I Didn’t Plan To Do It This Time

Okay, the snow zombies are coming. Sometime. Honestly. But the friend who wanted to help me do something “fun” with their little photo shoot just got slammed hard at work. And since he, like many people, is just hoping his company can remain a company rather than a name on the economic casualty list, I’ll not be bothering him about them right now.

Understandable, I hope. Dude has a bit more to worry about than making the SZs look fetching, you know?

So today we’re going to move to another favorite theme of mine: corruption of youth. Yes, it happened again. But it wasn’t me who started it this time, honest! And the where, I’ll admit, came at a time and a place when I least expected it to happen.

Thing 3 had a Court of Honor for Boy Scouts.

(And, note to anyone out there who is thinking, “Those guys discriminate against homosexuals!!” Yes, they do. And do my kids know I don’t agree with that policy? Hell, yeah. One of my oldest friends is gay, and I’ll go head to head with anyone, Scout people included, over whether he is doing something “wrong”. Because he’s not. IMHO, I don’t really think God gives a flip about who you love—He cares about how you love. So there, BSA is, to me, totally wrong.

But I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, folks. Lots of institutions, like schools, churches, or oh, say, my own government, have policies and philosophies with which I strongly disagree. But that hasn’t stopped me believing in a higher power or seeing that my kids are educated. Nor has it made me move out of my country, though if we would have elected another Republican, I would have considered it most seriously. For me, Scouts has been a way to spend one-on-one time with each of my Things—and that’s kind of tricky when one gets past the Dr. Seuss-imposed limit of two—and a way for us to be able to camp as a family when the ex had issues with that and I was trying to keep familial peace. Stupid in retrospect—trying to keep the familial peace, I mean—but it seemed a good idea at the time.

And, more importantly, this Troop has accepted Thing 3’s Asperger’s Syndrome without a blink; instead of being on the outside, Thing 3 is very much in; as in as a kid with Asperger’s lets himself get, anyway. So Scouts? It’s a big deal. He succeeding there, and he loves it. We’re staying.

Ahem. I will now step off the soapbox.)

Anyway, I was knitting while the talks were going on (shocking, I know) and while they were setting up for Court of Honor. Currently, I’m double knitting a scarf for Thing 4 to go along with his mittens and hat. I fully expect to have to make new mittens for next winter, but that’s not a big deal as the scarf will keep until then (it will have to, seeing as his mother didn’t get round to starting it until right before spring hit). Anyway, I was knitting and purling away and kind of people watching, when I noticed a little girl. She had stopped at our table a couple of times before the meal, and I thought perhaps she found Thing 4 kinda cute. (They’re near the same age.) But now here she was, after the meal, near the wall, watching our little family unit. Thing 4 had moved to see the video they had shown more clearly, but she was still staring at the empty seat next to me in which Thing 4 had sat.

I finally cottoned on to the fact that she wasn’t boy gazing, but yarn gazing. She was staring at the bright red and dark blue piles of yarn with a look I supposed I would see on my own face if yarn stores had mirrors hung over their bins of baby alpaca.

I smiled at her.

She smiled back, took a step forward, almost said something, then retreated to the wall again.

I knit and purled. I glanced back. She was still there. She did her little step forward, step back. And then?

“I knit too,” she blurted out.

“Cool! You wanna come help me with this?”

She most definitely did. She shyly informed me, when I asked, that she made dishcloths and blankets. She was fascinated with the scarf and with me knitting two different colors at once. I plopped the needles into her hands and showed her how it worked.

She had never purled before, and had most definitely never double-knitted, but she totally loved it. She wanted to know why I was using both hands to create the stitches. I explained how I had to keep each color on its own side so I didn’t knit the sides together, so each hand had to help. I showed her how you could pull the two sides apart, and what the right side of the fabric (for now hidden inside the scarf—I double-knit inside out) looked like. She couldn’t get over the smoothness of stockinette stitch. I explained that if she knitted one row on straight knitting, then purled back, she would get fabric that looked like that.

She continued on down my row, checking to make sure she was wrapping the yarn the correct way with the purl. She had only ever thrown yarn (er, no, I still can’t remember which that is) but she took to throwing with her right to purl and slipping with her left to knit as she alternated stitches like a pro. She accidentally slipped a stitch here or there when the yarn didn’t catch right, but I showed her how to fix that.

