A knitting librarian...

Just how exactly did I become a librarian?  It is funny the way the world categorizes and stereotypes people, but sometimes you can't fight it and the stereotypes are true.  We even become proud of them.  I didn't start out with a picture in my mind of Marian the Librarian knitting away in her antique rocker surrounded by a lovely collection of Dutch figurines.  It started much slower than that, more of a building up of interests until suddenly one day I saw the complete vision.  I may have been a little shocked by the implications of the vision, but I recognized it so intimately that I passionately embraced it. What?  I am a middle-aged knitting librarian who likes to shop for antiques?  That so totally rocks!

It all started with my unconventional childhood.  Born in 1969, during a time when television was a popular culture craze, my recently divorced mother turned to a legalistic religion that forbid exposure to such worldly practices.  My siblings and I became immediately marginalized with our cultural illiteracy, not to mention very odd style of dress.  There is an entire gap in my knowledge when references are made to The Brady Bunch, David Cassidy, and any number of other favorites of the time.  I never did figure out who JR was and why anyone would want to shoot him, further still, why did the whole world care?  My brother was less effected by the rules of the church than my sister and I due to his being a decade older and not as obvious with the whole dress thing.  In our legalistic faith, a boy could dress like a boy but a girl was required to dress like a pilgrim...not so cool in the 70's.  Also, television was not the only forbidden worldly practice.  There was an interminable list of no-no's which left us with very little to do other than read.  Admittedly, I did not take to the actual process of reading as well as my older sister, but thanks to her, I did fall in love with books.  All summer long I would follow her around begging her to "read to me".  It is a family joke to speak those words with only the nagging whine a six-year old can produce.  A single mom with limited resources couldn't offer much in the way of educational enrichment at the time, except for the public library. My sister would bring home all the best literature and grudgingly share it with me.  She was able to make the stories come to life with her voice!  I was sucked into the world of history and fantasy and teenage angst. It was beautiful and I loved it.

When she wasn't reading aloud to me we sometimes would play "pretend" (something children did a lot more of before video games and television).  My favorites were school, church and library.  Playing school seems standard enough, but not with my sister.  She would juice things up a bit with a difficult student named Rowdy Smitten.  She may have gotten that name from a book but to my young mind she was a creative genius.  Church was fun to play if I got to be the piano player banging away on the lamp table that obligingly converted to a piano while my sister brought down a fire and brimstone sermon on the congregation of stuffed animals.  But my favorite was library.  We would take our entire stack of library books (notice no limit on check-out) and remove all the check-out cards from the back pockets, then proceed to stamp and re-card each one.  Many people still mistakenly think that is all librarians do, check-out and shelve books. Little did I know then, the lifelong effect those moments were having on me, leading me to a fulfilling career in the magical world of books!  Thanks, Mom, for not having a television and thanks, Sis, for reading to me!
 

Lighting of the greens and a knitted mess...

Friday night I took the boys to the local lighting of the greens.  It was a simple affair with the town decorated, a stage for church choirs and Santa hanging out on a park bench.  The boys loved it, although I think they were more excited to see the Chick fil-A cow than Santa.   The highlight of the evening was the village train set lit up with Christmas decorations and all the trains running.  The boys climbed up on a bench and were every bit as glued to the sight as a video game.  Everytime the trains crossed paths they shouted "they're going to crash!"  Nothing could have been more exciting than a fiery crash on the little holiday express.  I did wonder if I might be able to tip the conductor of the remote controls for a minor derailment.  The next great adventure took place at the VFW commemorative cannon enticingly bolted to the ground in the center of the square.  Their faces were glowing as they slipped into a world of pretend, dragging several other willing boys with them into fierce battle, climbing around on the big gun and hiding behind it.  I felt bad for the children whose parents rushed them on from the scene, depriving them of the very rare opportunity to just play.  All in all, the evening was a great success, not at all like my lastest knitting project.

A couple years ago, on my way to NCCAT, I stopped at a wonderful yarn shop in Ashville and bought an exquisite little ball of silk yarn.  The display showed a pattern for a ruffle scarf knit lengthwise.  It was the perfect project for a week long get away.  There are only nine rows but the cast on is enormous.  It seems odd as you are knitting it and you can't see until the end that it really does work.  I was very pleased with the outcome and stashed the pattern for further use.  Well, this week I brought it out again but for an entirely different kind of yarn.  This time I used a bulky alpaca.  The results were disasterous!  It was miles long and looked like a twisted mess of yarn.  Even though it was late last night when I finished it, I had to pull the whole project out and rewind the yarn back into its lovely state of possibility...ready for a second chance as a nice, traditional basic scarf. 

Essay Contest

I decided to extend my Denmark travel blog into a random knitting journal; mostly random thoughts plus a little bit of knitting.  I was super excited today when someone told me they saw that Vanna White was having an essay contest to describe how you learned to knit or taught someone else to knit.  I had already prepared what I was going to say, when I read the rules of 50 words or less.  Fifty words!  Do you realize how hard it is to tell a story in 50 words?  Blogging was invented for people who need 50 words to say hello, but I relished the challenge and managed to condense the following story into 49 words.  (I thought I had an exact 50, but had to change everything when I realized there is no hyphen in yarn over!)

This essay is really more about my sister than about learning to knit, although she is responsible for my current obsession with knitting and fiber.  It all started several years ago when, as a homeschooling mom, she attended a knitting workshop that extolled all the educational benefits of knitting for children.  Apparently, she had some difficulty in the session but walked out with a determination to master the skill.  Now, a word about my sister and determination.  This is the same person who sat for hours on a sandy beach painstakingly removing every knot from a horribly twisted kite string.  I know for a fact that I would have trashed the thing without a second thought and gone happily on to the next event, but challenge has never been my forte.  My ex-husband used to say that my motto was "If it is hard, give up".  That was two husbands ago and I have now given up on marriage.  Anyway, my sister thus began a journey to teach herself to knit.  This was before the days of youtube videos and Stitch n'Bitch, but she became one of the most exquisite knitters I have ever known.  I admired her work so much that on a visit from Ohio, she took me to Michael's and bought me a pair of size 8 needles, some worsted weight yarn and a knitting kit with stitch holders, stitch markers, a yarn needle and other little accessories.  (I didn't know until later that she herself didn't own anything so cool as that.  It is just like her to put me first!) She taught me the basics of the knit stitch and I was off to make a 5 ft garter stitch scarf that I gave her as a Christmas present the following year.  I didn't pick up the needles again until, years later, I found myself in the hospital on long term bedrest with my third child.  It was the perfect time.  I picked up the yarn and called my sister.  From her home in Ohio to my hospital bed in North Carolina, she gently guided me every step of the way, through casting on to yarn overs (no hyphen).  Since then, knitting has become my passion.  Thank you, my dear sweet sister for teaching me!

Next time I will tell you about how she inspired me to become a librarian...