pure blasphemy!!!!

I went to JoAnn's today to get yet another clicker (I do believe I own more clickers than tape measurers) and some other assorted things. I ended up in a conversation with one of the employees there. I was telling her about a pattern I liked that I was planning on trying to modify (I have to modify everything. I don't think I have ever knitted something exactly like a pattern called for.) a pattern and knit it. She was telling me about knitting machines. She was raving at how wonderful they are and how you can make a whole sweater in one evening. I have to admit that that sounds like a nifty idea, but I enjoy the process of two needles in my hands, the gentle rhythm of the needles flowing over and around the yarn, the stitch by stitch magic of bringing a piece to fruition. You would lose the whole yin yang of knitting by handing over your yarn to some machine. I admit that having a whole sweater done in one evening sounds like a really cool thing, but that's why I make baby hats and baby socks. I have my smaller projects to handle my immediate gratification fix and my bigger projects (sweaters and the like) for long term projects. Besides, with every stitch I make, there is an essence of myself that goes into the project as a whole. I like to think I infuse positive energy in everything I make, but even at the times where I've had to frog something five times just to get "inside the stitch" there's something satisfying and magical about finally getting the pattern right and becoming one with it to the point that you can sometimes just knit it without looking at the pattern. You know what comes next by the stitch before it and the stitch underneath it. You develop a relationship with the yarn.
Anyway. Even though a sweater in an evening sounds like a really cool thing, this yarn whisperer is staying a handknitting kind of girl for now. Besides, if I were actually able to turn things out that fast, I'd have to buy more yarn than I already do and I don't know if my husband could stand that much yarn taking over our lives.