KNITSTER

It’s funny how you learn about people who knit or are interested in knitting just through conversation or just having your needles out working on something. That’s happened to me a lot in the past few days.

The first occurrence was almost a given that knitting would come up, because while I was at a fundraiser for a ladies’ fire auxiliary, a consultant for Knitability was there, which is a direct selling business I’ve thought about doing if I should want to add on another business. I don’t think my knitting skills are there yet, and I think having just TBSAH for now is enough, but the consultant was surprised that I had heard of the company, and we struck up a little chat about knitting with DPNs (which I still haven’t figured out how to do, but I understand better why you would use them), and cabling, and knitting left handed. This woman was very left handed, and a professional knitting instructor too, and informed me that my MIL was wrong to knit the way she was knitting, even left handed, and that the way I taught her was totally correct and the easiest way to learn for a lefty, because all patterns are written where knitting goes from right to left, and my MIL is knitting left to right. Well, you learn something new every day, and I certainly learned a few things from this woman.

Then yesterday, I saw our neighbor’s mother in law while waiting for Drew on the school bus stop. Joan and I have always chatted and gotten along fine, and we were talking about how JC is from Ecuador, and she mentioned that she’s really into knitting, and her favorite yarn is from South America, and I said, “Oh, is it Manos del Uraguay?” and she gasped that I knew. When I explained that I was a knitter, albeit a fairly new one, it was like she had found a kindred spirit in me, and proceeded to show me the afghan she was working on and explain the knit on one section where it looked a little trickier. She offered to help me if I ever had any questions, which is cool.

Then today, I was sitting during Drew’s TKD class (he graduated to camo belt today, hooray!), and the mother of another classmate saw me working on the second armband (for lack of a better description) for Drew’s Halloween costume and took great interest in what I was doing. She said her grandmother in India had taught her when she was small, but she didn’t remember, and she had been working on some mat, and it just wasn’t coming back to her that quickly. I showed her the knit and purl again, and she asked if I’d be back in this class again next week ( I think implying she wanted my help). Unfortunately for her, it’s unlikely that I’ll be back since Ma’am said that Drew could be in the Saturday Tiny Tigers if I was with him, so we’re going to give it a try. But it was just funny how she was practically drooling over my work, not that it was anything fancy, but it did look good, I must say.

I guess being a knitter is a conversation starter, for sure!

Posted on October 18th, 2005 by Dani
Filed under: Community