Free At Knit's End by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee Page B

village just because they don’t sell wool there.
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    I saw the angel in the marble and
carved until I set him free.
    â€” M ICHELANGELO
    S ome knitters purchase yarn with a pattern and a plan. They buy with a specific goal, and most of it is used more or less immediately and as planned. Others talk about the yarn “telling them what it wants to be.” They buy and hoard yarns, seemingly at random, until a yarn speaks to them about its destiny. There is sometimes a lag of 20 years or more between a yarn purchase and its realization as a knitted item, although there may be several periods of swatching and “false starts.” This process cannot be rushed, or failure is certain.
    Both ways are good, but if you prefer the latter, you need way more closet space.
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    True art is characterized by an irresistible
urge in the creative artist.
    â€” A LBERT E INSTEIN
    S ometimes I just stare at my husband. He has lived with a knitter all these years and yet has seemingly learned nothing of our ways. He is still able to say the most ridiculous things about knitting. For example, just the other day I was showing him some beautiful blue yarn in a catalog. He actually looked at the yarn (which was 80 percent wool and 20 percent mohair) and said to me, “Don’t you already have blue yarn in the stash just like that?”
    I could scarcely believe it. The blue yarn in the stash is 70 percent wool and 30 percent mohair. He has no idea.
    I’m so misunderstood as an artist.
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    Knitting, Knitting, 1, 2, 3,
I knit the scarves for Roo and me;
I love honey and I love tea;
Knitting, Knitting, 1, 2, 3.
    â€” K ATHLEEN W. Z OEHFELD
    W hen my mother learned that she was pregnant with me, she decided that she should learn to knit. She started with a simple yellow scarf and worked on it (and hated it) until I was born. With each successive pregnancy my mom hauled out the poor yellow scarf, and with each baby it grew by an inch or two.
    By the time my mother was having her fourth baby, I was five, and my grandmother had taught me to knit while my poor mother was still working on the yellow scarf. My grandmother came to visit one day and saw the scarf on the table. She picked it up and examined the stitches, then remarked (obviously thinking it was my work), “Well, now, that’s not bad for a five-year-old.” Mortified, my mother picked up the scarf and dropped it in the garbage.
    She has never knit again. She doesn’t mind.
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    You know you
knit too much when …
    Your non-knitting spouse
starts trying to feign interest
in your knitting, just so that
you will talk to him, saying
things such as, “So, are we
knitting or purling?” or,
“So how do you really feel
about cables?”

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    Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized
rural island that is slowly but steadily
being consumed by sheep.
    â€” D AVE B ARRY
    I t is likely a unique hallmark of knitters that they don’t think of a country being consumed by sheep, but rather a country that is being converted to wool.
    I will recognize that it is another unique hallmark of being a knitter that this quotation alone, without knowing anything else about the country, is enough to make me want a plane ticket to Ireland.
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    What Heracles said is true, O Argonauts!
On the Quest of the Golden Fleece
our lives and our honors depend.

To Colchis — to Colchis must we go!
    â€” P ADRAIC C OLUM ,
The Golden Fleece and the
Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles
    I n the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason embarks on a heroic quest to find and retrieve the Golden Fleece. Although most of the events are rooted in mythos, the Golden Fleece itself has a historical explanation. In the Colchis region of Greece, people used to pan for gold using, you guessed it, a sheep’s fleece. The fleece was held under running water, such as a stream, and the little bits of gold would be caught in it. If you had a very successful day,