Clara Parkes QUOTES

1 " Knitting has a profound connective power. The culture and people and rituals around it, the values, they all contribute to an immediate and profound trust in one another. It's home. You belong and are accepted, which rings true no matter where you are. "

― Clara Parkes , Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World

2 " A big stash allows me to have a fluid sense of creativity - a looseness that is very much like playing. It opens me up, unlocks things. The creative bit takes all the other pieces - the possibility, the abundance, the connections, and the actual work of making yarn - bundles them, and explodes like a glitter bomb. It gets everywhere, it makes me smile, and a I can't escape it.

My stash is the spark. Even if I haven't spun for days or weeks, even when I'm feeling dull-witted or anti-craft, I still spend time with my stash. It pulls on doors that have been locked, slides under the crack and clicks them open from the inside. After an hour tossing my fibers around, I am revitalized for making yarn, yes, but for things well beyond that, too. My sash fees like an extension of me that I sometimes forget about: the part that plays, that connects things that don't seem to go, that experiments and makes things. "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

3 " You've heard about the knitter's handshake? Two hands go in for the grab-and-shake, but at the last minute, they veer to the closest sleeve or band and grab it instead while we ask, "Did you knit this? "

― Clara Parkes , The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting

4 " All knitterly creation stems from one simple element: yarn. It is the baker’s flour, the jeweler’s gold, the gardener’s soil. Yarn is creation, consolation, and chaos all spun together into one perfect ball. "

― Clara Parkes

5 " A funny thing happens when more than one knitter gathers in a public place. A solo knitter, presuming she is a woman, quickly fades into the backdrop like a potted palm or a quietly nursing mother. ... A single knitter is shorthand for "nothing to see here, move on."

But when knitters gather, we become incongruously conspicuous. We are a species that other people aren't used to seeing in flocks, like a cluster of Corgis, a dozen Elvis impersonators waiting for the elevator. "

― Clara Parkes , Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World

6 " All knitting is choreography. "

― Clara Parkes , The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting

7 " I'm cashmere, for God's sake," it grumbles. "I deserve better than Rubbermaid. "

― Clara Parkes , The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting

8 " Asking a knitter what he or she plans on doing with the yarn he or she just bought is like asking a squirrel what it plans on doing with that nut it just buried under a pile of leaves. "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

9 " Nothing is a stronger cultural lightning rod than two needles and a ball of yarn. But "

― Clara Parkes , Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World

10 " No matter how slick the technology or charming the person on screen, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to replicate the full extent of the human learning experience online. "

― Clara Parkes , Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World

11 " Hand-dyers are never in competition with each other. Rather, we push each other to expand our worlds. "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

12 " Most of my yarn is for knitting, but some of it has a more complicated destiny as support staff: It is there to make me want to knit. It’s absolutely possible that I need the green Merino to inform how I’ll use the blue alpaca, and that ball of gorgeous variegated yarn? You bet "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

13 " I readily admit that I am not a minimalist. I find solace in the fact that the traditional Japanese minimal aesthetic was made possible by the equally traditional kura (storehouse) where the items not in use or on display in the home would be kept. I like being surrounded by things that inspire me and allow me to start new projects instantly. I know it’s wrong, but I do judge people. An obsession with minimalism has always smacked to me of a romanticism of poverty (and potentially an outdated one at that) from a wealthy perspective. I think of Marie Antoinette having a little farm built on the castle grounds so that she could play at being a peasant shepherdess. Considered minimalism in this day and age is generally a pastime for those with the affluence to buy (or rebuy) what they need, when they need it. The considered minimalist needn’t be as resourceful about keeping things around “just in case,” because, at any moment, he or she can replenish the shelves with abundance. "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

14 " Because we lack sufficient financial clout to establish a permanent place for such learning, we have this traveling circus of experts who roam from town to town, event to event, squeaky-wheeled suitcases of samples in tow. "

― Clara Parkes , Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World

15 " The word swatch dates back to the 1600s, when it referred to a sample piece of cloth attached to a batch of fabric being sent to the dye house. Today, "

― Clara Parkes , The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting

16 " I feel about my yarn stash as I do about my library: It is the record of much of my history, promise, potential, inspiration, learning, and space to dream. "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

17 " And really, does anybody believe that Michelangelo just decided to carve the David one day and went out and bought a slab of marble? "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn

18 " not-so-grand metropolis of Portland. "

― Clara Parkes , The Yarn Whisperer: My Unexpected Life in Knitting

19 " But when knitters gather, we become incongruously conspicuous. We are a species that other people aren’t used to seeing in flocks, like a cluster of Corgis, a dozen Elvis impersonators waiting for the elevator. Here "

― Clara Parkes , Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World

20 " You are the boss of your knitting and can do what you like; there is no “wrong” in knitting as long as you are pleased with the results. "

― Clara Parkes , A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn