Parents and Knitters

The top ten ways why being a parent is like being a knitter.

1. You have to work on something for a really long time before you know if it's going to be okay.
   


2. They both involve an act of creation involving common materials, easily found around the house.
   


3. Both knitting and parenting are more pleasant if you have the occasional glass of wine, but go right down the drain if you start up with a lot of tequila or shooters.
   


4. With either one, you can start with all the right materials, use all the best reference books available, really apply yourself, and still get completely unexpected results.
   


5. No matter whether you decided to become a parent or a knitter, you are still going to end up with something you have to hand wash.
   


6. Parents and knitters both have to learn new things all the time, mostly so that they can give someone else something.


7. Both activities are about tension. In knitting, the knitter has control of the amount of tension on the object in progress. In parenting, the opposite is true.
   


8. No matter how much time you spend at knitting or parenting, you are still going to wish you could spend all your time at it. Which is odd, since both activities are occasionally frustrating that you want to gnaw your own arm off.
   


9. Knitting and parenting are both about endurance. Most of the time it's just mundane repetitive labor, until one day, you realize you're actually making something sort of neat.
   


10. One day, you will wake up and realize that you are spending hours and hours working at something that is costing you a fortune, won't ever pay the bills, creates laundry and clutters up your house, and won't ever really be finished ... and the only thing you will think about it is that you can't wait to get home and do more.
    

Yarn Harlot : The Secret Life of a Knitter
by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee