Quotes from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

When people see me knitting, I tell them I'm a knitter. Not the sort of knitter they may have run into before, but a passionate, constant, deliberate knitter. I knit everyday, all the time, everywhere I go.

There are twice as many knitters as golfers in North America. Still, if you walk into any airport in North America, you can find a golf magazine but not a knitting magazine, even though you can't golf on a plane.

The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces.

With great effort comes great gratification.

Since I became a knitting humor writer, I seem to be understood a little better - at least for the purposes of social discourse.

Once in a while, I bump into a knitter, and we have a lovely conversation. But if you figure out the number of people who know me and the people who don't, it's really a small number.

The rules of Canadian engagement say that if we encounter a celebrity, we have to pretend we're not encountering a celebrity.

SABLE- A common knitting acronym that stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy.

The people who think I'm famous are knitters. Most of my life, I'm wildly unrecognized.

It's only knitting and it's one of the few times in your life when there are no bad consequences to a mistake.

The first time you find yourself having a conversation about moss stitch with a group of people who aren't desperately trying to escape you ... it's like coming home.

I do know that there isn't ever going to be a time when there aren't any knitters.

just because something is fun doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

If you have time to knit, if you've taken up knitting, it means you're not worried about the essential stuff.

I explain at the parties that I believe knitting is a transformative and intriguing act that can change the life and brain of the person doing it, and that knitting is a perfect metaphor for life and insight into some better ways through it.

It took me years and years of trial efforts to work out that there is absolutely no knitting triumph I can achieve that my husband will think is worth being woken up for.

Knitting is a boon for those of us who are easily bored. I take my knitting everywhere to take the edge off of moments that would otherwise drive me stark raving mad.

Everybody tells me that they would love to knit, but they don't have time. I look at people's lives and I can see opportunity and time for knitting all over the place. The time spent riding the bus each day? That's a pair of socks over a month. Waiting in line? Mittens. Watching TV? Buckets of wasted time that could be an exquisite lace shawl.

"Heirloom" is knitting code for "This pattern is so difficult that you would consider death a relief.

Knitting is still trying to teach me That no matter how well you knit, looking at your work too closely isn't helpful. It's like kissing with your eyes open: nobody looks good that close up.

As usual, the sock yarns have no idea what is going on.

imagine a scarf as an unlimited canvas

If you were ever dumped after knitting a guy a sweater, consider the possibility that the problem was with the sweater, not you. The recipient probably took one look at the thing, imagined a lifetime of having to pretend to like (and wear) this sweater and others of its like, and saw no choice but to flee into the night

Your average knitter, obsessed as we are with the art form, is quickly going to begin producing far more in the way of warm things than are needed by even an arctic-bound knitter. Knitting breeds generosity, true...but perhaps in a hurry to avoid burying ourselves in hand-knits. There are only so many scarves one knitter can use.