Done

I finished my sweater!

Last week actually, but there are no pictures as of yet.  I keep pulling it on to walk Molly early in the morning when it's chilly out, and I'm virtually IMPERVIOUS to the cold.  It's at least one full size too big for me, so I may try to shrink it in the wash, but for now, it's like a lovely, wooly blanket with sleeves.

As I was doing the finishing work on it I was thinking back to when I first learned how to knit.

It was 3 years ago, right about this time of the year.  We had only been in Georgia for a few short months, the Boy would go to bed by 6:30 every evening, but Chris wouldn't be home until 9:00 or later (if he had after-work commitments), so I would sit alone in our apartment every night.

After I had the Boy, when I finally realized that THIS mammoth task of Mothering would be my work for the foreseeable future, I sat down and made a list of all the things I wanted to learn, but had been putting off because I was in school and pursuing a career as a lofty, ivory-towered Academic.  Some of them were more involved than others, and thus more expensive than others.  But there were a few that could be done, on my own and on a relatively small budget.

So I took myself to the only craft store in town and bought 1 ball of Patons wool and 1 pair of wooden needles.  I dug out the book my Grandmother had given me the year before and sat on the couch and tried to decipher the rather cryptic instructions.

And FAILED.  I could NOT for the life of me figure out what that woman who wrote the book was talking about!  (I've read enough now to know that there ARE books out there that are written in such a way that it's actually possible to figure out what they want you to do.)

So I did what any smart girl of my generation would do.  I took myself to the internet.

I found a great website with some wonderful tutorials and I sat at my computer, night after night, practice practice practicing until I felt reasonably competent, and then I would rip everything out and start over again.  I didn't have a pattern, I wasn't on Ravelry, I had no real, tangible goal, I just wanted to learn.

And then, as usual, I got sidetracked.  I went down other paths, I learned a few other things.  And then, when we moved back to North Carolina, I went back to knitting.

I made my first pair of socks for my Boy, and then for Christmas, I determined to make Chris' first ever Christmas socks.

And it was that Christmas that I realized that knitting was actually calming me down.  I love Christmas, but I get a little worked up trying to make sure that it's a happy one for Chris and the Boy.  But as I sat on the couch quietly knitting every evening I felt the worry and anxiety and frenetic energy of the season slip quietly away.  Those socks aren't worn much now.  I've learned so much in the 2 years since I knit them that they really aren't very comfortable compared with my more recent endeavors. 



My only regret is that I didn't sit down and learn sooner.