It's easy to be lazy when you lack inspiration, so here's my attempt at something more poetic than a list.

Yarn inspires the timid, the tired, and the flustered; when we think yarn, we think colors and sets of colors, gauge (when we've finished that baby-fine project, chunky can be inspiring); having "a stash" - buying yarn when you have money means having yarn when the money runs dry; texture, pure sensual pleasure, and drape, the luscious body-clingingness of everything yarny combined to perfection.

Knitting exhibitions inspire: there is nothing like viewing knitting as sculpture and Art, knitting that explores all the possibilities of the craft. Imagine knitting murals, knitting with gossamer threads of metal or chunky slivers of paper, tiny to room filling knitted things.

Patterns and books inspire, from historical to hysterical.

Sharing with other knitters inspires: blogs, webrings, tears, frogging, challenges and sympathy, celebrations and rewards.

Knitting for others inspires: charity knitting for the homeless, recovering, mourning, the forgotten; gifts for children and grandparents, girlfriends and beaus.

Teaching someone to knit inspires: frustration and patience, fumbling and bent needles, laughter and tears, dropped stitches and extra stitches like extraterrestrials, appearing out of nowhere. Triumph and resignation.

Luscious photos from consumate artists such as this spinner, knitter, artisan supreme - brooklyntweed at blogspot.

Knitting for newborns, those tiny things knit up so quickly, precious coverings for carefully counted fingers and toes, colors only a newborn can wear, tassels and pompoms.

(Don't laugh) Knitting for appliances - such as a tv cosy to cover an ugly tv, or one for your blender or printer.

Celebrity knitting: Julia Roberts inspires me, as does Cameron Diaz.

Men who knit inspire me. Years ago I was traveling with friends and we dropped in unexpectedly on a family where no one was home. The residents must have left home on short notice; bread dough was rising and traveling across the table and onto the floor. In the living room were two knitting projects, fisherman knits on large circular needles.

A busy woman, I thought. As it happened, the knitting belonged to her sons. How admirably courageous, to pick up the "womanly art" of knitting.

Historical and/or literary knitting inspires - reading about such revolutionaries as Madame LaFarge in "Tale of Two Cities".

And last but not least, nature inspires. Where else do bronze, salmon pink, orange and purple look breathtakingly perfect together? Where else do textures and shapes invite imitation as with icicles, bare tree branches, the grain in a piece of lumber, the "star" in an apple halved horizontally, clouds against a brilliant blue sky?

Surrounded by this twisted skein of knitting inspiration, the knitting muse need never be silent again!