I learned to knit about six years ago. My best friend of 23 years taught me one night while I was visiting her Washington home. Bonnie is a superwoman. She is one of those people who do more in the first two hours after dawn than I do in a week. She raises Icelandic sheep, fleeces them, cleans and cards her own wool and even spins yarn. She does all this on top of her 50 hour a week finance job and her two hour commute. I am always amazed at how she fills her days and she always tells me “It’s easy!” When she presented the idea of learning to knit I was a bit skeptical. Her standards for “easy” were much different than mine. With in fifteen minutes of picking up a pair of needles, I was knitting and purling. Shockingly it was easy.

Knitting has become something that I do year round. I knit while watching tv, listening to audio books, on road trips, even on plane flights. There is something relaxing in the monotonous clicking of the needles, the mental zen recitation of “knit, knit, knit, knit, purl, purl, purl, purl, knit, knit, knit, knit…” Three years ago I inherited then adopted cats. For two of them my knitting supplies are just more things that the humans have left in their home. For the third, it is an obsession. She cannot allow the balls of yarn to rest peacefully. She will stalk them from all corners of the house. When I try to hide the yarn or put it up somewhere, she will scale furniture to get at it. Sometimes she is successful in a day, others I will start to relax thinking that I have finally outwitted her. Eventually though, I will come home (or wake up to) yarn wrapped around the house and the cat as she yawls and purrs in kitty ecstasy.

Thursday night, with Tay, I introduced knitting to others. It was a very basic session covering “casting on”, Knit and Purl stitches, and “binding off”. Everyone left with a small project, a ball of yarn and a pair of needles. They also left with a new skill that with practice can become a life long hobby. Visions of the scarves, hats, even sweaters and skirts that will someday come off those needles filled my mind as we left.