For people allergic to wool, one's heart can only bleed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(knitting while on a motorcycle) "For several years she knitted in secret (my father would not approve; she was to concentrate on motorcycling and LEAN into the curves, etc), and used a small circular needle (socks and mittens) in order to keep the knitting in her pocket until they were under way; then she leaned back slightly so Gaffer couldn't feel the movement of her hands. On the interstate one day, they were slowly passing a semi and my father happened to see the truck driver laugh and point out my mother's knitting to his passenger. Whoops-

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