July 27
 

Because I like to be trendy and popular and because I have a lot of time on my hands, I decided that the best thing to do would be to learn how to knit.   And because I hate learning things alone, I coerced Nicole to learn how to knit WITH me.  A couple months ago, I noticed that a store named YARN opened down the street from my house.  I filed that information away until further notice and didn't really think about it again.  Until, that is, I was seized with the desire to CREATE STUFF.  I partially blame Kerry.  I mean, SHE only took one or two classes and she's churning out really beautiful stuff at an alarming rate!!!  HOW HARD COULD KNITTING POSSIBLY BE??

So, on the day the knitting urge seized me, I rushed off to an arts and crafts megastore near my house, filled with knitting bravado and the desire to learn.  I chose 4 balls of yarn (skiens? I'm just not sure), two sets of needles, text messaged and called some knitting friends (Wendy, Kerry) with the hopes that someone could make some sense out of what I was supposed to be picking out.  I looked at books ("Yes, Even Someone As Stupid As YOU Can KNIT!!") and chose one with VERY LARGE PHOTOGRAPHS of people's hands holding yarn in impossible ways with the two needles all mixed in and again, with a blind confidence, I bought it all, and rushed home.

A couple hours later, needles and yarn in hand, book laid out in front of me, I studied the photographs.  "Step 1:  CASTING ON"  I stared.  I looped the yarn and stuck it on the needle.  I tried to follow the picture.  Nothing.  After no less than 50 failed attempts (It's not that I'm stupid, the photos are VERY VAGUE.) to cast on, I tossed the whole thing aside, disgusted, and decided I'd call the arts and crafts store to see if the class they offered ("Knit Christmas SCARVES!!!") was for beginners, and whether or not CHRISTMAS SCARVES!!! meant that we'd be working elves and jingle bells into the mix.

Bored Person on Phone:  AC Moore, can I help you?
Me:  I dont know! I have a question about one of your classes.
Bored Person on Phone:  Which?
Me:  The KNIT CHRISTMAS SCARVES!! class?
Bored Person on Phone:  What's the question?
Me:  Well, is it a beginner class?  Is it for someone who has never knit anything ever before??
Bored Person on Phone:  Well, yeah.  I mean, you should be able to pick up on it, unless you're SLOW or RETARDED or something.
Me:  Well....I'm not slow or retarded but I AM left handed.
Bored Person on Phone:  That's a LITTLE like being retarded.
 

After that conversation, like a little bolt of smart from the sky, I remembered YARN, by my house, so I called them.  They reassured me that I would NOT be at a substantial disadvantage being a slow and quite possibly retarded lefty, so I signed Nicole and I up for a beginner class on July 22, and put away my purchased supplies, figuring that I'd be able to learn more easily the whole casting on thing if someone was actually SHOWING IT TO ME.
 

In the two weeks between the time I signed us up for the class and the actual class, Nicole and I sent a lot of email back and forth about the great stuff we were going to knit (Nicole:  I'm going to make a sweater with a KING and an ACE on it!!.  Dana:  Mine is going to have a TWO and a THREE on the front, and on the back, it's going to say "HIT ME!!") and how immediately adept we were going to be and the matching sweaters we were going to knit for Justin and Nick.

So, on July 22nd at 6:45, we were waiting outside YARN when a very calm voiced woman in dockers and an overly fancy for a hot night in July shawl walked over to let us in.  "Hello! Welcome!! I'm so glad you're here!!!"  We walked into the store and were both immediately overwhelmed.

"We're going to be making a scarf today, so you need to pick out three types of yarn:  FIZZ, STRING and RIBBON.  Look around at the colors, and try and find one that really TALKS to you and says "Hello! I want to work with you today!!!"  I bite my lips so as not to giggle, because these women are SERIOUS ABOUT THEIR KNITTING and they are SERIOUS about their James Taylor and the whole scene is very MELLOW and GENTLE and SWEET and I avoided looking at Nicole because I knew that if we made eye contact, I would snort.

Nicole and I start scrounging around through the MILLION DIFFERENT things they have.  I am looking for the brightest, least matching stuff I can find.  Nicole is looking for BLACK, TAN and WHITE--or any similarly calm colors.  I pick mine out right away (if you're not worried about matching, anything goes!!) but it takes Nicole a little longer, because with BLACK ribbon and SAGE string, the FIZZ, which seemed to be almost entirely multicolored, was harder to match.

The knitting instructor lady and friend--there were two of them--suggested colors, BRIGHT ONES, to try and bring some PIZZAZZ into the scarf.  "How about this?!!? Orange is GREAT!!"  "PURPLE would really give those colors a KICK!!!!"  Nicole glared and continued searching.  Finally, she comes up with a TAN fizz.  (Please note:  I have no idea why it's called fizz.  The stuff is about the thickness of fishing line with little..um...bits of string coming off of it, making it look a little like shiny, frayed string).  "Tan?" they say, sweetly.  Those colors are FABULOUS together!!"

She gathers us around her to learn casting on (oh, at this point, I should mention that in the room are two James Taylor loving instructors, one person who chose THE EXACT SAME COLORS AS I, which was sort of lame, because really, pick your own colors, there, Sunshine, and us, so it wasn't all jammed with people) and in her teaching, she said something like: "Okay, to cast on, you go INTO THE HOUSE and THROUGH THE KITCHEN and OUT THE BACK DOOR!!! Got it??"  She does it a couple more times to make sure we understand, and we take our seats.

