Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Quotes

“ 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.”

“ I will continue to freak out my children by knitting in public. It's good for them.”

“There is practically no activity that cannot be enhanced or replaced by knitting, if you really want to get obsessive about it.”

“And in the act of making things, just by living their daily lives, they also make history. Knitting is clothing made in spare moments, or round the fire, whenever women gathered together... It's something to celebrate-clothes made in love and service, something women have always done.”

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

“Mr Wisdom,' said the girl who had led him into the presence.'Ah,' said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. 'Wisdom, did she say?''Yes. I wrote "Cocktail Time"''You couldn't have done better,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'How's your wife, Mr Wisdom?'Cosmo said he had no wife.'Surely?'"I'm a bachelor.'Then Wordsworth was wrong. He said you were married to immortal verse. Excuse me a moment,' murmured Mr Saxby, applying himself to the sock again. 'I'm just turning the heel. Do you knit?''No.''Sleep does. It knits the ravelled sleave of care.'(After a period of engrossed knitting, Cosmo coughs loudly to draw attention to his presence.)'Goodness, you made me jump!' he (Saxby) said. 'Who are you?''My name, as I have already told you, is Wisdom''How did you get in?' asked Mr Saxby with a show of interest.'I was shown in.''And stayed in. I see, Tennyson was right. Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers. Take a chair.''I have.''Take another,' said Mr Saxby hospitably.”

“The only thing that had saved her then was knitting. In prison she had become a compulsive knitter. Knitting allowed her to unite, to connect, to integrate. With every stitch she held on to dear life. Threads hold us together.”

“Observe her when she has some knitting, or some other woman's work in hand, and sits the image of peace, calmly intent on her needles and her silk, some discussion meantime going on around her, in the course of which peculiarities of character are being developed, or important interests canvassed; she takes no part in int; her humble, feminine mind is wholl with her knitting; none of her features move; she neither presumes to smile approval, nor frown disapprobation; her little hands assiduously ply their unpretending task; if she can only get this purse finished, or this bonnet-grec completed, it is enough for her.”

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

“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.”