This is actually not the view outside my window - I live in the city in a neighborhood of row homes - but it's prettier. It's near the Mill where the Meet Up was being held.
So, an inch or two of snow, but with icy rain on top and still falling. Very cold. Very gray. Blech. AND, I had to be there by 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday. AND it was a half hour drive.
I'm sorry, but I am not a morning person. I don't pop out of bed all perky and excited for a new day at 5 a.m., meditate, exercise for two hours, then yoga, then a smoothie with algae in it. Gag me. I am very much the kind of person who, on a gray snowy day, stays in bed with tea and a book and maybe gets up to brush my hair around two.
If only one could just have a Meet Up in bed. Not that kind. At least, not yet!
But that's not the point. The point is to get out there and meet people. To do what I normally wouldn't do. To not take the easy way out on a Saturday morning and let inertia win.
To look back in December and have an accumulation of experiences that add up to a well-lived year.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I was sick on Wednesday and missed the knitting Meet Up on Wednesday (fortunately, they have three of them a week in various places, so I didn't actually miss anything). I did get ready, drive there, and start walking up to the restaurant clutching my needles and yarn, ready to join in, but I saw the 25 or so people in the window, sitting in a packed cluster together, knitting and talking and I felt so tired.
Going to a Meet Up requires some level of being 'on' and I just didn't have it in me at that moment. Not for 25 people. Not for 5 people. What I had was a sore throat and a headache. So I went home.
That meant no excuses on Saturday morning. It took me a bit to find the place; I kept making wrong turns. I finally found it but had to park in the lower area because I couldn't figure out how to get to the upper parking lot (twisty turny roads). This meant a treacherous climb up some thickly iced steps in sneakers, and a long walk in the cold across the mill 'campus' to the other side where the weaving building had been. Inside I found a boutique mall with some cafe-ish type places to eat. It was totally empty - some of the stores were still locked up, except for two women knitting by one of the cafes. Couldn't miss them.
I introduced myself and they were very welcoming. This is a theme so far. Everyone I meet seems to be very happy that I've joined the group and showed up at an event. This is a new thing, in my experience. A friend and I were just discussing this phenomenon last night.
It hasn't always been the case that people are glad that you're suddenly inserting yourself into their group. Groups used to be clique-ish and closed off. If you weren't invited or brought by a member, you were an intruder and not wanted. Frozen out. I have been guilty of this behavior myself, in my twenties. You feel really powerful in your twenties. Like high school power (if you had some then) but with the freedom of adulthood thrown in. You don't live with your parents and you have your own money. No one is the boss of you! And that means you can decide not to like someone because of how they look or talk or whatever stupid reason you think is a good one. You and your group will be together forever and no one who doesn't belong is going to get in.
What a load of crap. Of all the people I hung with at that time, I only talk to one person still. My best friend. The rest? I have no idea where they are and, though I wish them well, I don't care. I'm open to anyone now. People are fascinating (most of them) and I can usually find one interesting thing in every one I meet, even if I don't plan on meeting them again.
So, knitting. Carol and Jenny (again, not real names) made me feel welcome. Carol moved her chair over and immediately started teaching me to knit. I was relieved that there were only two people. One: because the crowd of 25 at the restaurant on Wednesday was too much for me (I need a smaller group, if possible, I've discovered - better chance of connecting than being swallowed up by a crowd), and two: if I'm learning something new, I don't need a big audience to make me any more self conscious than I already am.
I'd borrowed yarn and needles from my sister, who took up knitting with a group, then abandoned the knitting but kept the group for the wine and conversation. That's my kind of hobby! you might say, but I'd actually like to make a scarf, so....
It's clear to me now that my brain is a bit of a jumble these days (maybe I haven't learned anything new in a while, which is not a good thing), because I had trouble following how to 'cast on' (get the first round of stitches onto the first needle), which they called a 'gauge' stitch, probably related to the gauge of the needle, but others I've told about my experience called it a 'knit' stitch or 'plain' stitch.
You do a sort of cat's cradle thing with your left hand and then weave the needle through the loops and then pull through so the 'stitch' is now a loop on the needle. Then you repeat until you run out of yarn (hopefully you pulled out the right amount for the right length or width of your project).
I'm usually a visual learner, but something about the weaving and looping and cats cradling at 9:30 on a very cold Saturday morning was not working for me. I had eaten chocolate for breakfast because running late so I think all the synapses I needed were firing merrily in the wrong directions as a result.
