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The Inner Teenage Knitter

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee from Toronto, Ontario is a prolific knitter and writer. Her blog, the Yarn Harlot is consistently ranked as one of the #1 knitting blogs in North America.  She is able to write in intriguing ways and knits up a storm as well.  I reluctantly encourage you to take a look at her blog because my efforts pale in comparison.  She is such a great writer.  Hey, she even has her own Wikipedia page.  

Recently she wrote about her inner knitter and described her as a 14 year old.  This inner knitter demands attention when she wants it, is immature, impatient and/or irrational, just like the typical 14 year old. (These are Stephanie's words not mine.  I want no teenagers hurt in the writing of this post.) There are times when she demands that you pick up your needles and knit something specific.  At other times she pouts and says "Whatever" when she's asked what knitting project should come next.  This comparison struck home for me.

My inner knitter is also a teenager, but I think she can drive making her at least 16 rather than 14.  My inner knitter likes to hoard yarn just in case there is an unpredicted yarn shortage, I guess, so she must be able to get to the appropriate stores.  She isn't too worried about whether the hoarded yarn is good quality or not-so-great quality, but she is beginning to enjoy better yarns.  In the months of December 2011 through March 2012 she was on some kind of strike.  She truly was in a "Whatever" mood, nothing was interesting enough, or perhaps it was too challenging so no real knitting happened for her or me.  That doesn't mean I wasn't knitting, but knitting was joyless then.  It seems she simply put on her iPhone ear buds to listen to the latest hits, shut her eyes and stayed in her room.  Then sometime in April, she emerged for some unknown reason; maybe the knitting class caused it, but then again I'm not sure I'll ever know why she returned.  I am just glad she did decide to come out of her room and talk to me!


Perhaps it was that gregarious teenager that prompted me to add a rather bright blue streak to my aging hair.  I can't quite say why I said yes to having this done, but I don't regret having listened to her.  Several Millennials (I do work on a college campus) have told me how much they like the colour and how brave I am to do it.  Gosh, at my age getting a compliment for anything is heartfelt.




This photo really doesn't do the blue justice; it is quite vibrant
 My inner 16-year old knitter is also quite good at leaving a mess.  It's not me, of course.  Paul is very patient and tolerates the pile of started projects, balls of all sorts of yarn and scattered books for some length of time and then packages her wayward stuff up (it's not me, remember?).   The man is a saint when it comes to tolerance and finding a solution, what can I say, I'm very lucky!

Stephanie says her inner knitter would prefer her to be unemployed so she could knit full-time, and I think mine would be just as happy if I could knit 8 hours a day as well.  She doesn't seem to understand that without that job I wouldn't actually be able to buy yarn.  Unfortunately, my inner teenage knitter doesn't appreciate that knitting for that length of time per day is hard on my eyes, back, wrists and overall health.  The 16-year old overlooks the fact that I am not 16, not anywhere near 16, 26, 36 or more.  She's such a child.  Again let me remind you this is my 16-year old not anyone else's.  Please no complaints from real teenagers.

Even if you don't have an inner knitter, you may have a different type of inner youthful, imprudent self, if you're more than 30.  It is that playful part of you that wants you to do what you want to do rather than what you should do.  Your mature self, more often than not, wins out, but that inner self has ways of getting even with you at some point.   If you do have that playful inner self perhaps some of the things I've described here might ring true for you.  It certainly did for hundreds of knitters on Stephanie's sites.

Thanks Stephanie, the Yarn Harlot, for helping me find the appropriate way to analyze my  urges for knitting.  It is good to know I'm just as abnormal as most of my fellow knitters with that raging 16 year old inside me.

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