Now comes what I perhaps inflatedly call my philosophy of knitting. Like many philosophies, it is hard to express in a few words. Its main tenets are enjoyment and satisfaction, accompanied by thrift, inventiveness, an appearance of industry, and, above all, resourcefulness.

Knit on with confidence and hope through all crises.

What? You can't knit in the dark? Stuff and nonsense; anybody can. Shut your eyes. Knit one stitch. Open your eyes and look at the stitch; it's all right. Shut your eyes and knit two stitches. Open them. Shut them. Knit three stitches. Falling off a log is no comparison.

Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either.

Knitting is formed by a series of loops pulled through loops to the end of time or to 'desired length'. By picking up loops and working in the opposite direction you are really picking up the concavities between the loops, and it is sheer unexpected witchcraft that stocking stitch and garter stitch will permit such an anomaly. Be grateful for this and don't expect anymore.

One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up; one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground.