My Shortcomings with Knitting and Purling

From the Daily Post

Starting from a bundled ball of brightly colored yarn, she knits furiously. I hear the taps and clanks of the metal needles as they involuntary greet and depart from one another in swift, repetitive motions. I busy myself with a textbook and look up to see a growing patch of knitted wool grow larger and longer from my roommate’s hands. I dart my eyes back to the technical blabber of the thermodynamic principles of ideal and real solutions and think to myself (and to an imaginary crowd of captivated and sympathetic uber-knitters), “Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you today to admit that I have regrettably been deprived of a certain skill that turns water into wine, that turns 100% acrylic strands of yarn into breathtaking scarves and Pinterest-like hats. Knitting is love, and I now love to knit. Teach me to purl and I shall clothe myself for a lifetime.”

(I’m sorry about that, I’ve just finished watching The Ruling Class with Peter O’Toole and now feel the urge to dress in robes and take my galvanized pressure cooker out of storage.)

So in order to dig myself out of the trenches of society, I needed to knit. I needed to knit like the wind.

All of my female ancestors were counting on me. I marched right into Michaels and bought myself a bundled ball of brightly colored yarn and the largest pair of needles I’ve ever imagined handling. Thankfully I had watched a bunch of Youtube videos for point-by-point advice for knit-wits like me. I was never really taught/urged to knit when I was younger, so knitting wasn’t a hobby that I had ever put forth time and effort into.

I was completely stupefied of even the most basic knitting patterns until I realized the objective of adding a layer of yarn via transferring your work from one needle to the other. “Genius!” When I finally got the hang of it, I was unstoppable. I knitted while listening to news, while filing my tax return, while making coffee for myself in the morning, while thwarting off a burglar in the middle of the night, while taking down the Christmas tree. It was effortless and relaxing, but also satisfying because I figured this scarf would turn out just as I had expected it to. Well, 256 yards later, quite a few missed stitches and rough edges were staring at me; taunting and mocking me. Had I failed? Might I need to scrap this and start all over again?

Yeah, probably. But that’s ok, because I can always just hide this in my drawer and pretend this never happened, right? Right?