Knitwit

I learned to knit at a young age, from the mom of my mom.  I learned to cast on from a young age as well, from a friend, with bright yarn and sticks you use to write.  I do not think I can do this short word thing for much more time.  It was nice while it...lasted.

I've always considered myself reasonably crafty, but two years of learning about producerism in history have made me realize that I am nowhere near artisan level.  Apart from my thus-derived shame, the greater influences on my latest artistic endeavor were the holiday jingles bringing life and hot chocolate to Walmart's otherwise droll atmosphere (I was there getting ingredients for my brother's rooster costume).  I once again had my ultimate fantasy of retiring, knitting, and binging on Korean dramas as I bathed in the glow of red ornaments and Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You."  In this daze, I ended up spending over forty dollars on yarn skeins, needles, and rooster supplies.  

I refused to let this high-cost project join my past knitting attempts (forever incomplete).  I found a pattern for a hat that was basically a stout scarf seamed together, and began knitting a hat for the most important person in my life.  Several thousand stitches and three days later, I triumphantly donned my first hat and mentally prepared myself to start knitting for lesser humans.

Over Thanksgiving break, I changed scenes a little, and flew to Germany.  I knitted for six hours straight on the plane, trying to ignore the fact that the lady next to me had two carry-on dogs, one of which had its own seat, and the other of which was attempting to crawl into my bag.  I watched two romance movies, one Indian and one Chinese, but the visual strain of knitting and watching was too great, and I settled for listening to Justin Bieber and Maroon 5, and knitting with my eyes closed.

As we traversed the bars of Germany night after night, I rejoiced whenever the adults finally decided to settle on a bar.  There I would perch, extract my knitting, and repeat my ribbing mantra: knit, knit, purl, purl, knit, knit, purl purl.  With each subsequent hat (I finished three hats in Germany), I noticed things about the pattern that helped me to stop making mistakes, and I truly felt like my knitting was going places.  One of the adults on the trip noted during one such bar hop, "Gloria seems to live on a higher plane than us.  It's probably the knitting.  She has reached knitting nirvana, and now she's just looking down at us humans."  I laughed a bit, but then nodded wisely in order to perpetuate my holy aura.

Honestly, I'm starting to tire of hats.  Or at least, hats the way I've been making them.  40 hours spent with the same pattern was in its own way adrenaline-filled and rewarding, but I want to branch out.  It doesn't help that 10 of those hours were lost when I misplaced my blue-and-green hat in the bustling food court of O'Hare airport while devouring a huge burrito bowl.  I still have a passion for yarn, and the addictive nature of knitting, and I have more than enough hat requests lined up for the year, but perhaps I'll branch out into something like mittens or hats with videogame characters on them in good time.

Here's a compilation of my lovely models in various poses of approval.