Quotes from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.

As she stacked the yarn on the counter she seemed a little incredulous. This should have been my first warning: When a person who sells yarn for a living thinks that maybe you're buying a lot of yarn—well, it's a sign. A different sort of knitter would have taken that as a hint. Me? I thought she was a knitter without aspirations.

For lack of a better phrase, knitting is knit together into who I am, and coming back to knitting meant coming back to myself, and myself was such a crazy place to be right then that I didn't want to go there.

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.

100 years ago, buying something you could make was considered wasteful; now making something you could buy is considered wasteful. I am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.

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

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

Advice for New Knitters When choosing a pattern, look for ones that have words such as "simple", "basic", and "easy". If you see the words "intriguing", "challenging", or "intricate", look elsewhere. If you happen across a pattern that says "heirloom", slowly put down the pattern and back away. "Heirloom" is knitting code for "This pattern is so difficult that you would consider death a relief".

The best reason for a knitter to marry is that you can't teach the cat to be impressed when you finish a lace scarf.

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

In the nineteeth century, knitting was prescribed to women as a cure for nervousness and hysteria. Many new knitters find this sort of hard to believe because, until you get good at it, knitting seems to cause those ailments. The twitch above my right eye will disappear with knitting practice .

When confronted with a birthday in a week I will remember that a book can be a really good present, too.

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.

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

I recognize that knitting can improve my mood in trying circumstances

it is pure potential. Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be can be almost spiritual

You don't knit because you are patient. You are patient because you knit.

A half finished shawl left on the coffee table isn't a mess; it's an object of art.

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

I will resist the urge to underestimate the complexity of knitting.

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.

It is important for knitters to know two things about frogging: that cats are capable of this knitting action, and even seem to enjoy it and seek opportunities to do it; and that foul language is a normal, healthy accompaniment to frogging, whether it is you or the cat that accomplished the task.

I make a habit of setting aside some time each evening to take out my knitting and work quietly on it, happily relaxing. I believe that it prepares me for sleep and washes away the cares of my day. I will consider that intarsia, or Fair Isle with three or more colors in a row, prepares nobody for sleep and cursing loudly while flinging knitting around the living room is about as far away from soothing as you can get.

Dear designer of questionable intent, Please send me a photo of yourself. Please be wearing the knitted pants that you designed. It's not that I don't believe that there is anyone out there thing enough to wear horizontally stripped trousers knit from chunky wool, it's just that I would like to know whether you are deliberately cruel or whether you are the one woman these would look really great on.