I met the Yarn Harlot

Me, Stephanie "Yarn Harlot" Pearl-McPhee, and her traveling sock at the Ann Arbor District Library

Some of you may recognize the above photo as that of me, your faithful blogger, with an incredible celebrity of the knitting world. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, aka the Yarn Harlot, writes amazing books about knitting. She is hilarious. For those of you that are about to close this window because of the preceding two statements, I invite you to keep reading: knitting is fantastic, and, frankly, knitting is cool. If you dont believe me, try it sometime. In fact, if youll be here, at UMMS next year, e-mail me, and well add you to our knitting group e-mail list. While weve been somewhat inactive since our neuro sequence, weve got a regular crowd that gets together and knits (with a few folks who crochet). I dont have much else to say, in part because I know that no little witty anecdote will be as hilarious as the ones I heard at the library book signing on Sunday, and in part because Im not sure that knitting has much to do with medical school and I know thats what most of you want to hear about.

Although, as I typed that last sentence, I've realized that I knit more prolifically during my first year of medical school than during any other time in my life. In fact, I believe that knitting was what got me through my first free weekend. You see, I had taken my first quiz of medical school and really didn't have any studying to do during the weekend. I was like a drug addict in withdrawal: fidgety, a little irritable, and looking for something, anything, to do. So I knit. Knitting is great for this. It's a project that generally requires some concentration and lots of tiny, precise movements of the hands. I roomed with a dental student one summer in college who started knitting to improve her surgical technique. I don't know about that (I guess we'll see when the knitting group hits the wards), but it does amazing things for the mind in terms of quieting. It's almost like meditating in a lot of ways

So I guess knitting is, in fact, intimately connected with medical school. I suppose that any activity that allows for some escape from the rigors of school has to be, in some way. To quote the Yarn Harlot Knit on!