Elizabeth Zimmermann > Quotes

“Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either.”
― Elizabeth Zimmerman

“Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitting Without Tears: Basic Techniques and Easy-to-Follow Directions for Garments to Fit All Sizes

“But unvented - ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams - it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind's history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac

“Knit on with confidence and hope through all crises.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitting Without Tears: Basic Techniques and Easy-to-Follow Directions for Garments to Fit All Sizes

“(knitting while on a motorcycle)
"For several years she knitted in secret (my father would not approve; she was to concentrate on motorcycling and LEAN into the curves, etc), and used a small circular needle (socks and mittens) in order to keep the knitting in her pocket until they were under way; then she leaned back slightly so Gaffer couldn't feel the movement of her hands.
On the interstate one day, they were slowly passing a semi and my father happened to see the truck driver laugh and point out my mother's knitting to his passenger. Whoops-”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Opinionated Knitter

“Pass by the synthetic yarn department, then, with your nose in the air. Should a clerk come out with the remark that All Young Mothers In This Day and Age (why can't they save their breath and say "now"?) insist on a yarn which can be machine-washed and machine-dried, come back at her with the reply that one day, you suppose, they will develop a baby that can be machine-washed and -dried. ”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac

“I know that spinning sets me in a trance; it soothes me and charges my batteries at the same time. When times are tough I sit down to spin during the news-broadcasts, with therapeutic results.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac

“I am a knitting fool. It's a quiet pastime, and a productive one. It enables one to join in the conversation or switch one's brain off, according to the interest or the excruciating dullness of what is being discussed. And the product does keep people warm and comfortable.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop

“No two people knit alike, look alike, think alike; why should their projects be alike? Your sweater should be like your own favorite original recipes - like nobody else's on earth.
And a good thing too.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitting Without Tears: Basic Techniques and Easy-to-Follow Directions for Garments to Fit All Sizes

“I can knit. I knit all year, day in, day out. It is my passion, and I rarely knit the same thing twice the same way.”
― Elizabeth Zimmermann, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac