Shyness is Nice

Muscle memory is a mysterious thing. I don't question it too much; I'm just glad that my brain is not the only part of my body responsible for remembering things. How to knit, for example: unlike some people, I don't knit year-round (who can bear to touch wool in July?). When the weather begins to get cooler and I dig out my Bag O' Random Yarn, I'm always a little bit afraid that I'll have completely forgotten how to cast on (that's "start," for non-knitters). But for the past five years or so, my hands have remembered the drill. Maybe I should have tried storing math formulas there back in high school. 

My first project of this fall: a black scarf (with fringe!) for my roommate. It's a knit stitch all the way through - I'm still really a beginner. I can crank out simple scarves like this easily, but I can't do any fancy patterned ones. (Yet!)

Here's a not-very-good picture of my scarf basket. I knitted all but two of these.

This is a neat photographic/grammatical trick: I've taken a picture of a hat in the future tense! And by that I mean, this will be a hat. Eventually.

In college, an extraordinarily patient friend taught me to knit. Knitting circle met every week - on Wednesdays if I remember correctly - and we all sat around with our various projects, and the experienced knitters helped the new ones, and we all drank apple cider and ate cake from the country market that was just across the little corn field from campus. And no, this was not the Iowa College for Grandmas; it was (is) widely considered to be one of the more left-leaning, liberal, experimental colleges in the country. (SNL even made fun of us once, so there!)

But I digress. Since college, I've still made a few projects (read: scarves) every fall and winter, but this week, for the first time, I was part of a knitting group again. A friend of a friend invited me to her group, which meets once a month at a little tea shop just south of Washington Square Park. I went after work and found them downstairs: this friend-of-a-friend I'd met twice before, and four complete strangers. And I joined them and we knitted and talked and eavesdropped shamelessly on the people at the next table, who were not using what you'd call indoor voices. 

It was perfectly wonderful. There were two or three experienced knitters, one other beginner, and one crocheter. I finished the scarf I was working on for my roommate, and the other knitters helped me start a hat, which I would not have remembered how to do on my own. It was such a pleasant and productive evening, and I'm so glad I went; a decade or so ago, sitting down with a table full of virtual strangers and making conversation and drinking tea and knitting would have been nearly unthinkable. (Ten years ago I did not knit, or drink tea, and I was ferociously shy.)

"Shyness is nice

And shyness can stop you

From doing all the things in life you'd like to"

-The Smiths

For the record, I don't think Morrissey was referring to knitting circles in that song.

What I'm reading: The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

What I'm listening to: Turn the Radio Off and We're Not Happy 'til You're Not Happy by Reel Big Fish; Deja Entendu by Brand New