Excerpts

Addict, Knitting noun:

I find it very interesting that many words knitters use to describe their hobby have somehow migrated from the language of the illegal drug trade. Stash, needles, dealer, habit, addiction - like knitting is a guilty secret. Next thing you know there will be a 12-step program - “Hello my name is Mary Beth and I am addicted to alpaca”. All together now, “Hi Mary Beth”.

I could quit any time I wanted to – really, I could. I don’t have to get my warm fuzzies by feeling all that wooly (or cottony, or lineny, or llama-y) goodness flow through my fingers. I really don’t have to spend my weekends at sheep and wool fairs, plan my vacations around visits to cool yarn stores across the country, or have three projects going at the same time so that there is always something to do. I could learn to watch a television program without doing anything else at the same time, read about people in need without being driven to knit each of them a hat, and spend time on the internet without cruising for yarn sales. I could read, nay even write a blog about, I don’t know politics, or gardening, or home improvement.

I could do any of these things, but I won’t. I love to knit, I love the process of knitting, and I love the finished items that I turn out. I love wearing hand-knit goodies, giving them as gifts to people I love, and sending them off to strangers who might need them. There is a reason that there isn’t a 12-step program for knitters, and that reason is none of us want to quit!

Frog verb: Ripping out worked rows to get to the row before you made the mistake. Not for the faint of heart (it is frightening to see all those live stitches floating in the breeze without the anchor of the knitting needle), but it is often the quickest solution to a knitting problem. The word comes from the sound the frog makes - ribbit, ribbit = rip-it, rip-it.

Some people are fearless in the practice of frogging and some avoid it like the plague. Those who have enough self-knowledge to understand that they will go slowly insane in a Gaslight sort of way knowing there is a mistake in their work, even though the mistake they made is tiny and probably invisible to the naked eye of a non-knitter, will soon be expert froggers. Those who refer to mistakes as design modifications will probably never frog a row in their lives. See also lifeline and tink.

Tension noun: 1. What you feel at an LYS when you have $500 worth of wants and $50 worth of disposable income. 2. Gauge if you are European or aspire to the aristocracy.