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Seriously

On Saturday I saw Stephanie Pearl-McPhee speak at Knit City in Vancouver.  She calls herself a knitting humourist and she certainly lived up to that.  I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  There were somewhere between 150-200  knitters in an auditorium laughing just as much as me.  It was great to have so many like-minded individuals together in one place.

Last night I couldn't sleep as I ran her comments through my mind.  I know at some point I will write more about them, but for today I want to summarize a serious portion of Stephanie's comments.  These are all her comments solely I'm merely reporting the ideas and reiterating what she said only she does it with so much more humour.  (You can thank me later.)

  1. "It's not your grandmother's knitting."  The headlines seem to say this all the time.  Funny thing is, it is exactly the same as my grandmother's knitting.  Knitting is wrapping yarn around a pair of sticks and that hasn't changed in 1,000 years.  So stop denigrating my grandmother, she knits the same way I do and we are both proud of it.  
  2. "Knitters are more diverse than you think."  We are an estimated 54 million strong in North America.  We aren't singularly gray-haired ladies; we include men, young people and all races.  Don't buttonhole us; it is disrespectful to all of us. 
  3. "Knitters are managing their difficult personalities so you don't have to."  It is apparent to knitters that without this activity we would be hard to live and/or work with.  Even though it isn't the new yoga (another bit of media mis-information), knitting does offer us our daily fix of endorphin and dopamine.  And we do it with yarn; no drugs involved.
  4. "Knitters are way smarter than you think they are."  It is not possible to do what we do without being able to manage basic math, read and implement complicated charts, and resolve problems, often of our own making.  Besides all of that, a single pair of socks requires that we do 20,000 things right.  And we do it time and time again properly.
  5. "Knitters are going to out live you."  Because of all the calming, mind stimulating and anti-arthritis benefits of knitting not only will we live longer, we'll also live better.
  6. "Knitters are so persistent you'll be sorry if you start with us."  It takes us hours to do certain activities that can be ridiculously repetitive.  Don't mess with us, we practice perseverance every time we knit something.  We've got the stick-to-it thing down, in spades.
There was a whole lot more that was funny and thoughtful comments made on Saturday, but these six items resonated with me.  I want to remember them so putting them here will do just that for me, and perhaps you'll enjoy some of them as well.

Finally, here's a few photos 1) Stephanie is diminutive, 2) knits beautiful stuff like the sweater she modeled for us, and 3) signs autographs.  There's more to come, but for now I'll stop here.

1) Those in the back may or may not have been able to see her over the podium

2) Stephanie is an active person so a motionless photo was tough to get

2) And she showed up the back as well

3) There will be more about this autograph in the book Tena gave me.



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