Needlework Quotes

There is no right way to knit; there is no wrong way to knit. So if anybody kindly tells you that what you are doing is "wrong," don't take umbrage; they mean well. Smile submissively, and listen, keeping your disagreement on an entirely mental level. They may be right, in this particular case, and even if not, they may drop off pieces of information which will come in very handy if you file them away carefully in your brain for future reference. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann

Tell Robb that I'm going to command the Night's Watch and keep him safe, so he might as well take up needlework with the girls and have Mikken melt down his sword for horseshoes.
- Jon Snow ~ George R R Martin

But you can tell he's a wizard, because he's got a pointy hat with a floppy brim. It's got the word "Wizzard" embroidered on it in big silver letters, by someone whose needlework is even worse than their spelling. ~ Terry Pratchett

In pagan times women were buried with accoutrements that reflected the female role in society. Instead of the tools, weapons and hunting dogs that accompanied men, women took household utensils, implements for needlework, spinning and weaving, jewellery and lapdogs with them on their journey to the next life. ~ Else Roesdahl

I stare at him coldly. "I do not care for needlework." I pause. "Unless it involves the base of the skull. ~ R.L. LaFevers

What do you like to do?"
She scuffed a toe amongst the rushes. "Needlework."
"Very restful, isn't it?"
"Well," said Arya, "not the way I do it. ~ George R R Martin

I suggest you stick to your needlework." "Only if I can stitch your lips shut. ~ Suzanne Barclay

Good day to you, Sister," Gannon grunted, gritting his teeth and clenching the reins in a white-knuckled grip. "May you live to see your great-grandchildren, and may your eyes never grow dim!" Rolin stifled a snicker. His spinster aunt was childless, and her eyesight was poor from years of needlework. ~ William D. Burt

Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The driver bumped his way through the door and plopped down Caitlyn's "luggage." Caitlyn watched Madame Snowe's eyes go to it, widening as
she took it in. Caitlyn's cheeks heated.
Her "luggage" was a Vietnam War-era army green duffel bag, bought for a dollar at a garage sale. Cloud-shaped moisture stains mottled its
faded surface, and jagged stitches of black carpet thread sealed a rip on one end, Caitlyn's clumsy needlework giving the mended hole the look of
one of Frankenstein's scars.
"Is that all you brought?" Greta asked.
Caitlyn nodded, wishing the floor would swallow her.
"Very good. You will have no trouble unpacking, and then you can burn your bag, heh?"
"Reduce, reuse, recycle!" Caitlyn said with false cheer. "We're very big on living green in Oregon. Why buy a new suitcase when someone else's
old duffel bag will do?"
"We'll see that it gets … disposed of properly, ~ Lisa Cach

By your logic I should also be in charge of Solinade dances, needlework, and horse thieving. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

..all forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one for keeping the foolish from applying their hearts to wisdom. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

But Miss Ferguson preferred science over penmanship. Philosophy over etiquette. And, dear heavens preserve them all, mathematics over everything. Not simply numbering that could see a wife through her household accounts. Algebra. Geometry. Indecipherable equations made up of unrecognizable symbols that meant nothing to anyone but the chit herself. It was enough to give Miss Chase hives.

The girl wasn't even saved by having any proper feminine skills. She could not tat or sing or draw. Her needlework was execrable, and her Italian worse. In fact, her only skills were completely unacceptable, as no one wanted a wife who could speak German, discuss physics, or bring down more pheasant than her husband. ~ Eileen Dreyer

For women to be supplying the soldiery with banners, flannel shirts and other material comforts was, superficially, all of a piece with their ministrations to their menfolk at home. Such contributions to the war effort were socially acceptable because they could be seen as an extension into the military sphere of the traditional female virtues of charity, nurture and needlework. Yet in reality what the women were doing represented the thin end of a far more radical wedge. Consciously or not, these female patriots were staking out a civic role for themselves. And many of them relished it. ~ Linda Colley

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann

The last caravan they robbed had been filled with fine clothing, pieces of which were strewn about their camp. Trousers hung from trees, shirts danced in the breeze. The bright colors on bare branches gave everything a festival air.

