Old Ladies and Knitting

Today I decided to take more time in the morning getting ready and doing chores in the beautiful morning sunlight that pours into my apartment these days. That and the fact that it was midnight by the time I hit the sack since my committee meeting went long and it took me awhile to wind down. The point being it put me on the bus into work later than normal. An older lady was sitting next to me and when I pulled out my knitting, the Norah Gaughan side-ways sweater, she became interested and asked what I was making which turned into a pleasant conversation to accompany my trip. It made me think back on how knitting on public transportation can open up the socializing. When mom and I were flying to India a few years ago to visit my brother, I had made the brilliant decision to take two red eyes so that our layover in London gave us a whole day to visit the Tate. I think it was on the train back to the airport, where both mom and I were beyond exhausted and we weren’t even half way through the trip yet, I was sitting across from an older British woman. I was knitting away on a tank and I could tell she was excited to see someone knitting in public. And maybe even that I was younger. You could tell she wanted to start a conversation but it wasn’t proper or something – she was very British and reserved. I blame it on the lack of sleep, because if I was more well rested I would have started the conversation but I was just too tired! The knitting was the only thing that was keeping me from passing out from pure exhaustion.


And then a few years before that I was on a train into Berlin with some friends for a weekend trip. This was the summer I thought I could go without knitting and on the second day had to go out and buy yarn – lesson learned. I got a good deal on the yarn but the needles were ridiculously expensive. Why would I spent 15 euros on two thick sticks! So I came up with this amazing way to knit with my pointer finger on my left hand and a pencil. It was quite ingenious and resulted in a beautiful scarf. Well the older lady on the train to Berlin was a knitter and quite intrigued. She watched me for awhile, figuring out how I was doing it and then started a conversation. Unfortunately it was in German and my grasp of the language was very minimal so that fizzled to a close quickly.I’ve been sorting through my yarn stock this week. For several reasons. One, I lose track of things in my head so go through drawers and cupboards periodically to tidy them up and also reacquaint myself with the items. It keeps things organized up in the noggin. Second, I’ve been updating my inventory list of yarn for sweaters. A few purchases from last year seemed to have snuck in unrecorded. And thirdly, I just love color and texture and organizing color and texture. There’s such a calming nature to it – caressing and admiring and imagining what I could turn this fiber into. I’ve decided to pull out all the random balls of yarn that aren’t enough for a sweater and pool them together and see if I can turn them into something – hats, socks, scarves, baby sweaters, you get the drift.
And then I realized (ok re-realized because I like to forget this as much as possible) that a lot of my “sweater” stashes for yarn do not have enough balls of yarn to make a sweater. How do I know this? Because I’m going through some of these balls of yarn that had once been knit up into a sweater but then was ripped back and wound into balls because I was sadly too short and the yarn is discontinued and there is no more yarn out there in the same color. It’s very sad. I realized, I need to start making some fair isle sweaters since I’m not a big fan of vests. I found some cute kid patterns and it looks like I’ll get to try my hand at making my own pattern. The best patterns I’ve found are based on the infamous Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Seamless Yoke Sweater. But most of the ones I love I don’t really have the right yarn or enough of the accent colors. I’ve got to use the pallet of yarn I currently have and create something. These are a few of the styles I like. I’m thinking something inspired by William Morris. But think that would take much thinner yarn to pull off effectively. We shall see.