Most Friday nights I spend at least a small portion of my evening drinking coffee, watching videos on Youtube, and knitting. It's not very glamorous, it's not exciting, but it's relaxing, and it completes my week and heralds my weekend. It started out as a means of decompressing, then it was for purposes of writing, and now it's just a habit I find reasonably benign. The one I go to is my local - just like a pub. I go there many times during the week, they know me and I feel comfortable listening to crazy music and lip-syncing and generally acting a fool to the music on my playlists. As I write this, it's Uncle Tommy by The Rumjacks. Not something most folks would even know or like, but it gets me moving even in my chair and sometimes, if the music really gets me going I can knit quite a few inches. Other times I watch old movies - my favorites so far are the Charlie Chan mysteries. I've about run out of those, so I fear I'll have to find some more. I love old mystery movies, and now I know I can find them on Youtube I'm even happier to sit in a coffee shop and knit.
I have knit quite a few things, though I am FAR from an expert. I tend to like the smaller pieces like the hexi-puffs I have been making for a project and now I'm on to socks. I have made hats, fingerless gloves, and even a couple times I had the lace shawl I keep promising to finish for my daughter (but I haven't so far). I'm really getting on with the third incarnation of toe-up socks. I say third incarnation because I've been working on the same socks for quite a while now and I have knit and frogged (knitty term for taking it all apart) the same two pairs three times altogether. First they were on too big a needles, so I had to frog the black one, then I found I had gotten all the way to the leg on both the striped and the black ones only to discover they were too long. As I am determined to make these damn socks for me, I have now begun again. To save my sanity I have decided to get far enough with the one yarn before I start the other again.
A couple weeks ago, I took a very short trip to get away and spend my time knitting. I had in mind to take these socks and work on them, and to find yarn suitable to make my very first sweater. I was so excited. I wasn't even very far from home, but I had two knitting/yarn stores mapped and I was so excited. I just knew I would find another set of fiber-minded folks like I had before on other trips. In the end, I met some very nice ladies who directed me to.....(wait for it).....my local yarn shop just a few miles away. I was really annoyed that the shop I had looked forward to finding and knitting in had not been in business for 7 years (yes, that's a seven), and that the best place they had to recommend was the store I regularly went to. I call it my No Place Like Home trip.
One thing I've learned after knitting for the last four or five years is nothing is the way it is supposed to be the first time. I would say the most important skill you must have when knitting - or crocheting, or crafting of any kind - is to rip it out (thus the term frogging) and begin again; salvage what you can and pick up the needles or hook or paper or clay or brush, and start fresh. Read the directions over and over, see it in your mind, find your center - you'll need it when you're taking the thing apart - and spending several minutes breathing deep before you get back on that horse.
I did find some wonderful yarn and a better pattern, and I went home and cast that project on. I did read over the instructions and thought I had the thing firmly in my mind. I got several inches done and it was beautiful. As the days past and I got further up, though, it became abundantly clear I was NOT where the pattern told me I should be. I could have kept going but I decided my first sweater would not be done haphazardly, so I took a breath, removed the needles and began ripping it out and winding the yarn back into as close to a ball as I could. Once I restarted I was more settled and I began measuring every few rows. I am now on the front left side, still measuring as carefully as the back and I am confident I will come up with a beautiful sweater once it is done.
It is this skill to move beyond I find useful tonight. Don't get me wrong - I have been known to whine and moan for quite sometime before I pick back up, but the more I do practice restarting the less I find it necessary to grump. Tonight, however, I spent quite a while being grumpy as I fought traffic and crazy drivers only to find that when I finally got to my local it was full, no place to park, and dangerous to even make the attempt. I admit I drove around a bit too long, but finally ended up at the other, smaller, less dependable shop just a bit further up the road. It's not my local, they don't know me, and there's a large table of students working on a project. But it's still a coffee shop, it still had brownies, and though I'm busy blogging with no time to knit, I still have one of my favorite Youtube playlists going in my headphones. They also close an hour earlier, but it's not terrible, and I'm still having a great Friday night.
I guess the moral of this rambling is that sometimes it really is hard to drink coffee...just like it is to knit a sweater without having to start over...but once you get the cup in your hand, the brownie on your plate, or the yarn cast on, you're on your way.
May your week be full of coffee and yarn.
txdonna
