STEPHANIE PEARL-MCPHEE

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

The only difference between an experienced knitter and new knitter is that the experienced knitter makes bigger mistakes faster. Be bold; there are no terrible consequences in knitting.

All Newfoundlander men can knit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Knitters use knitting to value-add to the world.

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.

Some knitters say that they buy yarn with no project in mind and wait patiently for the yarn to "speak" to them. This reminds me of Michelangelo, who believed that every block of stone he carved had the statue waiting inside and that all he did was reveal it. I think I've had yarn speak to me during the knitting process, and I've definitely spoken to it. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, or maybe my yarn and I aren't on such good terms, but it really seems to me that all I say is "please" and all it ever says is "no".

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.

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

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.

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.

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

When you are knitting socks and sweaters and scarves, you aren't just knitting. You are assigning a value to human effort. You are holding back time. You are preserving the simple unchanging act of handwork.

It is a little known fact that much like birds, who can always find north, knitters can always find yarn.

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.

I recognize that knitting can improve my mood in trying circumstances

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.