1. Buying yarn to lift my mood will only make me feel better for a little while. Then I will have less money and less space, which is actually less uplifting. This is actually true about almost all shopping.
2. It saves time to take time to do things right. I resent the hell out of that one, because even after almost forty years of knitting, I still can’t believe that there’s no way to speed this up. I have to admit, though, that after forty years of trying to figure out where to cut corners, it turns out that knitting just doesn’t work that way. Cutting a corner means what you make is less good, things that are less good are either less durable or funny looking, and either way people wear that stuff less (or not at all) and then you’ve totally wasted your time because you have a sweater with one sleeve that sort of puffs because you didn’t rip back and have a do over when you totally knew that the short rows were funny, and now nobody’s ever going to wear it. For example. Not that I learned that the hard way or anything.
3. It takes me about sixteen hours to knit a plain pair of sock-weight socks.
4. I do not knit socks full time.
5. Clearly, understanding items 3 and 4, my expectations concerning how much sock yarn I should be buying are way too high.
6. Related to items 3, 4, and 5 above, I may be dangerously delusional… since I understand these things and still don’t think this means I have too much sock yarn.
7. There is absolutely nothing that can be said to one’s employer to properly explain that you have a knitting deadline for your sister’s baby and really can’t come in to work. I would have better luck getting a day off if I said that all my clothes burned up in a house fire and that coming to work means coming naked.
8. No matter how interesting it is to me, and no matter how long I think about it, I have to admit that knitting probably moves too slowly to make a good basis for a reality show like Dancing with the Stars or America’s Next Top Model.
9. It is okay to use stash yarn. The integrity of the stash does not need to be maintained. It is not a mine shaft that will collapse in on itself and destroy everything if I take something out.
10. I should not resent it when socks wear out. The average woman weighs 150 pounds and takes between 5,000 and 8,000 steps a day. I should consider it a miracle and be nothing short of astonished if socks last more than a single wearing.