At Knit's End Read Online Free PDF

examination I discovered that Sharon had twisted each and every stitch. The stitch was pretty, but it wasn’t stockinette. I praised the sweater, then showed Sharon the mistake she was making and pulled out my knitting to teach her how to make a proper stitch. Sharon was uninterested. “Don’t you want to be a better knitter?” I queried.
    â€œI just want to knit,” she replied. “I don’t have to be good.”
    I will respect that not everybody needs to be perfect. Sometimes, just knitting is enough.
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    I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine
and gives me a certain dignity, as if I were
attending a state funeral or something.
Someday I may get up enough courage
to wear it, instead of carrying it.
    â€” E RMA B OMBECK
    5 reasons to knit hats:
    They are a small project. You can go nuts with a fiber you usually couldn’t afford, such as cashmere or alpaca.
    A great deal of body heat is lost through the head.
    A great hat can make up for bad hair.
    They can be knit fairly quickly and, as a bonus, children’s heads grow slowly compared to the rest of them.
    Normally timid dressers (even male ones) will often wear a wild hat. Your inner artist can be fully released through hat knitting without the fear that it will never be worn.
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    Whoever said money can’t buy happiness
simply didn’t know where to go shopping.
    â€” B O D EREK
    T here is a segment of my stash that I cannot explain. If you knew me, and you looked at this yarn, you would think that I had gone to the yarn store drunk. There is pink chenille (I wouldn’t be caught dead in this pink, and I hate chenille), there is heavy cotton (cotton is my enemy; knitting it makes my hands hurt), and so on. I offer this only by way of explanation. It turns out that I will buy any yarn, even yarn I will never use, if the store discounts it by more than 50 percent.
    Do not be tricked. Not all yarn is meant to be yours, no matter how good a deal it is.
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    The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
    â€” H ERBERT S PENCER
    M y mother is an avid garage sale shopper. She enjoys finding little treasures and getting good deals. She loves a $2 lamp the way that I love knitting. She called me one weekend after making her neighborhood rounds and described some yarn she had seen at a sale. “It was a lovely green,” she said, “and the label said 100 percent Shetland wool… there were 12 skeins for $4.” The world swirled around me excitedly. “Did you get it?” I asked, suddenly understanding completely what my mother sees in garage sales. “No,” she replied, “I wasn’t sure if it was good wool.”
    Educate your family and friends. Teach them this: there is no such thing as “bad” $4 wool.
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    You know you
knit too much when …
    You find yourself stalking
a man in the grocery store,
not because he’s really
good-looking, but because
he is wearing an Aran
sweater with a cable you
are trying to work out.

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    I have long been of the opinion that if
work were such a splendid thing the rich would have
kept more of it for themselves.
    â€” B RUCE G ROCOTT
    K nitting has many rewards. Sometimes it is the joy of wondrous creativity, of taking yarn and needles and making a new and beautiful thing out of nothing. Sometimes it is figuring out something tricky and clever, solving a problem with your wits and your wool. There is even the joy of clothing your loved ones or wrapping a baby in a blanket you made yourself. Sometimes, though, it is the pride of having slogged through 26 inches of plain boring garter stitch, row after mind-numbingly plain row, and coming out the other side with your sanity and desire to remain a knitter intact.
    I will pride myself on my stamina as a knitter.
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    He who would travel happily
must travel light.
    â€” A NTOINE DE S AINT -E XUPERY
    I t used to be that when I traveled, I packed lightly enough that I would