"Obsession is normal" - Yarn Harlot

(I'm mildly freaked out that there's a real live picture of me online, this has never happened before.  Everyone that's turned up from Yarn Harlot, hi there!  Thanks for the comments, and come back and visit.  Or run away screaming, it's all the same to me.)

I have never seen so many knitters in one place as I did last night.  St Louis County Library was unprepared for how many people would turn up, I sat on the floor as there were no more chairs.  Almost everyone was knitting and checking out everyone else's project.  I got about 2 inches done on Hubby's sock, so it was a good night (only one inch and a whole other sock to go).  There were an awful lot of socks in progress.  And no-one thought it impolite that people knitted while Stephanie the Yarn Harlot was talking, I love that.  People really can do two things at once, especially if one thing is as automatic as knitting.

Picked up her latest book Knitting Rules from Borders on the way home (she signed my knitting journal instead), but I disagree with her about dpns for socks.  I'm done wrestling with the octopus, I'll keep my Magic Loop.  Stephanie said knitting is neither an art, nor a craft, but a sport:

Sport (noun)An active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition.


A form of leisure-time physical activity that is planned, structured and competitive.
Sport is a physical activity involving large muscle groups, requiring strategic methods, physical training and mental preparation and whose outcome is determined, within a rules framework, by skill, not chance. Sport occurs in an organized, structured and competitive environment where a winner is declared.

(Plus some other stuff about mutant plants and hamsters, which I doubt is relevant unless you have a very talented hamster.)

The definition fits, mostly.  Some knitters are more competitive than others.  She has another two books planned, wonder if one would be about spinning?