2 legit to knit

When I was on the plane back from Australia my friend and I were discussing what our New Years resolutions were. Rather than do my typical, lose weight, stop eating after 7 p.m. stop yelling, treat my husband like an adult, stop drinking (so much),  I decided to keep a resolution I could stick too.

This is a knitted iphone given to kids as
in an effort to offer disenfranchised youth hope for the future.
I don't know, I just liked the picture.

"I'm going to learn to knit!" I exclaimed.  If I didn't already feel like a 33 year old tool, I certainly did now.  I think her resolutions, were something like, find a job and find a man.  I didn't have time for that mumbo jumbo. I needed to express my inner Laura Ingall. She kind of grinned and said, "that's great, and turned to watch the rest of the feature presentation, Dinner for Schmucks.  The rest of the ride home I had some really grandiose ideas. I was going to first knit a scarf, then matching hats with ears on top for the boys, then a french press cozy. ( I made that one up), but as any coffee lover knows, if you don't drink french pressed coffee immediately it gets cold, and perhaps a nice sweater would keep the heat in for at least 3 more minutes and in my house every second counts.

We landed and said our goodbyes. Wouldn't you know it, a week later I had a box at my front door with yarn, knitting needles and a how-to-knit book.   I tried to send her a man, but he wouldn't get in the box!..ba dum dum, thank you! I'll be here all week...

She really had the best intentions and she knew that I would put it off long enough to convince myself that I'm a slow learner and knitting was for geniuses.  So I opened the book and read the first page, I immediately closed the book and called our local craft store to inquire about classes. It just so happened that a 2 week class was starting the next week. SIGN ME up! It was $20 and each class is 4 hours. 

Four hours of knitting? Maybe its just an excuse for old woman to get out of the house and chat. 

I arrived and I was the youngest by 30 years.  Each woman "claimed" to be a beginner. The instructor walked in. She gave her knitting credentials, she grew up in El Salvador. She began knitting with two rusty nails and some twine... by the time she was four she had knit her first pair of socks. This woman was a knitting nazi. We began with 2 huge needles and yarn.  After a few minutes everyone had cast on... ok everyone but me and the oldest woman in the class who was wearing a red baret .  She said the instructor was moving too fast and that she couldn't catch on. I couldn't have agreed more. Granted everyone else in the class was already halfway to a scarf,  she and I needed help.  I have a sneaking suspicion that she just had dimensia and had knit that baret on her head yesterday and was accidentally misplaced at this craft store by her caregiver.

So what was my excuse? My brain just didn't work this way. I kept thinking when I would want to undo a stitch, command Z ( for you Mac users) or discard changes for you PC users. But obviously it didn't work that way. I started to sweat. The nazi would come around and help me, but as soon as she left, I was back to square one. 

I left the class feeling defeated, but proud of my one row. I tried to show my husband and he just looked at it the way you look at a 2 year olds paintings. The "happy that they tried, but wow, that is horrible" look. I was not going to let 8 conniving con-spiriting old women show me up.  I was going to go to a source that is in my territory..youtube!   But to my dismay, that didn't make sense to me either.  I went to bed that night thinking this may not be working.  I walked into work the next day hoping that my co-workers had forgotten that I was blabbing the previous day about a knitting class I was going to take, but of course, that is the one day they listened to me.  The phone rang. .. It was the knitting nazi! How did she get my work number?  She wanted to meet with me one on one on Thursday to go over some things. Wow, my incompetence must have shocked her.  We set a date for 6. It felt like a KGB internal security  briefing. 

I arrived. She didn't.  

What a cruel joke. If you don't think hazing happens in the senior world..think again.

But luckily there was another woman who worked there who was willing to take me on as a charity case. What she said made sense and my knitting knob had been turned on. I got it. And I didn't stop.  I loved it. It actually kept my hands occupied long enough to help me with my non-New years resolutions of eating and drinking.  I became the Rudy of the knitting world!

I had to go back to the store twice in one day because I lost a stitch but other than that I was on a roll.

Tonight I have my final knitting class. And although my husband stated that my scarf looks like the Shroud of Turin that Jesus was wrapped in, it makes me proud. Sure. I got a little ambitious and disregarded my stitch count, but what is one person's scarf is another's son's stuffed animals soon-to-be blanket. 

And last time I checked. The Jesus' shroud was going for a lot of money these days.