08/8/10
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the grocery store. . . I made a wrong turn and ended up standing in the yarn section of my local craft store.
Now let me be clear, my mother taught me how to knit when I about ten or twelve, but I didn’t really take to it. For one thing, Mom had amazing talents with knitting needles. She knit snowflake sweaters, and cable sweaters, and even a Ramsay plaid mohair afghan once. I could not compete. For another, I had sweaty hands as a child and you just can’t knit with sweaty hands.
So, instead, I let Aunt Annie teach me how to embroider. I could embroider rings around Mom. Eventually I even bested Aunt Annie in that department, but I could never match her skill at tatting. (I still have some of her tatted lace, waiting to be put on a grand child’s dress.) But I digress.
Why was I standing there reading a Debbie Macomber book filled with knitting instructions?
Several reasons: 1) My critique partners are yarn harlots. And they have been trying to suck me in for a long, long time. 2) I hate grocery shopping, and 3) I needed a vacation . . . bad.
For the last several months I’ve done nothing on my weekends but stare into a computer screen wrestling with manuscripts, new webpages, and day-job demands. This weekend I hauled home a boat load of work-related things to do, in addition to a box filled with copy edits. I really needed to get the grocery shopping done and get back to the computer. I had a whole weekend planned — and it was all work.
But I just couldn’t do it.
So instead, ended up fingering yarn at the craft store. And the yarn won.
I bought some of it, and I started a project. I spent most of yesterday knitting while listening to the entire season of Morgan Freeman’s ‘Through the Wormhole.” In the process I discovered a few things:
1) Knitting is like riding a bicycle. Once you learn, you never forget how. I haven’t knitted since I was a teenager.
2) My hands are not nearly as sweaty as they used to me. So maybe there are some positives to being post menopausal, and
3) You can justify all kinds of procrastination when you’re actually making something.
So, here’s a photo of what I accomplished yesterday. This is the back of a basic V-neck sweater:
And yes those are watermelon earrings in the photo — a gift from Heidi Hamburg who is tickled by the fact that Last Chance has a water tower painted like a watermelon. I didn’t have the heart to crop them out of the photo.
It was really fun, yesterday, to get away from the computer and practice an art that is ancient. It really relaxed me. And I was surprised by how connected I felt to Mom, who passed away in 1997.
I’ll be posting my progress on this project from time-to-time. That way I might actually finish it. I was notorious as a youngster for starting knitting projects and never finishing them. Although I did ultimately finish the obligatory stripped scarf (Met’s colors), and the basic crew neck sweater (knit with really chunky yarn on ginormous needles.)
So, okay, CPs, you can snort and giggle and whatnot, but you finally sucked me in. You and the burning need for a vacation from the computer screen.
5 Responses
Comments
We. Told. You. So. Attagirl!!! It’s going to be GREAT! And I swear, knitting is meditative; I can roll along the row, stitching away, plotting out the next few scenes…and missing the stitch count, so I have to frog the whole row, and…
Yay! She’s been assimilated!
Next we have to introduce you to Ravelry, also known as knitter’s hell and paradise, all rolled into one. http://www.ravelry.com Go sign up, and thank us later.
I was *wondering* what happened to you yesterday!
YES!! I knew we’d get to you eventually!
Carla’s right. Resistance *is* futile. Welcome to the knitting borg.
(And go sign up for ravelry. It’s like crack for knitters…)
Welcome to the collective!
PS Can you teach me to embroider? I’m on a knitted stuffed animal kick, and they’d like some faces…
I would be happy to teach you embroidery. I know cross-stitch and crewel. I even know how to embroider patterns on knitted garments because sometimes Mom would ask me to do that for her.
I am really a craft-harlot. It’s just that knitting has always been my nemesis. But so far the sweaty hands problem has not materialized. Let’s hear it for AC on a hot summer day.
I remember you started a red sweater for me sometime when I was in middle school. This, “I haven’t knit since I was a teenager” BS is FALSE.
I think the only thing I’ve ever completed are a few scarfs, and the rug in my bathroom made out of an old paisley sheet. Somethings run in the family.
Hmmm….
Thanks for jogging my fading memory. I do vaguely remember that maroon sweater. But I think you were younger than middle school. I think I started that sweater shortly after Mom died. That was 1997, so you were 11. And I think I knitted for a grand total of about four days that time and didn’t finish the back.
As I recall I taught you to knit using that sweater and you took over the knitting, but didn’t finish it either. The last thing I actually finished was a baby blue sweater vest and that was when I was a sophomore in High School.
And really, that wasn’t a finished project, either, because it was supposed to be a pullover sweater, but I just didn’t finish the sleeves. I did wear it for a while, though.
I have a really jaded past when it comes to knitting. Which is why I’m knitting in public now.