Happy Knitting Anniversary

I have a receipt dated December 7, 2004 of my Susan Bates Knitting Teacher kit. It stayed in its package for a few days before I opened it, and with the encouragement of my daughter, took my first steps in knitting. I struggled alone, with the booklet, Red Heart yarn, and pink aluminum needles, and after a few days, I knitted a square. Weeks later, imagine my surprise to discover there were classes available, and a bigger surprise when I Googled "knitting" and felt like I'd been living in a cave while knitting became cool. Apparently I was too busy being a working Mom, casually developing programming skills, folding origami, and watching way too much TV. So this is the one year anniversary of my love affair with knitting, which literally changed my life. I quit smoking, cut way back drinking, found new friends, a new career, and I truly believe that I'm smarter today, because knitting is condusive to meditation, as well as geometric and mathematical problem solving skills. I celebrated by spending the entire day doing, what else? Knitting!

I giggle to myself now when I look at "old" photos of my knitting stuff back then - a few books, a handful off needles and tools, and a dozen or so skeins of yarn. From a minimalist standpoint, that's all one needs to knit. But with my hedonistic appetite, I have so much stuff that the idea of taking a knitting inventory exhausts me. I'm on the lookout for a new home, and seriously considering an extra room just for yarn and crafts.


Happy Holidays! Never mind that the tree is fake and the yarn is mostly acrylic. The tiny stocking and ornaments are my own little cute creations. Using a basic sock pattern of only 20 sts around, the cuff is a seeded rib with purl borders. The round ornaments are essentially two hats, from top-down, several even rounds, then brim-up. The first one on the right sucks since I used twisted yarn-over increases, and then decreased too rapidly. But the second one, with several modifications, is nearly perfect. Yes I will post the pattern, tomorrow, when I'm not loopy from knitting all day.


So what's a gal to do with 4 hours, a knitting machine, and several skeins of yarn? Why, you knit a simple Mary Poncho for a friend, and save her from weeks of straight stockingnette, to desperately knit a Christmas gift for her sister. I even went the extra mile and blocked, sewed, and wove the ends. All that's left is fringe. Tomorrw, I'm going to save another friend from the same predicament, and knit a poncho/shawl thing, which is hard to explain, so you'll have to wait for the photo shoot. I'm afraid it'll be so cute, I'll have to make one for myself.

The other day, I opened a fortune cookie to find, "One learns most from teaching." I'm so proud to see one of my students, Susannah, knitting wonderfully after only a few short months, and with a knitting blog to boot.