The Real Value of Knitting

 I don't own many pieces of clothing from over a dozen years ago, but this is one of them.

It's a dickey from an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern, and I knit it long before The Big Bang Theory made dickeys a part of the public imagination, again.

I made it when I was a grad student and couldn't afford fancy yarn. I bought the skein for it at a farmers market in Athens, Ohio, from the same man who convinced me to try eggplant for the first time.

It isn't the softest yarn to ever grace my needles and may have been from a meat breed of sheep. But, by Jove, it is still as warm as the day I made it and nary a pill has appeared on it even though I wore it at least once a week for half of the year when I lived in Ohio, Michigan and South Dakota. It even bolstered my resolve against a wet Scottish spring. (Don't believe people who say that May is summer in Scotland. It is still the spring, in my book, if you wear wool socks and are happy about it.)

If you find yourself shorter of funds than you like, remember: the right yarn used in a good project lasts, and lasts and lasts - much longer than the shirt or whatever I could have bought with the same amount of money.