Wow – I’ve so enjoyed reading your comments on Wednesday’s post. (I still have more to read – not through them all yet.) Whether it’s continuing a heritage passed down from your great (great great) grandparents, or seeing you through some tough life-situations, or enjoying the beautiful yarns and fibers, or blessing others with things that you have made with your own hands, or giving you something to do when you’d be likely to otherwise fidget, I think it’s pretty unanimous that we all love knitting. So far, I haven’t seen anyone say that they are knitting “for now”. A few people hope that this will stick with them for life, but the great majority of you feel that you will definitely be knitting for years and years to come.  As knitters, we love the portabilty of knitting, we love the huge variety of things that we can make, we love the challenge of hard patterns (and the mindlessness of others), we love the fibers and colors, and we love that there never seems to be a shortage of things to make and keep or give away. (As several of you pointed out, someone may not have room in their house for that picture you spent hours cross-stitching for them, or the pillow you needlepointed for them, but not many people turn down hand-knit socks!)

Since I think these comments are so priceless and I think they share so much, I had an idea. I’m going to print off some of the comments (without names attached) to make a big collage for one of the walls here at Loopy. To go along with that, I’d love to have you email me a photo of you and your friends, knitting. I’ll sprinkle photos in among the quotes of “why do you knit?”. I know I won’t be able to use all of the quotes and all of the photos, but I think it will make for a very fun wall here.  Of course I’ll show you a picture when I’m done. I always get a little sad for people who have pre-conceived notions about knitters, don’t you? They think of the toilet paper roll covers that their grandmothers made (not that there’s anything wrong with that…) or the scratchy (ugly) sweaters and goofy slippers that their aunts gave them for their birthdays years and years ago, and they wonder why anyone would want to knit? Or how it could possibly be challenging in any way?  They’re sure missing out, aren’t they? This wall just needs to be done. And then I’ll need to find a way to get non-knitters in here to see it and convince them to give knitting a try.

No recipes today, but how about some low calorie treats for you? Marlon from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, mentioned knitting up wonderful pastries with yarn from The Loopy Ewe, so I asked for photos!  The patterns came from this book, and of course the varieties are endless. I’m afraid that if I had that chocolate cake sitting out on the counter, I’d be hankering for a real piece of one by the end of the day. Too tempting!  But what a fun way to use up your leftover yarn and to make people smile. Thanks, Marlon, for sharing photos and giving me permission to use them on the blog today. You did a beautiful job on all of these.

WH and I are heading up to Indiana to visit College Guy and College Girl tomorrow – yay! I can’t wait to see them. (Still trying to figure out why kids think they need to grow up and move out of the house, but I know that it’s supposed to be a “good thing”. sigh.)

Sheri whocan’twaittostartinontheLoopyCentralKnittingCollage
nowthatIputthatideaintomyhead