It's All About Me

Heh.  That's a good one.  I am one of those people who rarely puts myself first.  But, I figured, dear reader, that I should let you know a bit about me.  I started knitting when I was 4.  My Beppe, or grandmother, taught me when I was staying at her house for a few days.  She was one of those women who was always busy.  She always had some type of crafting project on the go, whether it be knitting or crocheting or something else.  My first knitting projects were amazingly good.  I would go to bed at night at Beppe's house with an item that was full of holes, extra increases, unintentional decreases, and twisted and dropped stitches, and when I woke up in the morning, it had repaired itself overnight!  As I grew, I later realized that my Beppe couldn't stand a project with mistakes in it, and would rip it back and reknit it while I slept.  Kind of like the Knitting Tooth Fairy.  Too bad I don't have one of those now!

I knit off and on during my youth, making the odd sweater or two whenever I felt like it.  I remember that once I had chosen a project that was rather complicated, a summer sweater out of a very soft pink and white twist cotton/acrylic blend that had cables that went diagonally across the front, with some sort of patterned stitch (seed stitch?) in between the cables.  I gave up after a while, not because it was too complicated, but because life just got too busy (and knitting teenagers are not really that cool).  I gave it to a favourite aunt who also knit (my Beppe's daughter), and she very graciously finished it for me.  I wore that sweater a lot!

When I first got married, I knit my then-husband a sweater one year for Christmas.  It was a chunky weight wool/acrylic blend, in grey and black with a Fair Isle pattern across the front.  I was so proud of that sweater, working on it in secret.  To my dismay, it didn't fit over his head - the neckline was too tight!  A knitting friend of my mother's helped me rip it back and restitch it, saving the sweater.

Since then, I've finished lots of projects (even those that fit!) , but I've learned that I cannot really knit with deadlines.  I just puts too much pressure on myself otherwise. Knitting is a stress-reliever for me, and I don't want or need it to be creating stress!  I am not really a process knitter, more of a finished object knitter, but I'm learning to relax and enjoy the process, and not finish a project just to finish the project.  I'm finding more and more that knitting is very much like meditation.  But I'm preaching to the converted here, aren't I?

Not much knitting happened yesterday, but I did get a few rows in on my Plain Vanilla 2.0 socks.  I was hoping to add a picture of them here, but for whatever reason Blogger isn't letting me this morning.  Will try again later.

And two of the reasons why I have such an enchanted life:

My daughters, walking the beach at Port Stanley last Friday