October 10, 2007

Us and Them

Here is it, Friday again. My knitting room/office/3rd floor bathroom (very old house) is neat and tidy in anticipation of my parents' upcoming visit. The weather has finally turned colder -- most welcome in mid-October. Tonight, I'll roast a chicken for dinner and warm up the house.

Casty and I, having come to a kind of detente, co-exist more or less peacefully. I do have projects on my needles, a Clapotis, (right down there) a February Baby Sweater -- also waiting for the next two weeks or so. I have great plans - for a Tree Jacket, a Cobblestone, hats and mittens, you name it. Even so, at different times in the day, I long to knit.



This past winter, chatting with a group of women at my brother-in-law's annual Superbowl party, I realized that there are people for whom knitting means nothing. These women were perfectly nice, all of them with interesting lives and a lot to say. But they do not knit. Their friends don't knit. They are not interested in your knitting, and they don't want to learn to knit. They nod politely and move the conversation forward. They do not spend an inordinate amount of time or money thinking about projects, swatching, buying yarn, discussing the merits of various needles, etc. They are not glued to Ravelry for hours on end, or worse, waiting for their invite. In short, they are not obsessed, or addicted, or whatever it is we are.

My question is this: What do they do? What would you do if you didn't knit?

October 1, 2007

Adding Insult to Injury


Thanks so much to all who sent get-well wishes to me and get-lost wishes to Casty. I did break down over the weekend and tried to do a little knitting. I did two rows on the Clapotis. Not only was it slow and laborious, but I felt like I was knitting with my shoe. At the end of row two I realized that my right thumb was also starting to hurt. Enough said. 28 more days and I can resume my knitting life.

In the meantime, I've been fretting about all the Christmas knitting that won't get done, cleaning and de-crumbing the toaster, and looking for other ways to use the yarn around the house.

Here you see some lovely fragrant rosemary from a friend's amazing kitchen garden -- all tied up to dry with Cherry Tree Hill Supersock. Tomorrow I'll tie up the rest -- thyme, oregano, sage and tarragon. All is not lost!