Knitting and Reading

I am so excited to be joining along with Ginny's Yarn Along for the very first time this week! I have wanted to learn to knit for years, and it always seemed so very complicated. And now, I present to you... my KNITTING!!

During our "homeless" period when things felt really dark, confusing and more than slightly scary, I had a good friend who saw my need and wanted to do something to help. She is a fellow homeschool mom, cool thing is she even homeschools grown-ups on occasion! One day, during that time, I was visiting her I told her how I wished I had brought something with me to my parent's house to occupy my hands while my mind could rest. Creating something pretty is such a wonderful thing, one of the best sorts of therapy I think. I had packed away every single bit of crafty/art supply type stuff I owned because I was sure it would be boxed up such a short time that I wouldn't even have a chance to miss it. Well she declared that I should learn to knit, and proceeded to teach me!

 It was wonderful. Seriously, I had always thought knitting was so scary and had to be just perfect or the fabric of the universe might come apart at the seams or something equally disastrous might happen. She said no, that if I realized I messed something up all I had to do was un-knit it to back before the mistake, and hey, she was teaching me to knit a square washcloth. Even if I frogged that thing 16 times, all the way back to the very beginning and rewound the yarn into a ball, no harm done, I'd just have an everlasting knitting project that way! :-) I think I knit that very same washcloth 8 or 9 times. Every time I started to feel overwhelmed with stuff, I'd grab the needles and start knitting. At one point I had a 2 foot wide washcloth, when I was super preoccupied and not paying any attention to casting on.I never did worry about finishing that thing, it was purely for the joy of the movement.  So I decided once we moved that it might be time to branch out! 

I found a simple shawl pattern on Ravelry that could be tied in the back. I love those! My notes are here. So far so good. The lovely yarn is one I won from a giveaway on Frontier Dreams, from her sponsor Luna Grey Fiber Arts. It is super soft and feels so nice to knit, and the color is gorgeous. Not at all difficult to handle, even for a total novice like me!

And I am reading An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. It is sort of a cook book, sort of a compilation of cooking essays. I am really enjoying it, and I very much like her style of writing, but it makes me extremely hungry. Lots of talk about good crusty bread and olive oil and garlic on most everything! It's a book about good simple food well cooked.