lucid in deutschland

my first knitting projectI really don’t know what has come over me. I’ve taken up knitting. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a fever. I blame it on the size of my head. All of my winter hats feel too big on me. Thus the desire to learn has been waxing ever since I landed in Germany and discovered what a cold place Continental living can be.

Apparently knitting a hat on the first attempt is a little to overzealous. So I’ve started with a scarf, which I now call, the pea green potholder.

My grandmother is the only person who has knitted for me: a sweater vest as a kid with pretty Easter colors and later, when I attended UF, an orange and blue scarf. I had in the back of my mind that knitting is what you do when your feet don’t move any more or worse that it would mark a seal across my forehead that I’ve scooted a notch over towards domestication.

But more and more of my ‘modern’ girlfriends and even men my age, to my surprise, are knitters. And excellent ones at that. On random occasions, it came out that I had no earthly clue how to knit and there was always some wild-spirited someone to say, “Hey, I’ll teach you how, no sweat.”

So after a weekend of trial and error, I discovered knitting isn’t so difficult or mysterious; it doesn’t make a maid out of someone. You do have to have a knack for spacial orientation and a memory of an owl. I keep forgetting how many rows I perled versus knitted. Those who are good with knots would be especially mesmerized with knitting. Now I have this image in my head of a row of fishermen weaving their cast nets and a group of women knitting essential winter hats. There is value in learning to use your hands.