It's Knitting Season

Every January, I slow down. Shops are quiet, kids are back in school, days are dark and short. And every January, I decide to take up knitting. I like making things with my hands. I’m good at this! 

I head to some obscure yarn store inconveniently located outside of my bubble to procure the most expensive and exotic yarns for what will surely be the most beautiful cowl neck sweater one has ever seen. How hard can this be?! Haven’t people been knitting for centuries? This might even go so well that I’ll parlay into sheep farming and become a homesteader once and for all. 

I digress. 

Like a kid in a candy shop, the soft balls of brightly colored yarn call to me. I wonder if perhaps I was a cat in my last life with one of those yarn ball toys. I’m not particularly fond of cats. 

Excitedly, I interrupt the knitting circle round table in the shop and rudely blurt out that I know nothing about anything and need immediate attention. Ladies, drop your needles. 

After a long, philosophical discussion with the shopkeeper about how it really DOES make sense that I need to start with a cashmere blend, she begrudgingly rings me up and sends me on my way with a wish and a prayer. 

I get in the car thinking, I was born to knit. 

That evening among the eye rolls of my family who are checking the calendar and whispering “yep, this tracks…” I pull out my wares and get to work.  

If you’ve ever googled a “how to knit” video, you know that it’s an immediate confidence booster for your life choices and career paths. Upon finding someone that I can tolerate, I follow the long-tail-cast-on method, which oddly brings up a nostalgia for my sailing school days and solidifies my conscious identity as someone who now both sails and knits. A true wasp. 

Fast forward a day or two, I’ve lost a needle, my yarn is in a disastrous tangled mess of cashmere knots and my dog has adopted the whole apparatus as his own. Two dear friends remind me that it’s in fact the “procurement of yarn” that lights me up. And that we all know that I’m certifiably unfit to follow any type of verbal or written directions. Particularly from a manual of any kind. What would one do without friends that know us. 

Needless to say, it’s January. Sigh. I walk away with an $85 long pot holder knowing that I may have an acquaintance with large hands in need of this very thing.