Because Knitting Is Everywhere...

Oh knitting, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways! How much do I think about knitting y'all? Pretty much all the time. And my love of the craft is so well-known among my friends that they assist me in my constant knitting thinking.

For example, I was visiting my friend Doris Ann the other day. I hadn't seen her in ages. I walk in and she excitedly tells me she's got something to show me. Then she disappears into her room and comes back out with this amazing hand knitted red sweater. I love the pattern, I love the weight of it, I LOVE the color of it. She tells me her husband, Bart, found it for her IN A THRIFT STORE!

Okay, who sends knitting like that to a thrift store? I think. But before I can get irked with this person I'll never know, I console myself with the thought that at least Bart and Doris Ann found it, and that now it is in a home where it will be appreciated forevermore.

Does this make me dorky? That all of my adventures, including tea time with friends, somehow tie into knitting? OF COURSE NOT!! (Or should I say OF COURSE KNOT!!) One of the ten million things I love about my knitting habit is that no matter where I am in the world, all I have to do it look around me for evidence of the pervasive power of knitting. I've even got my man joining in on this spot-the-knitting game, too. More than once he's leaned over to me at a dinner party and said something along the lines of, "Say, isn't that a cabled sweater that woman is wearing?"

I also love knowing that if I need some instant friends when I'm traveling, I need only pop into the local knit shop. This I did recently. I was on a short jaunt to Houston, a few hours from my home in Austin. I'd been to a really cute knit shop down there a year or so before-- it's called Knitting in the Loop. I decided to pop back in and when I arrived, I discovered they had moved-- but not far, just to the building next door. The MUCH BIGGER space next door.

I walked in and a half-dozen knitters looked up from their spots on overstuffed couches and chairs and grinned at me. And I grinned right back. We were all in our happy place and we took a moment to savor our shared secret with knowing smiles.

I don't think I really knew, when I picked up the needles back in 2000, just what a big world would open up for me. But in the past dozen years, I'm not exaggerating when I say that knitting has totally changed the way I see the world, and the way I travel. Everything gets viewed through knitter's eyes now, and I have to say I love the perspective.

And then, there is our trip to Monhegan Island, which is like this super-concentrated dose of Knitter Happiness for me. On the island I'm one of the ones on the couch, looking up and grinning whenever someone walks in the door of Monhegan House and peeks over to see what "that group of ladies" is laughing about. Me? I'm laughing in large part because my everyday knitting joy is compounded exponentially on the trip, thanks to being in the company of others just like me-- fanatics who can't go five feet without noting something that reminds them of knitting.