My Prince

Knitting has done a lot for me in the 3 short years I have been working with it.  It gives me occupation, it's incredibly practical, it's a powerful reminder of one of my favorite truths: that little things matter, and most importantly it settles my ever-present anxiety. 

But Chris might have a slightly different perspective.  I think he likes the knitting, he certainly likes the socks, and I think he much prefers the mellowing effect it has on my, shall we say, concentrated temperament.  But I think he finds himself baffled by the presence of so much yarn.  Yarn everywhere.  Yarn stashed in a big bin in the closet, on the shelf, in the desk and occasionally left out just to rub like a good-luck-inducing charm on shelves or the dresser. 

And it might just be my own obsessive personality, but I have a tendency to talk projects with him.  I did the same thing in graduate school, when I was working on a complicated analysis, I would sit at his feet and talk the entire idea out, making notes and flagging quotes to use and he would just look at me with this bemused expression the entire time.  I still do this occasionally (though it's now in the car when we're going somewhere, and it usually involves minutiae from a novel I've read half a dozen times but only recently noticed).  And now I talk through knitting projects with him, yes, even his traditional Christmas socks.  I'm starting to wonder if he's not so crazy about this habit, since he specifically asked that his Christmas socks this year actually be a SURPRISE.

I've resisted buying a swift, partly because I'm cheap and partly because we have no where for it to live.  So when I need to wind hanks of yarn into smoothly, tangle-free balls, he usually holds the hanks for me and we have a nice chat while I wind the yarn.

So I spent the bulk of last Saturday winding balls for upcoming projects so that I could shift seamlessly between them when I felt like it.  The first ball (a charcoal grey alpaca that I've had for two years) I draped around a chair and wound while Chris was at work on Friday night.  Saturday morning he held the pinky-lavender wool blend (the Boy helped) while I wound it.  But then on Saturday afternoon he was watching a movie and he worked so hard all week that I didn't want to ask him to help me, so I laid out the hank of navy blue merino wool and started to wind it up.

Now, I love wool.  Hands down it's my favorite yarn to work with.  But wool sticks to itself, that's why it shrinks in the wash.  So as I was winding, the wool was sticking to itself and NOT staying in the nice wide circle I had laid it out in.  After about an hour, I had a big tangled heap of navy yarn.  And by big, I mean it looked like a big plate of navy blue spaghetti.  Or hair.  Very curly, tangled messy hair.

It was at this point that I asked for help.  I have since acknowledged that the time to ask for help was at the BEGINNING before making the enormous mess.

So Chris looked at me and said, "Um.  Yeah.  Is there a reason you didn't ask me to help you at the beginning?"  And I said, "You were watching a movie.  I didn't want to interrupt."  And he said, "Dude.  Before making an enormous mess of it, just ASK for help.  Ok?"  At which point we both laughed and agreed that I would ask for help.

And then he did something that I did NOT expect and remain awed by.  He took the whole mess and painstakingly over 2 days, spent SIX HOURS untangling the hank of yarn and winding it into a neat ball.  For me.  Just me.


How did I ever get so lucky?