What a day I've had! Often my Sundays remind me a bit of that army recruiting slogan: "We do more before 9am than most people do all day." Only with me, it would be, "I do more before noon on Sundays than most people do all day on Sundays." Okay, not as catchy or impressive as the army's, but still.
I started my day with the Sunday school class I'm teaching. My co-teacher, Peter, is pretty awesome. Not only is he a dynamic teacher, but he also has a lot of amazing things to teach the kids, and me, within the context of the anti-racism curriculum we're teaching. We had a great class, for which I can take no credit; but I certainly learned a lot, and was inspired to delve into the issues around racism more deeply, both for myself and so that I can more effectively co-teach this class. I'm a white girl from the suburbs, so it's not exactly something I can profess to be an expert on. I certainly can educate myself a lot more than I have.
Then I went to the service (one of the great things about teaching in the first hour is that I get to attend the second service, and there's no danger of me sleeping in and skipping it). Galen's sermon was about mindfulness - about making every hour of our lives meaningful. It was just great. If you'd like to read it, it will be posted on the All Souls website in a couple of days.
After coffee hour, I continued the anti-racist theme and went to a dialogue about how we can make our congregation more inclusive and ethnically diverse. Very interesting, and I'm happy to see the Board of Trustees at this white, Upper East Side church making an effort in some way to branch out.
After that, I went downtown to Soho for a Church of Craft meeting. I haven't made it to one of these for a year, and it was so wonderful. I mainly talked to the other knitters there, but it was very inspiring for me to be around all the crafts. In fact, it reminded me about my dream to open a store that would feature all kinds of crafts (sort of like an A.C. Moore or a Michael's, but more homey, less corporate), with space for classes and a gallery and/or some kind of consignment shop. This idea came to me last year when I was in a particularly creative and open phase, either in a dream or maybe just in the middle of the night. I've always been into all kinds of crafts (mostly fiber and paper, but I'm open), although I've focused more and more on knitting. Well, it's a pie-in-the-sky dream, but who knows? Anything can happen.
Oh, and I also finished the alpaca scarf at the Church of Craft meeting. That was cool. And people seemed to like it (and the hat, which I brought just to show off), and many encouraged my plan to submit them to Knitty. Yay! It's also very gratifying to me to be able to finish a scarf in a little over 24 hours, since it gives me hope that one day when I devote myself full-time to knitting and designing, I'll actually be able to finish things in a timely manner.
So that's my fabulous day. And it's not even 9pm - still plenty of knitting/TV vegging time left! Woo hoo!
I'll leave you with this (perhaps overly long) story about how I learned to knit, which has been a discussion on the Upper West Side Knitters e-mail list the last couple of days. I'll understand if you don't read the whole thing. (But hey, you made it this far...)
Recently I remembered that I actually learned to crochet several years before I learned to knit - maybe I was around 10 - and kept crocheting circles (doilies? potholders? I don't think they ever served any practical purpose, except to amuse me) for about a year or so. But then I apparently lost interest.I learned to knit my senior year in high school for a student-directed one-act play based on an Edith Wharton story, Roman Fever, in which I was playing an older woman who knit throughout the play. I think the director said it was okay if I faked the knitting (although in retrospect, and having watched many non-knitters try to knit onstage, I think that would have been blatently obvious), but I was happy to learn. My best friend knew how to knit (as well as other fiber arts) from her crafty aunt, and she taught me to cast on, knit, and bind off. She never taught me the purl stitch. But I immediately became obsessed, and knit garter stitch scarfs in scratchy (but beautiful) wool for about a year. Katie doesn't knit anymore, butI've made several things for her babies to thank her.
My mom thought that I should learn how to knit something other than scarves, so she bought me knitting lessons from a woman we knew who had donated them to our church auction. She taught me, in the space of a few hours, to knit in the continental style, purl, and read a pattern. We went to a yarn shop and I chose a simple pullover pattern in a sport-weight wool. I worked on it on and off for many months (maybe a year?) and by the time it was finished, I was not knitting in the same gauge I'd started in. (My first lesson in checking gauge as I went along!) The sleeves and cowl were way too large. A couple years ago I frogged that sweater, but haven't recycled the yarn yet - I should, it's nice yarn.
My second sweater was also inauspicious - a green cardigan with bobbles. I don't wear green - what was I thinking?! But sometime during college I discovered Fair Isle via Zilbourg's Fine & Fanciful hats book, and cables via Starmore's Aran knitting.
A couple months after I met my husband in 2000 I got on a real knitting kick - in fact, knitting him a sweater from Aran Knitting (before we were engaged, refuting the dreaded curse, although does it count if I didn't finish it until after we were engaged?) and I haven't had a dry spell since. I can't remember going longer than 24 hours without knitting since somewhere around October 2000. And now it's hard for me to imagine that I ever will.
But who knows - never say never...
That's my story (and I'm sticking to it!)
it's a great story!
Posted by: athena | October 14, 2003 at 01:27 PM