From Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Knitting Rules
In the end, the reason we fill our houses with it, visit it in yarn shops, speak of it in glowing terms, and hoard it with passion is that it is pure potential. Every ball or skein of yarn hold something inside it, and the great mystery of what it might be can be almost spiritual. These six balls of wool could be a shawl my mum puts around her shoulders when she's cold, or maybe it's a blanket a friend wraps her baby in. Maybe that baby takes a shine to it and it becomes his beloved companion blankie, comforting him for years. and years. Maybe it's a sweater that my daughter is wearing the day she gets her first kiss, and from then on my yarn is part of her memory of that day. Maybe, just maybe, those six balls are a scarf and hat that get tucked away for years and long after I'm gone someone pulls them out and says, "Remember how Grammy was with all the wool? Remember how she knit all the time?" fingering the soft wool and pondering who I was and what I did while I was here.
It's a mystery, each ball of yarn...and I don't know what each one is going to be or what life it will take when I finally set needles to it. But each one will be something I made with my own two hands. The yarn, then- my whole big sweeping stash- is the stuff of dreams.
