Hanks a lot

Hanks and skeins. Guage, slub, nub, and boucle. Chenille or spiral. Needles, hooks, pins, yarnover and casting on. Slip slip knit, slip knit pass.... the peculiar language of knitting! I took up knitting about three Christmas's ago when my sister gave to me as a gift, a set of needles, a book on knitting, and several skeins of yarn to get started. In three years, I taught myself - and have pretty much mastered - casting on, knit and purl, garter and seed stitches, and how to make a cable...the basics. Which has added up to at least a half dozen scarves, and hats, including items knit for friends as well as Peanut, an old tiny teddy bear I own with wobbly head and legs. His little scarf keeps him warm, while supporting his head.

As much as I revel in the thrill of shopping for items perfectly constructed and manufactured by someone else, it doesn't match the feeling of making something with your own hands. Knitting stores are wonderful, cozy places to visit. Cubbyholes are usually packed with colorful hanks and skeins of soft merinos, rough hand-spun worsted wools, baby soft alpacas, shlubby chenilles, flat cottons that look like long strands of linguine, and peculiar looking strands called flutter that add a touch of whimsy to patterns. And the patterns! From simple simple chunky scarfs and hats and mittens, to difficult shawls and cardigan sweaters that I aspire to make - the finished pictures of which would make you drool.

I'm better at holding knitting needles now than I am at holding chopsticks. I love the feel of the warm wood or bamboo in my hands, manipulating the soft yarns - through, up and over, down and through again. Each stitch, one stitch closer to the finished product. It's meditative, calming - until you notice a hole like the hole in a piece of swiss cheese because you've dropped a stitch two rows back...

I knit at home, on my way to and from work, and while traveling. I once made a hat on a flight west to Maui. I've seen people knitting socks on subways, and hats on the cold winter sidewalks of SoHo, New York with ear flaps and all. Simple materials that work anywhere. A simple stand of wool, grown off the back of a woolly sheep, that grows into something charming and wooly to wear...