Death by Knitting or Ode to Stephanie Pearl (not Purl)

As she surveyed her Christmas list
(For gifting, not for getting),
Her family started a knitting pool
So they could run the betting.
Would she finish her knitting this year?
The tension ran quite high.
All walked softly as they passed,
So they wouldn’t get poked in the eye
By her needles going clickety-clack.
Wool fluff filled the air,
Whirled in clouds about her head
And settled everywhere.
She started looking hollow-eyed,
She started getting thin,
Still, she kept a-knitting on
With a weird and manic grin.
Socks for mamma, a hat for Ted,
Gloves for Auntie Sue.
All far more than twenty
Knitting thirty years could do.
She finished her knitting on Christmas Eve,
Long after all were in bed.
But when they all got up that morn
They found her lying dead!
Yarn and needles were clutched in her hands.
The mortician left them there,
And so she was buried, wrapped in the shawl
She meant to give to Claire.
“Why did she do ‘IT’?!” her family wailed,
“She knit her life away!”
“Oh, is that knitting?” A friend remarked,
“I thought it was crochet!”

© 2002 by Janine Tinklenberg.This poem may be used in knitting guild newsletters freely as long as my name appears and I get a copy of the newsletter.