There have been a few topics I promised in prior posts but neglected to expand upon. Here they are:
1. Twice-Knit Knitting, or How Mom and Dad Got Together
Ok, so that's a strong way of putting it. There were many other chapters in my parents' love story before they got married. But I guess Twice-Knit Knitting could easily have been Chapter One. It's a sweet story, one that I will probably butcher, since I didn't get the amazing story-telling gene from my Grampa (but that's a topic for another day).
The story starts with my Mom's Mom. Grandma Murphy is one of the most creative women I know, blessed with the entrepreneurial spirit, the drive to make things happen, and the sass/savvy of a Southern businesswoman. Off the top of my head, her ventures include selling stoves, owning a plant store & caring for the plants of local businesses, creating and selling appliqued (insert accent aigu) shirts, and designing, making, and selling western wear under her business, Lee Wearable Art. She also patented two knitting techniques: knitting in a circle with two straight needles, and double-knitting. And as if that weren't enough, she also published a knitting book, Twice-Knit Knitting.
It's out of print (sigh), but I have a copy on order through Amazon. I'll have to scan and post some of the pictures here in a future blog; my Mom, Aunts, and Grampa all modeled her designs.
See that lovely skimpy number on the right? The blue bikini? Yep, my Mom (then-15? 16?) modeled it on a beach (ordinary). On a beach in winter (out of the ordinary). To further put in in perspective, there was snow on the beach that day. They had to hunt around and finally found a spot on the rocks where you couldn't see the snow! My poor Mom ... by the end of the shoot her nipples were probably as blue as the bikini itself.
So the story continues that my other Grandma, Dad's Mom, bought a copy of Grandma Murphy's book. Somehow my Dad got his eye on that picture of my Mom, and he cut it out of his Mom's knitting book, and stuck it in the side of his mirror in his room. All together now: Awwwwwah!
And life went on ... and their paths diverged, then converged, and six years after Grandma's book was published, they were married. Next month marks their 36th anniversary :)
2. In January I mentioned a "new knitting venture" that I have been considering.
Last post, I showed you the hats I knit for my baby niece while I was down in Virginia. My sister told me that at one of Leah's doctor's appointments, the nurses and other ladies loved Leah's hat. She said if I knit up a bunch, she thought I could sell them at $8 - $10 apiece.
The next week, I found the yarn I used for the hats on Joann.com at a nice discount. So I bought up a dozen skeins. I could make 24 hats in different sizes out of that dozen. I thought maybe I could sell them to friends or referrals.
But the winter has been mild (to say the least) and other projects distracted me from my venture. So I still might knit up those hats, but maybe I'll give them to charity. This article particularly moved me to consider it:
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/01/knitters_warm-hearted_bequest.html
I have a friend near Cleveland, OH who knits, too. We talked about setting up a non-profit knitting club ... maybe coordinating with our knitting friends around the country to donate one item a month. It's not much, but a nice pair of mittens or a scarf or a hat could mean the world to one child walking to school in the winter.
3. Why Pictures Are So Essential To The Success of Blogs
"How can one possibly pay attention to a book with no pictures in it?"
~Alice, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
I confess. I'm as guilty as any of that most offensive of all offenses: Not reading a blog post, just looking at the pictures. As I said before, we live in the age of Google Images and Pinterest, where we can visually gorge our appetite for knitting inspiration at the strike of a few keys. Search for "knit" or "yarn" and you have a smorgasbord of tactile delights.
Don't deny it: it's human nature that our five senses tend to overpower our intelligence or imagination. In fact, it is usually for the lack of the former that the latter wins out.
I'm not sure what more I can say on that topic except that, knowing this to be true, I've tried to use more photos in my blogs.
As an aside, for some reason I like taking up-close pictures of my projects. I never took a photography class - maybe I should. It just seems to break up the monotony of the standard project-shot-from-above angle.
So there you have it. If your curiosity was burning, I hope that was enough to quell the flame. Now I must leave you, to seam up the cream zippy cardigan! My sister threw down the gauntlet when I told her about it and she said "Oh, so when will she be getting it? Next year? The year after?"
