"Ooh, what are you making?" she asked. I showed her my glove-in-progress, and she exclaimed over my brilliance. "I'm making scarves for Christmas presents!" she told me, excitedly. "Now, I'm sure you can tell me this--how do you make fringe?"
Luckily, I hadn't yet used the waste yarn (to be used as a stitch holder) I had with me, so I demonstrated fringing a few times.
"Oh, you're so clever!" the neurologist told me. "I'm just not smart enough to do all this stuff, gloves and fringe and stuff like that!"
"Well, it all works out," I told her. "I'm not smart enough to do all that neurology stuff, but I can play with yarn!"
Ah, yes. I can make fringe, and the migraine specialist thinks I'm brilliant.
After my neurology appointment I headed downstairs to the part of the clinic where my GP works to get a vaccine. Again, I was working on my glove in the waiting room. And I noticed that the woman across from me was staring at me. Full-on, not pretending not to Staring. Finally I caught her eye and smiled at her. "I'm sorry I'm staring," she said. "That's just such an amazing talent to have!"
"It's much more of a skill than a talent," I told her. "It can be taught."
"Don't believe her!" came a voice from one side. "I could never get the hang of it!"
The story came out: she (of the voice from off to one side) had a knitting friend, and in their hanging-out time she had begun to knit a sweater. "And she wouldn't teach me to bind off, so the sleeves were so long they looked like I had made a sweater for a baby orangutan!"
"But I'm sure they were beautifully knit!" I exclaimed. She shot me a look that said, Oh, no, they weren't. I still think that it wasn't so much as case of not getting the hang of it as having a strange teacher who wouldn't teach her to bind off, but what do I know?
I kept insisting that the gloves were easier than they looked (but I did thank them both for the compliments), and soon went back for my vaccine.
Knitting: What an excellent conversation starter!
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I know I said that this was going to be text-only, but in my last post I forgot to include a picture of the amount of yarn I had left from the skein when I finished the first glove.
See that little pile? That's 100 inches of yarn. Whew! Two 100-gram balls of Lion Cashmere Blend=one pair of women's gloves. Period.
2 comments:
Were you getting nervous at the end of the second glove? I once finished a sock with only 8" left and I thought I was going to hyperventilate.
It's usually a conversation starter. When I had my layover in Cincinnati last month, I sat down opposite a knitter at the gate. I already had my knitting in hand. I smiled at her and said a cheery, "Hello!"
She said, "Hello," no smile, and went back to her knitting.
I grew up in Northern Kentucky, but in all my years south of the Boone-Grant county line, I'd forgotten what assholes Cincinnatians could be. :0
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