the Village Knittiot

Guess what? My mom is a knitter. Yes, it is true. We are now a knitting family. A week with me and she has mastered the single needle cast-on and the knit stitch (she’s still working on purling), has bought 4 pairs of needles and 11 skeins of yarn, has been to 3 different yarn stores in 5 days (and we still didn’t get to them all), has started two projects (both of which she carried with her on the plane home and which, she reports, have both seen considerable progress), and is already exhibiting signs of developing a healthy fiber addiction. Mission accomplished. Put another notch on my belt. See us? We are knitting. Together! In my den! Me and my mom.

I wasn’t sure that me ma’ would like the whole knitting thing. She’s a bit…well…high strung. Sitting for more than 20 seconds is not really something she is good at. So rather than try to force it, I decided to set aside my knitting expectations for her visit and just go with the flow. Do the things she wanted to do. You know, be a good daughter.

She called me from the airport on Christmas Day to tell me that her flight had been cancelled and the next one wouldn’t be taking off for another three hours. I asked her what she was going to do with all that time (knowing full well that she would be crawling out of her skin at this point) and she calmly replied, “Well, Amy [my cousin] taught me to knit last night at about 10:00. So I’m going to work on that.” She said she wasn’t sure if she was doing it right, but it was fun. You know how when you were a teenager and you would say something that your parents approved of whole heartedly and they would spend a good ten minutes trying to be really casual about their approval and excitement for fear that it would make you do a sudden 180 degree shift in your thinking? This was me on the phone with my mom talking about knitting. And very much like those parents, I don’t think my attempts at nonchalance were very convincing . The thing that was so exciting was how calm she seemed (a calmness that translated itself into her entire visit here — well, mostly. Let’s just say she was more relaxed than I have seen her in a long time.) I promise to never again underestimate the mystical powers of knitting.

My mother, however, is not the first knitter I have enabled. Meet Kari. A couple of months ago Kari made the fatal mistake of telling me (a known knitter) that she had found a basket of knitting stuff just lying around in her attic. “I ought to send you this stuff,” She said. “Someone should get some use out of it.”

Yes, I thought. Yes. Someone should get some use out of them. Maybe someone named Kari? And you know what, I am the worst kind of enabler. I am the kind of enabler that looks for yarn shops in your neighborhood. Tells you about the classes they offer. Suggests that I fly out to see you with ulterior motives of ensnaring you in yarn and its tantalizing yumminess. Kari must have known that it was useless to fight it, because she really did give in pretty easily. She visited the store, fell in love, signed up for a class, made a hat, bought more yarn she doesn’t even know what she is going to do with yet (Kari has a stash already!), has several projects in the works, and in general has so much yarn stuff going on that she sends me updates!! I also might add here that I think Kari is a very good writer and that she really ought to consider starting a blog (you didn’t think I wasn’t going to try to get her sucked into blogging now, did you?).

In WoW news, this was the first week in over a month that I wasn’t being sucked into a virtual world every spare moment of my time. Imagine, knitters, not being able to do any knitting of consequence for an entire week. This is the idea. On the bright side, I got a lot of knitting done. I also had the brilliant idea that having something simple to knit while playing WoW would be good for travelling time between the different cities and continents and for the multiple trips from the graveyard back to my dead body (death, in WoW, is just really dull — I hope that actual death is nothing like it). Num Lock is my friend — press it and I’m running without having to do anything but point myself in the right direction. While I’m running, I’m knitting (and dodging the occassional tree).

In other knitting news, this week I started and finished 2 fluffy scarves in pinks and purples (thanks in part to the little bit of WoW time I did manage to sneak). They are for two adorable little girls who love fluffy, and love pinks and purples. Sadly, they both have the stomach flu and I haven’t been able to get over to their house to give them their prezzies. The picture is a bit dark, but if you look close you will also see a bear that my own yarn enabler made me for Christmas, and the knitting bag my mother gave me (handmade by her aunt).

I also finished my Sweetie’s birthday hat — only a month late.

He loves it and has taken to wearing it around the house because it has been so chilly in here. This is already really long, or I would tell you the ordeal of the furnace. Perhaps another day…

One final note. Here is the really lovely thing about having a mother who knits. She understands two words — stash enhancement Thanks mom! Now, if you’ll excuse me I have about a weeks worth of WoW to go catch up on…

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2005 at 10:56 am and is filed under this Knittiot Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.