Sunday, February 06, 2011

A Pearl is Born

It's been a long time since this particular piece of cyberspace has held new words.  My words have been elsewhere.  Many things have changed.  I have a facebook now.  Okay, that's not the biggest change.  There are actually a lot of little changes that have caused and are caused by the biggest one.  This is a story that is best told from the beginning, with a sneak peek at the end with bits of the middle thrown in.....

No, not really.   The last post here is from October 2006.    I was 19.   Homeschooled, still pretty shy.  In my second fall at the community college studying international business.  I had just decided to stop calling the boy I was hanging out with and see what would happen.  I had red hair.  I shared my room with my 3 sisters.  I still said I could play guitar.  I went to church with my parents, worked with kids and tried not to have too much contact with adults.  I rode the bus though, and people were always striking up conversations with me.   I was taking Arabic.  I discovered Regina Spektor and the Postal Service that fall.  I visited my first yarn shop.  It has since closed.  I still don't frequent yarn shops, but there's one that opened close by a few months ago that I've been meaning to visit.  I think I'm afraid if I ever set foot in one more than twice a year, I'll become addicted and never have any money ever ever again.   I'd just bought my computer.   I guess it is that old.  My sister was talking to the boy who would become her fiance, but only for a little while, since they would break up.  Paramour was on the radio.

Now, I'm a woman.  I can talk to strangers and be confident and I'm my own supervisor most of the time at work.  I can drive a car, and I'm not afraid.  I don't share a room with anyone anymore.  I have confronted my parents like an adult.  I left my parents' church filled with people who've known me from birth, and now go to one around the corner where I am an adult, and not someone's child, where the community is as much a part of their daily lives as it is mine, and were God is more important than religious rituals.  My hair is its own color again.

And, I've become addicted to knitting.  If I leave the house without something to knit, I have to take deep breaths and reassure myself I'm going to be fine.  I can't knit at the grocery store anyway.  Last fall I had some time off of work, and the only thing keeping me from insanity was some yarn and a couple of needles.  Christmas came around and I decided to knit my rather large family hats.  Christmas Eve found me weaving in ends at 10 PM.  I thought that I would be tired of knitting.  I knit so much my my arms would be sore at the end of the day.  But Christmas day found me knitting another hat for a good friend, and Boxing Day I was making my sister the twin to my brother's hat, the next week I worked on the last couple of sleeves for Grandma's sweater and then it was January.  My grandfather died, and my brothers were pall bearers.  It was cold, so I made them hats to match their suits.  Three simple hats in three stressful days.  I wanted my own mittens, so I made some.  Just big enough to be too big, so I gave them to my brother.  My aunt asked for a  hat to sleep in, so I made her this.  I used Caron Country, in Silver Service and Charcoal.  

January was supposed to be punctuated by a camping trip in the Shenandoahs.  It gets much colder there, and a dearth of handknits or anything woolen at all was discovered in my wardrobe.  The camping trip was canceled, but the idea stuck and there is now a lovely sweater of my own design on my needles.  It began its growth on Monday, and the weather immediately became ridiculous.  Wednesday I wore a tshirt to work, because it was 65 degrees out.  This time last year we were gearing up for 18 inches of snow.   So, here's crossing my fingers that when this sweater is born, it will bring snow with it.  

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