My friend Ryan is embarking on a great adventure. He's moving across the country to pursue amazing opportunities, untold fortunes and ceaseless glory. I think that's just utterly fantastic, other than missing him terribly, which I fully plan on doing. I still remember the first time I met Ryan. I went to play poker with a friend I met in an intro PoliSci class and was introduced to about ten people at once. Ryan stood out though. I don't know if it was his magnetic personality, his rapier wit, his Adonis-esque hair or the fact that he was knitting a hat at a poker game, but whatever it was, we hit it off right away.
Ryan is known for, among many other things, his knitting. He made hats for several people and is currently in the process of knitting himself a blanket. It looks... complicated, but warm. Like a hot toddy. As for me, I settled on something a little more conducive to my experience level. That's code for "I'm still struggling to finish the potholder he got me started on". Its pink.
So, the thing about knitting is this. It is not hard to do at all. It is, however, incredibly hard to do well. The basic stitch is just that: basic. There are only a couple of little needle thread twisties (its a technical term, look it up) that you need to remember to do something basic like the potholder I was working on. The real difficulty in knitting things is keeping the tension correct on the stitches. And that matters. A lot.
Substantial.
I was actually pretty proud of my little mini-potholder in progress. And I do so enjoy pink more than I should ever admit. Oh who am I kidding? Like Ms. Hot-Pink-Office is going to convince anyone pink isn't awesome. I paused to marvel at the stitches for a minute when I got to that point because I realized that knitting is kind of impressive. Even bad knitting. That interlocking piece of fabulous in my lap came from a single, connected, piece of yarn. Someone, at some point, had to figure out that if you make knots over and over in the same pattern, you can create something strong out of yarn.
The fact that human beings are capable of figuring stuff like that out is something that fascinates me. Seriously. It got me thinking while Ryan and I were knitting and debating the misogynistic elements of The Twilight Saga: New Moon as compared to those in Don Giovanni (that is a totally normal conversation, shut up). I started thinking about the fact that at some point in the course of human history, we didn't know how to knit. We didn't know how to sew. We didn't know how to cook. We didn't know how to build houses. Even the wheel had to be invented at some point. We take all these things for granted, but there was a point at which they were the pinnacle of human creation. That's kind of neat.
Then I saw Ryan's blanket. Show off.
My potholder pales in comparison to Ryan's blanket - he had to use multiple stitches to create it, which for me is like some weird kind of sorcery. The other stitch is called pearling. So you don't necessarily just knit something - you could also be pearling it. As for Ryan and I; we sat together and had a relaxing afternoon watching New Moon, knitting, chatting and just enjoying each other's company. I'm starting to understand how knitting became such a social activity - once you get the motion down, it is really easy to just space out and enjoy the person you're spending time with.
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