Petru wrestled with an intricately brocaded vest, struggling to get it across his shoulders. He spun in one direction and then the other. Nicolae watched, lips a single straight line but eyes dancing with mirth.

"That would fit better if it were designed for a man," Matei said as he walked by. Matei's purse was full now, but he still looked hungry.

Petru stopped spinning and ripped off the vest in horror. Nicolae burst into laughter. "You could have told me!" Petru said.

"But it set off the color of your eyes so nicely."

Petru glared murderously. Then he looked over at Lada and held the vest out. She raised a single eyebrow at the delicate colors and needlework. Muttering to himself, Petru threw the vest at Nicolae's head and walked away ~ Kiersten White

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a
rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently
and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

THE ELFIN KNIGHT

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She must be a true love of mine

Tell her she'll sleep in a goose-feather bed
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Tell her I sear she'll have nothing to dread
She must be a true love of mine

Tell her tomorrow her answer make known
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
What e'er she may say I'll not leave her alone
She must be a true love of mine

Her answer came in a week and a day
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
I'm sorry good sir, I must answer thee nay
I'll not be a true love of thine

From the sting of my curse she can never be free
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Unless she unravels my riddlings three
She will be a true love of mine

Tell her to make me a magical shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Without any seam or needlework
Else she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to find me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
Else she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to plow it with just a goat's horn
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
And sow it all over with one grain of corn
Else she'll be a true love of mine
And her daughters forever possessions of mine ~ Nancy Werlin

Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again. ~ Dorothy Day

A vast deal of human sympathy runs along the electric line of needlework, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humble seamstress. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Tailor's work
the finishing of men's outside garments
was the "trade" learned most frequently by women in [the 1820s and 1830s],and one or more of my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind. ~ Lucy Larcom

My own hobbies are rather quiet. I like to read and do needlework, and I love animals. ~ Betsy Byars

a brief history of art
Cave paintings. Clay then bronze statues. Then for about 1,400 years, people painted nothing except bold but rudimentary pictures of either the Virgin Mary and Child or the Crucifixion. Some bright spark realised that things in the distance looked smaller and the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion improved hugely. Suddenly everyone was good at hands and facial expression and now the statues were in marble. Fat cherubs started appearing, while elsewhere there was a craze for domestic interiors and women standing by windows doing needlework. Dead pheasants and bunches of grapes and lots of detail. Cherubs disappeared and instead there were fanciful, idealised landscapes, then portraits of aristocrats on horseback, then huge canvasses of battles and shipwrecks. Then it was back to women lying on sofas or getting out of the bath, murkier this time, less detailed then a great many wine bottles and apples, then ballet dancers. Paintings developed a certain splodginess - critical term - so that they barely resembled what they were meant to be. Someone signed a urinal, and it all went mad. Neat squares of primary colour were followed by great blocks of emulsion, then soup cans, then someone picked up a video camera, someone else poured concrete, and the whole thing became hopelessly fractured into a kind of confusing, anything-goes free for all. ~ David Nicholls

Yet surely that story she had imagined was a real thing? If you created a story with your mind surely it was just as much there as a piece of needlework that you created with your fingers? You could not see it with your bodily eyes, that was all ... the invisible world must be saturated with the stories that men tell both in their minds and by their lives. They must be everywhere, these stories, twisting together, penetrating existence like air breathed into the lungs, and how terrible, how awful, thought Henrietta, if the air breathed should be foul. How dare men live, how dare they think or imagine, when every action and every thought is a tiny thread to ar or enrich that tremendous tapestried story that man weaves on the loom that God has set up, a loom that stretches from heaven above to hell below, and from side to side of the universe ... ~ Elizabeth Goudge

The six great gifts of an Irish girl are beauty, soft voice, sweet speech, wisdom, needlework, and chastity. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Do you want some help?"said Liam, rising. "No, thanks." She smiled at him, the man without a past with whom she was falling in love, and shook her head. He could help her later, she thought, when she brought down the larger boxes, big box with the theater programs and school yearbooks, and the little leather case that held the fans and the sketches and the pieces of needlework. But first, she would go alone to bring down the letters it would be the last time she would have Grandma Jo to herself. "Thanks, but I want to do this on my own." "Independent family, aren't they?" Liam grumbled to Matthew, sitting down again. "You don't know the half," said Matthew. ~ Gabrielle Donnelly

