? The crying?
The fourteen sheets of shredded graph paper? Knitting is like a marriage
(I tell him) and you don’t just trash the whole thing because there are
bad moments.
I love knitting because it’s something that can be accomplished no
matter how poorly it’s going at any given moment. It’s a triumph of
dexterity over string. I can’t make my kids turn out the way I want; I
have no control over my editor; world peace remains elusive despite my
very best efforts; but all of that be damned—I can put a heel in a sock
and it will go exactly the way I want it to go. Eventually, at least.
Knitting is magic. Knitting is an act of creation and a simple
transformation each and every time. Each knitted gift holds hours of my
life. I know it looks just like a hat, but really, it’s four hours at the
hospital, six hours on the bus, two hours alone at four in the morning
when I couldn’t sleep because I tend to worry. It is all those hours when
I chose to spend time warming another person. It’s giving them my time
—time that I could have spent on anything, or anyone, else. Knitting is
love, looped and warm.
So—why this book? Because there are fifty million knitters in North
America. I can’t be the only one who feels this way.
Raise your needles (straight or circular) if you’re with me.