The absolute best, totally coolest thing about this surprise knit moment, though? When the candle was lit and lights turned down and when I went up with Thing 3 to stand with him as they ask parents to do, that chica just flipped on my Knit Lites and kept right on stitching.

(Imagine this picture in the dark. Darn flash ruins everything. But thanks, Thing 2, for thinking to take it!)

You rock, G. Hope I see you at the next meeting. Bring your sticks, okay?

The Beautiful Art of Corruption

I've blogged about corrupting short people before.


Starting with my own Things was logical. The last two Things are still working on their garter stitch dogs, but Thing Two did complete a crocheted project.


It was supposed to be a scarf. A blue scarf. Thing Two was very into blue.


She obediently hooked row after row of single crochet, measuring the scarf at the end of every row. At some point, she stopped and calculated just how much longer it would take to get an entire scarf, and instead continuing on with the endless blue, she whacked a bright red few rows onto the end, cheerfully tied the extra yarn in granny knots and, without bothering with the silly practice of the weaving in of ends, presented it to me.



I told her it was wonderful. Then, thankfully, she informed what it was before I had to think of a way to ask without asking.


"It's a book holder, Mommy!"


And so it remained for years on my bedside table, patiently holding my books for me. (Now it does duty beneath a basket of yarn, its unwoven ends hanging cheerfully over the shelf edge. I am nothing if not sentimental.)



While this should be enough to satisfy any crocheter, it obviously just whetted my corrupt others gene's appetite. So, yes, I have progressed to the corruption of other people's children (Hey, you're talking about a person who has a basket solely filled with fun, variegated yarns and clear, colored plastic hooks and kid sized needles, like some benign version of that kid-tempting, cookie-housed old lady).


What I didn't expect in return for running up the fiber bills in friends' households was this:

(Please pretend there is a photo of a wonderful bookmark, done in the calm blues of the sea, with accompanying hand-made card, also beautifully created. Because there will be such a photo as soon as find the cord which connects my camera to my computer...)

(Well, the cord wasn't found, but a new card reader was purchased :))

The card said this:


Dear ---------,


I wanted to thank you so much for teaching me the beautiful art of corruption. Because of you, I now have a lovely hobby and the power to create amazing things out of yarn. You are an awesome teacher.


Sincerely,


------------


P.S. The bookmark you receive is my first finished project.


You expect to receive firsts from your own Things. But from other people's?


Hey, Friend of Thing Two? You just gave me so much more than I gave to you. Thanks, chica. :)

Corrupting the Young

You want to. You know you do. The urge to twist and warp little minds is just something no one can control.

It starts with your own kids; quietly and by stealth, so no one notices. But one day they're knitting squares to make into Herbie

& Reg,

garter stitch dogs extraordinaire from Kids Learn to Knit, or little hats for charity

and the next thing you know, they're knitting something secret for somebody who might read the blog



and giving you Bambi eyes for a skein of hand dyed sock yarn that they swear that they are going to knit up themselves (just as soon as I pick a pattern from your pattern stash, mom, honest).

But that's not enough. You find yourself letting small kids hang out with you and try stitches while they wait in line to go to gym (awesome crowd control method when everyone is five years old and under). The only problem there is that you don't get the satisfaction of total corruption. There's only time, due to the sheer number of small people, for a quick dip into the pool of degenerate behavior.

So, you turn to other outlets. Namely, the kids of your friends.

It's great.

You talk them into making Nigel, the late night owl (another Kids Learn to Knit cutie) with a bribe of their very own kitty cat-headed needles and uber-bright variegated yarn.

You slyly offer to reteach some other friends' daughter how to knit,

then point out that bamboo needles work better with the yarn she has chosen. And after she drags her father to the local yarn shop to get the needles (where she and your own daughter, who's gone along to make sure dad doesn't duck out, also purchase several skeins of two color cottons) you score the ultimate in knitting corruption.

Nothing's better than a kid in a skeleton t-shirt picking up a skein. Absolutely. Nothing. And all because he had the audacity to say (after the girls were safely out of the house), "That doesn't look hard to do."

By the time the girls had returned, he had picked up enough speed with the needles to have finished the bookmark his sister had started and was experimenting with different ways to make knitting "more efficient." You realize you may have to email him Hardcore, from Knitty, just to keep him going.

But you don't have to do it all. Really. Because before you know it, they're knitting without you.

The corruption never ends. Just think of who could be next...

(you thought it was going to be a picture of you, Thing One, didn't you?)