Why , instead of teaching her poetry and drama and needlework, had her governesses not taught the most important lesson anyone could learn - that life was really not going to be easy after one was free of the schoolroom? ~ Mary Balogh

During the descent, she gave the doily to the man across the aisle, worried about his ailing son, and the needlework was so elegant it made him feel better just to hold it. That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. ~ Aimee Bender

I'll kill her, freak," Pitala snarled in warning as he clicked off the blaster's release.
Nykyrian appeared unaffected by the insult and threat-and why wouldn't he be? It wasn't like the blaster was pressing against his temple.
He released a bored sigh. "Then I'll kill you and laugh while I do it. Either way it's no real sweat off my balls. Release her and you can at least walk away alive. But that's not a standing offer. Make up your mind quick before I kill you just for getting me out on a night when I'd rather be at home doing needlework."
-Pitala & Nykyrian (& Kiara) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Next came the drawing room and Abigail stared in surprise. It appeared as though the occupants had just been called away. A tea set sat on the round table, cups encrusted with dry tea. A book lay open over the arm of the sofa. A needlework project, nearly finished, lay trapped under an overturned chair. What had happened here? Why had the family left so abruptly, and why had the rooms been entombed for almost two decades? ~ Julie Klassen

The sewing machine joins what the scissors have cut asunder, plus whatever else comes in its path. ~ Mason Cooley

The tulip next appeared, all over gay, But wanton, full of pride, and full of play; The world can't show a dye but here has place; Nay, by new mixtures, she can change her face; Purple and gold are both beneath her care- The richest needlework she loves to wear; Her only study is to please the eye, And to outshine the rest in finery ~ Abraham Cowley

The needlework of lies and rumors seeks to distract peoples attention from the daily business of governance under the Presidents leadership. Those who continually plot for the Presidents downfall will never succeed because she is a hard-working President with no other agenda than to promote our peoples welfare ~ Eduardo Ermita

Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could not imagine sitting and stitching the fine crow's-foot seams.
Writing was the same, the pinching of thoughts into marks on paper and trying to keep your cursive legible, trying to think of the next thing to say and then behind you on several sheets of paper you find you have left permanent tracks, a trail, upon which anybody could follow you. Stalking you through your deep woods of private thought.
~ Paulette Jiles

I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read. ~ Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs. Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she's do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand. Panic. ~ Jeanette Winterson

SCARBOROUGH FAIR, or, THE LOVER'S PROMISE

(Lucy:)
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
Always he'll be a true love of mine

Tell him I've made him a magical shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Without any seam or needlework
Always he'll be a true love of mine

(Zach:)
Tell her she's found me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
That makes her a true love of mine

Tell her she's plowed it with just a goat's horn
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
She's sowed it all over with one grain of corn
Yes, she is a true love of mine
And her daughter forever a daughter of mine

(Together:)
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Remember us to all who live there
Ours will be true love for all time ~ Nancy Werlin

She will not bow her head to any woman or man, so why, indeed, should she bow to a needle? ~ Libbie Hawker

Poppy was busy with needlework, stitching a pair of men's slippers with bright wool threads, while Beatrix played solitaire on the floor near the hearth. Noticing the way her youngest sister was riffling through the cards, Amelia laughed. "Beatrix," she said after Win had finished a chapter, "why in heaven's name would you cheat at solitaire? You're playing against yourself."
"Then there's no one to object when I cheat."
"It's not whether you win but how you win that's important," Amelia said.
"I've heard that before, and I don't agree at all. It's much nicer to win."
Poppy shook her head over her embroidery. "Beatrix, you are positively shameless."
"And a winner," Beatrix said with satisfaction, laying down the exact card she wanted. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The verb 'to darn' is explained in my pocket dictionary as follows: 'To mend by imitating the texture of the stuff, with thread and needle.' But this definition does not correspond to the work accomplished by good Chinese housewives. When they mend a sock, they do not try 'to imitate the texture of the stuff'. Their art makes no attempt at concealment: it even takes a certain pride in revealing itself. ~ Daniele Vare