The copycat woman gets it right away (because she is at an advantage:  SHE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO KNIT A LITTLE), Nicole gets it right away because she is SMART, and I stare at the needles and the yarn blankly.  The James Taylor instructor without the inappropriately fancy scarf leans in to help me.

Me:  What the FU...hell am I doing wrong??
Nicole:  Try harder, stupid!!!!
Lady:  Aww, no...it's okay, this is very difficult, you'll get it!!
Me:  Goddammit, am I dumb or WHAT?
Lady:  Here, let me get you started.  The next row is easier.
Me: I doubt it.
Nicole:  It won't be easier for YOU!!!
Me:  No, it probably won't!!
Lady:  You'll be GREAT, don't you worry!!

Finally, I sort of understand casting on, and I do my twenty stitches and move on to the next color.

Lady with inappropriately fancy scarf:  Knitting is life, ladies!!
Nicole:  Huh!
Dana:  Is it?  Then I need to get a whole hell of a lot better at it.
Lady w/o scarf:  That's it! You're getting it?
Dana: AW, FUCK.  What did I do wrong?
Ladies:  Uncomfortable chuckles.
Nicole: Oh, GODDAMMIT!!  What the fuck is with this FIZZ bullshit??
Dana:  You're up to FIZZ?  Jesus, YOU SUCK!
Lady with scarf:  Everyone goes at their own pace!!!
Copycat woman:  .....GLARINGLY FILTHY LOOK at us...
Dana: SHIT.  I dropped my needle.
Nicole: These sticks are annoying!! They're too big and they keep catching!!
Lady without scarf:  Wax paper!! WAX PAPER!!!!! WAX PAPER!!!
Dana and Nicole:  Huh, ok.
Nicole:  I HATE THESE STICKS.
Lady without scarf:  Maybe you need different ones?  Hang on.  These are HAND MADE you know!!!!
Nicole:  They suck!!!!
Dana:  Mine are kind of catching, too, but I like them.
 

An hour passes.  Nicole is about 20 rows in, I am about 8.  We knit and curse.  The teacher ladies soothe and give us quizzical looks.  At the end of the class, I realize that somewhere along the way, I've managed to make a GIANT, GAPING HOLE in the scarf.  The Inappropriate Scarf Lady snatches the knitting away from me.

Her:  I'll fix that RIGHT NOW!! That's the great thing about this yarn, it's very forgiving, because it's so loose.
Me:  Um, that's really not necessary!
Her:  Oh, it's no problem.  It won't take any time at all!!
Me:  But...
Her:  Here we go!!!  Be nicer to Diane (she never really got our names straight, despite us telling her 50 times) in the future, yarn!! She's a BEGINNER!!
Her:  Other Knitting lady, don't you just LOVE to see a room filled with people who didn't know how to knit knitting?? Isn't it gratifying!
Other Lady:  Oooh, it sure is!! Look at that, it's like your mistake never happened!!
Me:  Really, you don't have to do that!!  I'm sure I'm going to make LOTS of mistakes!!  Don't waste your time!!  Seriously!!! I still suck!!!
Nicole:  Yeah, you do!
Ladies:  Oh no!! You don't!!! You're a BEGINNER!!
Nicole:  I'm a beginner and I don't suck!!
Dana:  That's true!!  What's your fucking problem?  Why are you showing off????
Nicole: I'm AWESOME!!!!
Ladies:  Nancy, your colors really came together nicely!!!!  They've got plenty of WOW!!!
Nicole:  I think it looks a little stupid.
Me:  Mine is a little like swiss cheese.
Ladies:  ALMOST FINISHED!!!!
Me:  SERIOUSLY,  YOU REPAIRING THAT IS NOT NECESSARY!
Ladies: Oh, but IT IS.
Me:  You'll be sorry!!!
 
 

We walked out the door with my newly repaired, but still tragically flawed rows and Nicole with her nice beginning and turn to eachother.  "They had NO idea what to make of us!!"  "Ha, we were all "FUCK THIS FUCKING FUCK!!! and they were always "I'VE SEE FIRE AND I'VE SEEN RAIN!!!!!"
 

I get home and show Nick what I'd learned, bound and determined to continue with it, until I saw that I'd somehow grown a whole new hole (IN THE KNITTING, you FREAKS). I threw it all down, pissed off, and decided that I would start again on new needles.  Problem was, I COULDN'T REMEMBER HOW TO GET INTO THE HOUSE AND THROUGH THE KITCHEN AND OUT THE FUCKING BACK DOOR.  I sent off a lot of really pissed email to Nicole and went to bed a total failure.

Anyhow, Nicole's knitting all fell off her needle in the bag on the way home, so she had to start again, and I totally forgot to keep a count of how many stitches I'd made, so I wound up with something tiny on the bottom and 47 stitches across on the top, so the woman DID totally waste her time, though I imagine that she holds the ideal that ANY TIME SPENT KNITTING IS NOT EVEN A REMOTE WASTE OF TIME.
 
 

This is what I'm up to, in terms of The Scarf, Redux (note:  The smart knitters I spoke with about it informed me that it was totally insane to have them start us with THREE different things, and that using the FIZZ was COMPLETELY crazy because it's very difficult to work with.  Those ladies were COMMITTED to the idea that we were going to catch on IMMEDIATELY, which was only partially the case)

 

The ending to the story so far, is that Nicole and I spent about 235 hours on Saturday knitting.  The moments we spent away from our knitting were spent MISSING our knitting.  Instead of sitting in front of the computer at night, I sit in front of the TV, knitting.  I'm still not fully convinced I'll ever move past SCARF, though.  Nicole might.  She SUCKS.
 
 
 

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