from Kris B.

I think that I have created a monster in introducing Tracey to the joys, and other side effects of knitting!  Our text messages this week have turned from cooking and baking conversations to things like what is YO and SSK and what fiber content in yarn.  Don’t be surprised if you guys get a recipe with a yarn cupcake on Monday! 🙂

How Knitting Affects Your Life

1. Knitting totally messes with your sense of time.  For knitters, time is measured in rows.  “I’ll do that after I finish this row.”  “I’ll go to bed after I finish one more repeat.”  The problem is that a row can be 20 stitches or 400 stitches.  And a repeat can be 2 rows or sixteen rows.  Needless to say, the actual time associated with each is not the same!  But to a knitter’s mind a row is a row!
2. Knitting is a weight loss activity.  It is nearly impossible to knit and snack at the same time!  Or, if you say, “I’ll do it at the end of this row.” you better be hoping for those 400 stitch rows! 🙂
3. Yarn never goes bad so you can “stock up and save” unlike with food items.  When you have a bunch of fruit and veggies in the fridge that you bought because they sounded good at the time, you have to eat them before they go bad, whether they sound good now or not!  That bulky hot pink yarn that looked so appealing when you bought and makes you now ask yourself what in the world you were thinking can sit in your yarn stash as long as it takes for it to come around and again look like a good idea!

It has been fun for Tracey and I to share another interest.  And, it is kind of hilarious to try to explain knitting techniques via text message; but hey, a knitter has got to do what a knitter has got to do!  I keep saying that I could show her how to do some of these things in two minutes and the learning would be so much easier with someone actually guiding and watching you through the process.  Thank you YouTube for stepping in for me!  Hopefully one of these days, we will have a face-to-face “Stitch and Bitch” with one another and share some knitting fun…and I’m sure there will be cookies or cupcakes present too.

from Tracey G.

Oh my goodness, I don’t even know where to start! This is one of those activities I’d always wanted to learn, but just never thought I would be able to “get it”, so I never tried. Well, I take that back – I tried once, and it was YEARS ago, no YouTube, no Bluprint just books. And I will say right here that some things I have a really hard time learning out of a book, yarn crafts likely being number one. I think I ended up with more knotted yarn than any real skill headway back then, so I gave up and tried my hand at crochet instead. Even that proved “meh” to me, so I eventually gave up after a few afghans.

Then, at this point I figured too late to learn it now, which Jeremy pointed out to me was stupid thinking one night over dinner, by telling me that “duh, you can still learn, there’s still time”. Um, yep, he’s right. Again, but I won’t tell him that! And if you combine that with Knitting Ninja Kris, I was set up to try my hand at it! And I am so glad that I did! I am having so much fun already, even my mistakes that frustrate me, I’m taking as a learning experience.

So, that said, here’s my three;

1. Yep. We share number one – sense of time goes right out the window! I’m like a dog with a bone when trying something new and really wanting to be successful at it, and that makes me really reluctant to put something down. I want to keep going and going because the more I keep on trucking, the more improvement I see, which spurs me on to keep going, rinse repeat and all that, stuck on repeat… Before I know it, it’s time make dinner, which really makes me irritated because it’s cutting into my knitting/learning time! It just flew by! And that’s exactly it too – I’ll get to it when I finish this row, or this section etc!! The guys are already started to wonder if they’ll get dinners some nights or not…
2. This is an anytime activity and that’s really sitting well with me! I can do it whenever, hot or cold, day or night – I’m not a slave to the weather or the clock. With baking, or working on decorating cookies, that’s stuff that I have to kind of follow the clock or the weather. Baking in July is NOT on my menu if we’re having a hot summer, vs. the cool summer (60’s and so forth), but knitting? I can pick it up no matter what the weather is. And at the heart, I think that’s another thing that spurred me on to try it – I needed some kind of creative activity for summer, because I really do miss all the baking of the fall and winter! And, I can start something whatever time it is and not worry about having to wait up for it to come out of the oven etc.
3. And lastly, I can see I’ll become yarn obsessed… I think I already am, but that’s an easy rabbit hole to go down! So many are appealing, and I like them and want them – with not much thought of what to actually make with them, but I just know I’ll have something come up! And on that note, I think I’ll head to the Michael’s website because Kris informed me this morning there’s a sale….

And I agree, it’s fun to share another interest – I love having a good teacher on speed dial!