On the Needles

Many knitters seem to have certain oddities in common.

One is of course that we are always counting. A friend of mine mentioned this to me -- she was over visiting and I was, of course, knitting and talking. She said there seems to be a lot of counting going on. I laughed and said, you know, you ought to hear it when a group of knitters get together:

Alice: "So, Linda, have you warmed up to your daughter's boyfriend at all?"

Linda (whispering): "sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . . (aloud:) not really."

Another oddity is that so many of us can't seem to knit one thing at a time. I have never heard a satisfactory explanation for this. I don't know if it's a short attention span or a desire to fool ourselves into thinking that we can finish more things in a shorter time if we are working on five things at once.

Despite my fervent desire to finish the Faroe sweater before Thanksgiving and the Anemoi mittens before Christmas, I just started a Christmas stocking for my son's (long-term) girlfriend. It's to match the ones that my grandmother knitted for my siblings and me and my mother knitted for the kids. I don't know how long those Anemoi mittens will take but I really don't see how I can finish all three projects in time. Something's going to have to give. I'll probably let the stocking go until next Christmas, though I hate to do it. We luvvv the girlfriend.