Apparently I have a reputation for unfinished projects that I need to repair.
(Darnit, it was ok when only I knew it, but now everyone else has noticed too)
Mrs. Pi
Christians have conversion stories about how they converted to Christianity. I've also got one of those, but this blog is a different genre, so I'll stick with How I Converted To Knitting. It's true, I was converted. By Vickie Howell. I guess it started before her, but she was the main catalyst.
Knitting for me has been a learning experience, a development ... or to be more dramatic, a metamorphosis. Hell, it could pass as a pure metaphor for my life. I've made lots of mistakes, I've started back at square one, I've unraveled, I've gotten tangled up in knots, I've struck inspiration, I've hit dry spells, I've left things undone, I've improvised, I've broken rules, I've enjoyed successes and failures ... ok so I've never been much of a poet, but you get the idea. One of these days, I'm going to tell my boss I need to frog back to the beginning and start over on one of my projects at work (in insurance, mind you), and she's going to look at me like I have baobabs growing out of my face.
I can't pinpoint what it was that first made me want to try knitting. I do know I was in high school. Maybe it was when my mom got involved in the prayer shawl ministry at church, and watching her, it just looked like something I could enjoy. Maybe it was when I found out about my Grandma's book, Twice-Knit Knitting, the one that pretty much got my parents together (but that's a story for another day). Things in my life just sort of seem to pop up as recurring themes before they feature as a main topic.
Or maybe I just found myself in the yarn aisle at the craft store. Yes, in fact, I think that was it. Glamorous? No. But there it is. I was at one of those big box craft stores - you know, the ones that carry aisles and aisles of "yarn" (well now, someone's turned into a bit of a yarn snob). I was with my mom, and I asked her if she'd teach me how to knit. We bought a skein of plain, acrylic/wool worsted and a pair of needles, and the rest is history (too cliche ... argh, where do they hide the accent aigu?) thus a knitting phenom discovered her calling!
Um, hardly. The needles felt awkward in my hands (despite having mastered other tactical challenges like folding origami cranes and using chopsticks - shout out to four years of Japanese exchange students: Sakura, Yoko, Maho, and Takako). I couldn't grasp the concept of making a slipknot. I started off with the only cast-on method my mom remembered - the simple one, where you essentially have a string of cursive "e's" on your needle. I had at it for a while, reading along with I Taught Myself Knitting. And I'm fairly certain I abandoned that first effort soon afterward.
But I picked it back up, I did. Ok, so a few years went by, and I was in college, and I needed something to do between scenes of a college play. The second attempt only went slightly better than the first. And I confess: I dabbled in crochet. It became sort of an obsession. I spent a few months crocheting to my heart's content. And then I knit a scarf, I think. And that was it for a while. Techniques and terms and fibers and needles lay dormant, marinating.
Until 2006. I was living in my first house, just purchased, and I stumbled upon the show "Knitty Gritty" with Vickie Howell, on HGTV. I was hooked. I DVR'd each and every episode. I learned names like Lily Chin and techniques like "long-tail cast-on". Something about seeing knitting up-close, performed live by real knitters ... I'd be lying if the pleasure I got didn't make me feel like something of a voyeur. There was a flurry of fiber activity, and a true knitter was born. After a seven-year progression from larva to pupa to chrysalis ... I was a beautiful butterfly. Why yes, I do sicken myself sometimes with inclination to cliche (insert accent aigu).
From then, I knitted not just scarves, but hats, and mittens, arm warmers and socks. I started a vest and sweater (I'm better at starting than finishing). So I'm not an expert knitter, but I'm not a novice, either. I'm proficient. All thanks to Vickie Howell.
Which is why, right now, even though I have cast on and ripped out the same mitten four times, I refuse to bad-mouth the Vickie Howell for Caron's Sheep(ish) yarn, difficult though it may be, and though it splits and breaks and somehow refuses to follow its own gauge, I will not stoop to calling it cheap, or resort to name-calling, even though it's completely good for absolutely nothing. Because I owe her. She converted me to knitting.
Mrs. Pi
