Truth from the Sock Summit*
Published on Monday August 10th, 2009
“Just as the bird’s wing evolved to fly, the human hand evolved to manipulate. An idle hand is not a happy hand.”
— Barbara Walker, 9 August 2009
“You have to put on your own oxygen mask.”
— Deborah Robson on tending one’s craft, body and soul while meeting the demands of motherhood and a career, 9 August 2009
“Julia Child used to say you needed a well-stocked pantry in case company came by and you needed to prepare a fabulous dinner. I think you need to stock your pantry in case a good idea comes by.”
— Judith MacKenzie McCuin, whose stash weighs 6,000 pounds, on avoiding yarn-accumulation guilt, 9 August 2009
*All quotes filtered through my brain and pencil as fast as I could scribble. They may not be verbatim, but they’re pretty close.
Posted: August 10th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Thank you – these were almost as good as being there….
Posted: August 10th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Love them all
Posted: August 10th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
[...] me (I know, what the hell?) so to occupy my hands I took note of quotes I liked. I saw today that Blue Garter did the same, so I’m actually combining what she wrote down and what I wrote down for the first one (read [...]
Posted: August 11th, 2009 at 4:51 am
How many individual skeins of yarn are in a stash weighing 6,000 lbs???
Posted: August 11th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Coolness. Wish I could’ve been there too!
Posted: August 11th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I think you pocked the best quotes of the whole summit to print here! I hope you had a great time… I wanted to be a knitting conference for the rest of my life, it was such a blast!! Now back to real life…
Posted: August 11th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Wow. Part of me would love a stash that weighed 6000 pounds, and the rest of me is wondering what I would do when I wanted to start a new project. It’s already overwhelming, and I don’t tend to have sweater lots of yarn.
Posted: August 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Lovely! I especially like the first, as my body is so opposed to idle hands that my hands, when I was a child, would shred things if I didn’t occupy them. I had no idea I was doing it, so it really felt quite odd to look down and find the sad remains of a paper napkin in my lap or a crumpled tissue or something. Our bodies want to work.
Posted: August 11th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
So good to catch up with you again at the Sock Summit. I was so impressed with Barbara Walker’s quote – I’ve long been a believer in the necessity of work for humans (whether paid or unpaid). Judith MacKenzie McCuin has more fiber in her stash, than I do in my business!
Posted: August 13th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
[...] for the rest of the Sock Summit. I finally got to knit a few more rows on my Ene’s Scarf. Blue Garter (who I got to meet again!) has summarised the best quotes from the Luminary Panel, so that I [...]
Posted: August 16th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Hi – I kept checking this blog over the last couple of weeks wondering ‘is Sarah going to Sock Summit??’ It seemed that you must be, but seeing no posts ahead of time about it, I wasn’t sure… very glad to read the quotes, and not surprised at all to hear that it was absolutely wonderful!
I’ve been visiting my one of my oldest/best friends in Ashland this week, who knew how to knit *a bit.* I helped her get back to it, and she started a dish cloth yesterday and finished it tonight, and I’ve helped start a hat that she wants to make for a young friend/former student – she’s a first grade teacher… so satisfying to sit visiting together and watch the project grow on her needles. As soon as she finished the dishcloth, she began a 2nd one, so that she ‘wouldn’t forget’ how to start one.
Re: 6,000 pounds of stash – well, figuring that most skeins/balls are either 2 oz or 4 oz, let’s say the average weight is 3 oz. Which means there’s about 5 skeins to the pound. Which means that 6,000 pounds of stash is approximately – wait for it – 30,000 skeins. That’s a lot of yarn! If you knit one of those average 3 oz. skeins every single day, day in and day out, that stash would last for 82 years…
Posted: August 19th, 2009 at 4:08 am
Thanks for sharing these!
Posted: August 19th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
every one of those is a gem. 600 pounds. gawd.
Posted: August 19th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
i meant 6000. double gawd.