Learning a new skill

Here's how it happened. First, back in December, I received this afghan from my grandmother. It is huge and covers the whole queen size bed. It is deliciously cozy and made even moreso by the knowledge that I know who toiled away to create it. What a skill, I thought, to create such a beautiful and useful item from a long piece of string.

Here, admire the closeup of perfectly even and error free knitting.

Then on December 13th, one of my favorite bloggers Yarn Harlot posted this little recipe for a 2-hour scarf. (She's an awesome writer, even if she does mostly write about knitting) 2 Hours? She made it sound so easy and dolt-proof. Still, I would have to learn the meanings of such terms as "gauge", "worsted" and "casting on". I printed out the post and put it on my pile of papers.

Then I forgot all about it when we headed into the holidays and vacation.

On the last night in California, Em was making the very scarf that I had the directions printed out for, and she let me get closer and watch until I said, "I want to try." (Very clever on her part, had she said "Here, you try" I would've felt too much pressure and fled.)

Within a few minutes, I was knitting. My tongue poked through my lips in deep focus: under and though, wrap from the back, pull it back under and slip it off. This was just the dash of encouragement I needed and when I returned home, I went out to buy some needles and yarn.

Since then, I have left two pathetic messages on Em's machine lamenting my retardation inabilities. I had to cast on 6 times before (I think) getting it right but then I had a meltdown to "start my row". I have mistreated the yarn, yelling at it and throwing it to the floor twice. But later, after my frustration level fell, I returned and tried to figure out what the hell I did wrong. I didn't know a fucking piece of string had so many qualities to be aware of. Twistiness, tightness, looseness, evenness, tension applied when making the stitch. They are all so important and induce madness especially when boo-boos are made. (As a novice, I get to refer to my knitting fuckups as "boo boos")

Here's how far I've gotten from 9 hours on the project.


I'm trusting that eventually it will look like a scarf. But it doesn't matter really, it's rather meditative and time warping and I find myself strangely energized and relaxed when knitting. I sat down yesterday just to "start the next row" and before I knew it 3 hours had passed. Seemed like maybe 15 minutes to me. Maybe I could get into this hobby.