10:27 p.m. - 2004-01-31
knitting
i've taken up knitting. i decided that i'm just not nearly feminine enough, and that by learning to knit, i will doubtless increase my sex appeal and marriageability exponentially.
also, mom and i spend an awful lot of time just sitting together, drinking coffee and engaging in (very) random conversation interspersed with long, comfortable silences. silences in which i often try to write, either in my little journal-y, diary-ish book, or else letters/emails to friends around the globe, or even, rarely, here. in any case, our silences are just long enough to get me started on some particularly enthralling line of thought before one of us comes up with something we clearly need to discuss right now, like groceries, snowboarding, sex, authors, road trips, my brother, or devotional meetings, to name a few. and, much as i enjoy the conversations, i also have some minor level of frustration at constantly interrupting something i feel somewhat productive in doing, which is where the knitting comes in. i can happily knit either in silence or while we talk, and it still feels a little useful. granted, there is a limit to how many scarves any person actually needs, and the level i'm at is such that anything more than a scarf is a little too complicated yet. then again, with the constant loosing of places, stitches and trains of thought, it looks like just finishing this scarf could take me until summer, so i shouldn't be worrying about that either.
my problem is that i can't just do something the conventional way without questioning all the little ins and outs - in this case, why you knit from left to right and then, having moved all your stitches onto the right hand needle, swap them. unhappy with the inefficiency therein, i've been toying around with going back and forth, which produces a pleasingly even surface knit with a tendency to curl in on itself. after a lot of trial and error involving picking up dropped stitches (apparently, in knitting, if you start with 30 stitches in a row, it is expected that you will also finish with 30 in that row, until you get to the complicated bits, which i have not.) i have, however, gotten quite adept at adding or dropping stitches that i wasn't aware of dropping or adding in the first place.
so anyway. knitting. not just for gramma anymore, though at the rate i'm going it might be relegated to her - or anyone with more patience that me - again soon.
and i still have a crush, and i still have no idea what to do about it, or how i really feel about him, or what, exactly, i actually want from him anyway. in a lot of ways it's a blessing not to see him very often, as i'm sure that would only exacerbate this whole mental mess. i will see him the weekend after next though. yes, valentine's day. trouble. i can't even begin the imagine what to do about that. suggestions?
