Who wears the homemade poncho in this family? |
I’m knitting up a storm. The Dialing for Obsessions Wheel that is my brain has landed on KNITTING! again. It’s a good day for babies, homeless cold people and bare necks, because I’m making booties, blankets and scarves.
Except for booties, which are kind of hard, everything I make is very easy, comes with instructions that are less than 15 words long, are squares or rectangles, and are made with yarn that is so fluffy, you could not only hide your mistakes, you could drop a couple of Cheez-its in there while you’re knitting, and they’d never be found.
I’m the worst knitter I know. It seems that most people who knit are fairly good at it, or they’d drop it and go on to crocheting or scrapbooking or selling junk on EBay. I seem to the be the only one who says, on a regular basis, “I knit. I’m not very good at it, but I like it anyway, so I do it just for fun.” You could remove the word knit and replace it with golf, bowl,skate, polka, and sing karaoke and it applies to me, too. Does this mean I’m the happiest underachiever in the bleachers? Probably. I’m quite content to be mediocre at a lot of things.
My new knitting friend is Laura, who talked me into picking up my knitting needles again and continuing with a half-finished dishcloth. Then she drove me to Michael’s, where she talked me into buying some fun yarn that was on sale. She went home and made three scarves and an afghan in her college team colors for her husband. I went home and arranged my new yarn balls into a nice display in a basket in my closet.
Laura is a woman of action. She also signed us up for a knitting class and actually paid attention when the teacher showed us how to yarn over, add a stitch, K2 TOG with a CC and rep rom * fr edge. Or something. I was distracted by the fishbowl classroom we were in and kept looking out at the Michael’s shoppers every time I heard the automatic doors open. And it was really hard to concentrate on knitting when right in front of me were actual cakes from the cake decorating class, mounted on the wall with a sign-up sheet.
“Is there a snack?” I wanted to ask, but the class only cost $15 and we’re all grownups, so I doubted it. (Note to self: Next time sign up for a class that’s more likely to have food.)
Laura keeps saying that she’s so glad I got her knitting and that if it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have half the soft warm things in her house that she has now.
“We’re so much alike,” she says. I wish. When we agree that kids have made us less willing to take risks, Laura says she can hardly jump out of an airplane now. I say I can hardly bring myself to drive to the Lexington Airport the traffic is so crazy. She’s a certified scuba diver and I start to feel uncomfortable if I’m in the shower for more than 10 minutes. She shoots guns and I don’t even like when the car doors get slammed shut.
And when it comes to knitting, I’m good at buying the yarn, planning my projects and arranging the yarn in impressive, artistic piles. But that’s where my talent ends. Actually making something out of it is another story.
If you promise not to laugh, I’ll report back to you when I finish the booties I’m working on. No, I’m not making them for any baby I know. But a baby that is conceived within the next two years could be the lucky winner of these sweet little things, because that’s how long it’ll take me to finish them.
And after that: a blanket for me to take to the nursing home with me.