I did finally get it. If you're interested, here is a video with the basics. The cast on method is different, but actually easier, I think, because it mimics the plain stitch moves you do once you have one needle full of stitches and are ready for the next row using the second needle.
There is annoying music with this video that I muted while watching. Very distracting and not at all suited to the subject! I guess it was trying to make knitting hip or sexy, neither of which it is.
Eventually I had both needles in play and managed a few rows of the plain stitch. My moves with the needles could not have been more awkward but I did feel fairly proud of myself and Carol was very encouraging, telling me I'd picked it up very quickly and that I'd just learned 90% of what I needed to know in ten minutes. That's a pretty good return on one's time. Why aren't more things like knitting? Like college?
We then tried the purl stitch, which creates a 'V' shape, and seems to be a reverse of the moves for the plain stitch. This one turned out even more awkward and I kept messing it up and having to pull out a stitch and do it again. The result looked nice, but I got myself into something of a snarl with very tight loops on one needle that made it hard to pull the other needle and yarn through. I managed to fix it and decided to do a plain stitch for the rest of the piece.
By then seven more women had shown up with various complicated projects (to me): sweaters and booties and reversible scarves with ruffles. The woman with the sweater, Sandy, needed help figuring out the number of stitches for the size she wanted and I could not repeat the talk of how to calculate them that went on for ten minutes. It was way too complicated for my reptile knitting brain.
Some women had these cool, slim metal needles attached to cables that enabled them to make both booties at once, or a sweater or a very long scarf. I want these now!
If I have the cables, I can knit a scarf lengthwise rather than width-wise, which takes longer. I'm committed to width-wise now, but for future reference, that's the way to go - with cables. For now, whatever. I'm happy with what I have. I'd like to be able to check 'knitted scarf' off my list of things (great and small) that I'd like to accomplish this year. Apparently, a good sized scarf is 60 inches.
I made lots of mistakes, but also learned that multi-colored yarn covers up a multitude of sins. Hurray!
I also learned:
1) Knitting needles don't click. The metal ones sometimes do, very very quietly. So if you're a writer and one of your characters knits, don't put in as a sensory detail that the needles clicked. They don't. Not really. I will never make that error again.
2) The women don't talk like wise crone mothers or something, telling folktales, exchanging herbal medicine recipes, and dispensing sage advice. They talked about deaths, illnesses, shoes, and football (big game that weekend). Sigh.
The closest we got to fulfilling the second myth was when one woman told a story of finding a stash of yarn bought by her husband's grandmother decades before. The grandmother bought it for ten cents, fifty cents, etc. and the color was a lovely pale peach it seemed would be hard to find nowadays (especially now, jewel tones are in). The yarn itself was very thin and tight. The woman in the group and her daughter (who wasn't there) were making a sweater together to sort of carry on the grandmother's hobby and purpose for the yarn. Nice, but not as good as a folktale.
Another knitting group collected at a nearby table; they seemed like a class. They were a noisy bunch, but my group didn't seem to notice or feel competitive. We were quite quiet, actually. There were long stretches of silence like I've not experienced before. A mix of slightly uncomfortable (not, OhMyGodWouldSomebodySaySomething. More like, It would be nice if someone said something, I'd prefer it, but it's okay if not, still, could someone say something?), and slightly focused and peaceful. A bit of tension, a bit of calm.
I really wanted to tell them about my Meet Up project and ask them what they thought of gathering like this. What prompted them to join. Who had they met? Had friendships formed? What did they get from the experience? I figure I should be asking people these types of questions. Be a Meet Up Anthropologist/Sociologist.
But I chickened out and when asked why I'd joined the group said I wanted to meet people outside my regular social circle. Which is true.
I stayed over two hours, though, and knitted two inches. Later, in the evening, I knitted another two inches, and did one more last night. That's 5 inches. Only 55 to go!
Next Up: A meeting of a pagan group. We're going to make our own runes then learn how to cast them. It will be my fourth Meet Up event and I'll have completed January.
Here's my knitting so far - that really is 5 inches; it gets bunched up! - and a (hopefully) cool picture of a bridge near the Mill. (Seriously, doesn't it make you want to go back to bed?)
WHERE: Old mill buildings converted to boutique mall
PEOPLE: 9 (all women in forties or fifties)
COST: $3 (toll road)
MILES: 46.94 miles RT
RATING: 7/10
THEME: Craft
