Thursday . January 2 . 2003 . 10:46am |
knitting factory In my new vein of being unbearably nesty and craftsy (though, unfortunately, not crafty), I have decided that I am going to become a Master Knitter. I know how to knit. Kind of. I imagine I must have some sort of genetic predisposition (though it has yet to manifest) since my grandmother has been know to knit entire sweaters without looking down once, unraveling said sweaters posthaste when she got bored of them, and then re-knitting another sweater anew with the same thread, like a mighty phoenix rising from the yarn pile. My mom has picked up most of her knitting savvy from my grandmother, and though my mom doesn't really knit that often, she has all the motions down and can pick up and re-imagine patterns from 30, 40 years ago with no problem. She can be scary like that. And now my younger sister is hooked into it, having knitted an impressively long scarf (I know, I know, scarves are easy, but still) and been given a fun knitting book for Christmas. I was looking through the book at all the neat little cozy projects--scarves, hats, mittens, sweaters, even--and knew that I wanted to crash the party. I was going to plunk down with my tangled yarn and clumsy hands and insert myself into the knitting circle, come what may. And maybe I would get a rocking chair. My problem with knitting is--well, I'm just not very good at it. My yarn gets knotted. I drop stitches. I thread the needles too tight. And when enough mistakes accumulate in my project, I get frustrated and quit, my scarf re-invented as a pot-holder. I have great patience for some things, it seems, but not projects that highlight my inadequacies. Oh, also, I only know one stitch, and I can only knit straight, flat things. Anyone want a knitted bookmark? So anyway, I'm going to try my hand at knitting again. In my mind I have an image of having something fun to do with my hands during my interminable commutes uptown, where my choices would otherwise be to fall into semi-stuporous coma or gaze intently into the crotches of passengers standing in front of me. Knitting could be like making friendship bracelets in high school, though without the clipboards and safety pins. Actually, come to think of it, I was never that great at making friendship bracelets either. I never quite got the hang of how to braid it into patterns. I didn't get how to make the "V" shape. All my friendship bracelets were the same, just great big slabs of descending diagonal lines. The textile arts baffle me. xo Michelle |
