Knitting with Cotton

When I first started knitting, I was pregnant with my first child (19 years ago). I thought it would be nice to knit a baby blanket. I had grown up with a grandmother and a father (yes, that's right, a father) who crocheted. Since I was born in the last half of the 1960s, I was a young child in the 70s. Who remembers ponchos? Macrame? Crocheted bikinis? Daisy afghans? (Still have that one, by the way.) I had this large swing that was made out of macrame and had a homemade clown sitting on it. It hung from the ceiling in the corner of my room on my sister's side. Now, who remembers the movie Poltergeist? Are you following me here? Never in the history of the world has a clown been removed from a child's bedroom faster. I still have nightmares.

Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yes, so because I grew up around crocheting, I didn't particularly like the look of the baby blanket if it was crocheted. To me (in my ultimate 20ish wisdom) knitting looked so much more professional. We had, at that time, gotten through the craft era of the 70's, through the fashion atrocities of the 80's (enough said on that era) and were just squeeking into the 90's when this thought occurred to me. I want to KNIT! I headed off to the nearest craft store and bought a book on knitting along with some yarn. Initially I got stuck and sheepishly walked into a yarn store in Southern California. The wonderful clerks helped me and I was on my way. How was the blanket? Don't know. Never finished it. In fact, I didn't pick up needles again until about 2 years ago. This was after we moved to Utah and I was experiencing my first winter when I realized that reading books (or watching TV) whilst stuffing one's face whilst watching the snow fall outside was not terribly healthy. People don't get depressed because of the winter, they get depressed because in the spring they step on the scale and see the results of all the noshing! I never packed on the freshman 15, I packed on the Utah 20!

Needless to say, I was such a novice back then about this whole knitting thing. I was satisfied with any old yarn and if the project looked reasonably simple and elegant, I was game. It wasn't until I found this Filtura Di Crosa Baby pom pom yarn by Tahki that I started to realize that yarn really mattered when it came to one's projects. This was the crossroads of my knitting existence. And I crossed over, I mean I really crossed over. Living on the planet Yarn Obsession is fun! Stash is a blast! Have you seen the Kleenex commercial where the woman touches everything, until she gets to the tissue and suddenly .... it's FEEEEEEL. Oh yes, the feel of the yarn is essential. It makes you excited to see the final project.

However, knitting with cotton is something different. If you don't have a consistent tension, it ends up looking all wompy (or is it wonky?). I know that's not a Webster's word, but you know what I mean. Here is an example of my first attempt to knit with cotton. Truly humiliating. But, I have finally gotten the hang of it, and yesterday I finished the Gumdrop Sweater for my next door neighbor's little girl. Here it is. I will post pictures of her in it, though. I promise. So since spring and summer are just around the corner, pick up some cotton, or maybe some bamboo/cotton mix. There is so much out there, I just don't have enough time to see it all! And ladies .... use good yarn. You'll be glad you did.

Knitting with Tom Brady

"Excuse me? Did I hear you right?" you are saying. And, my dear readers, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" I was knitting with Tom Brady - THE Tom Brady. You know, that dashingly handsome man on the football field and magazine covers. But, how is this possible? Not only did it happen, but, may I add that I was knitting, too! Do I have you salivating for the details? Well ... let me tell you ...

In October I took a trip to California with my four children. We stayed in a cute little house in Venice Beach. Tom had just had the surgery for his knee (for all you football fans, you remember he got hurt the first game of the season and the injury took him out for the rest of the season). Anyhoo, my husband is his ... umm ... well, for lack of a better word ... therapist. He was working with Tom and the surgeon on his rehab. So, I went along with my husband to the house where he was recovering, and climbed up on the bed to look at some architectural renderings on the house he's building. At the time I was knitting that sweater you see on the "Projects" post, below, and I was showing it to him. He had my husband pull a hat out of his closet, to show me his favorite one. I told him I would knit him a hat for next winter. It will be something out of cashmere & wool with a strand of mohair to go with it. SOFT!!!

So before we left, I had to help my husband position pillows, prop up Tommy's knee and tuck him in for the night. And that, my dear and faithful readers, is how I ended up knitting with Tom Brady.

I Have KITCATS

Where does the time go? There just never seems to be enough time in one day to do everything I need, and let's not forget all of the things I want to do. Being obsessive as I am, it is impossible to sit down to focus on a knitting project, when the laundry needs to be done, the dishes need cleaning, groceries need to be put away, my bed is not made, or any one of the other myriad of items on a busy mother's "to do" list.

I am convinced that I have an undiagnosed case of KITCATS (that's Knitter's Inability To Complete Any Task Syndrome). How many times have I started to make my bed, picked up a pair of shoes to put away in the closet, and -- TA DA!! -- there is the dirty clothes hamper. I pick up the laundry and start a load, only to discover that the (new) bulldog has left me a wet surprise in the laundry room. In order to fully clean this, I plug in the steam machine (which takes about 10 minutes to heat up), and head into the kitchen to throw away the paper towels used to clean up the wet stuff. The trash can in full, so I tie up the trash bag and head out to the garbage cans -- oh! there's the mailman. I trudge down the driveway to get the mail (which is about three-fourths of the way full of my 78 year-old father-in-law's offers to win an astronomical amount of money if he would only send $29.95 today to cover "handling costs"). Back inside, the steamer is ready, so I clean the laundry room floor, put a new trash bag into the kitchen trash can -- and the dishwasher needs to be unloaded and reloaded. There are crumbs on the kitchen floor (what else is new?), and the washing machine has just beeped. I unload the laundry into the dryer, and put a new (dirty) load into the washer.

Chewy, the bulldog, needs to be fed then taken outside for ... (you know). More on Chewy later. Oh! It's lunchtime. First, put something together to eat, rinse the dishes, start the dishwasher. I need a nap! Snooze for about 30 minutes, and it's time to pick the kids up at the bus stop. Snacks, referee, homework, referee, dinner, referee. Knitting? Knitting? Oh heck, I forgot the laundry in the dryer. My bed has never been made and my husband is wondering what I did all day. Yes, it's true. I have KITCATS. Sadly, there is no cure, because as I get older, the days go by faster and faster. I can only take a deep breath, and hope against all hope that I will be able to carve out some time to get to the computer to talk to the universe at large and put a couple more stitches into my latest project. Okay, truth be told, it's the latest project that has my attention, because I know that YOU all know I have a LOT of knitting projects going on at once and quite a short attention span.

How did my obsession for knitting become an obsession for keeping my house clean? Hmmmmm.......