Houston, we have a problem......

Well, well, well – Friday again already! Remember when you were in your teens (back in the dark ages for me!) and Friday always seemed to take forever to roll around each week?

Now Fridays seem to zip past so fast that I feel like someone watching a tennis match – whizzz- there goes another Friday – whiz – another one – I’d better stop – I’m getting whiplash!

So, here in a straight pinch from Black Dog Knits for Fibrelicious Friday is:

Some beautiful laceweight ( 106 grams, 1200 metres of the Happy Spider’s Apricot Delight). One day it wants to grow up, fight world poverty, end war and become an absolutely gorgeous shawl.

Speaking of school, I hated it – had attitude issues with my teachers (I thought many of them weren’t very good teachers – I respected the ones who were and ‘acted out’ and was generally a poisonous brat with those I didn’t respect. One of these was the Home Ec teacher, a sour and bitter woman, with a mouth like a cat’s bum. I was just plain scared of her!

As a tomboy, I had the level of respect for the ‘womanly arts’, as she used to call them, that I had for dog poo on my shoe. I was a good cook (as were both my parents) but I was NOT good at needlework, and the grade 7 knitting that started off as a scarf became a pencil case. So did the grade 8 one. I failed needlework. In those days girls did sewing and cooking, and boys did woodwork and metal work – I really figured that girls got the rough end of the pineapple on that one (as they did in the 1970s in many other areas).

I couldn’t see the point in knitting. I did not touch either sewing or knitting again for many years.

When I went to Uni, my father bought me a sewing machine rather than give me a clothing allowance. I taught myself to design and sew and develop patterns. I made clothes for myself and my friends and costumes for a number of theatre productions. With no sour faced teacher in the picture deriding my efforts, I had discovered the joy of sewing. Also at Uni, a friend taught me to knit. I was never great, but I enjoyed it and made some jumpers (some of which I still have – though not my first ever jumper – made out of pale blue ‘New Yorker’)

I knitted on and off for the next mumble mumble years and always enjoyed it and loved wearing my creations. – remember the colours and shapes of the 1980’s!

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was knitting a mohair jumper. Her very early arrival meant that I didn’t finish it and she was 3 & ½ and my son was 18 months old when I decided to knit again. That was in May last year. I didn’t realise that the hat, and then the mittens for her and then the mittens for me would be like the first drink to a recovering alcoholic.

This is the second part of the stash – in the downstairs cupboard. (Rose Red – can you see the Ziploc bags?) This is WIP and soon to be WIP. There’s the sock kit from Red Bird Knits Sock of the every other month club – Collinette Jitterbug, calico bags with cotton for dishcloths, sock yarn I want to do things with now – or at least next week, patterns and books – my new ball winder, the knitting felting bag – slippers etc and more.

I hadn’t realised I was an alcoholic. I just sort of knitted. Most of the time. But with that first knitting after the 3 and a half year hiatus I was a woman possessed. I can no more think of a future without knitting , than I can think of a future without legs!

Hello, my name is Tinkingbell – and I’m a knitaholic…….