How I Learned to Knit

Good people are good because
they've come to wisdom through failure.
-William Saroyan

Two Sharp Sticks (by far one of my favorite names for a blog) is having a knitaversary party. I love any good excuse for a party, especially a knitting party, . . . and I don't have a whole lot of new knitting content. Did you want to see the Chuppah? It's a little longer than this. Use your imagination. In the meantime, I'm going to go back in my imagination and join in the party with my contribution.

How I Learned to Knit, by Theresa

It was a dark and stormy night in Providence, RI.
Well, it was dark, at least. It was December.
Our heroine was in a moment of crisis.
It was exam period.
I reached deep into my soul and realized that my destiny lay in yarn.
Or I was web-surfing instead of studying biostatistics and somehow the idea struck.
I braved the elements in a daring trek to gather the necessary supplies.
It was cold. And Michael's was in a whole 'nother state. The fact that it was a mere six miles away? A fact of New England life. And there was a Lesiure Arts kits and some ugly acrylic. Yellow.
I struggled all night to master the knit stitch, working against all the forces of nature, including the terrible light in my college dorm room, and the relative dearth of online tutorials in 2000.
This much is true.
I began to knit everywhere.
But what did I make? Garter stitch scarves in Lion Brand Homespun. For an entire year I made absolutely nothing except garter stitch scarves. Until Every. Single. Person. I knew had a scarf.
It was move on, branch out, or die. Basic law of biology.
Biology - what I was not studying the night I learned to knit.
And I found support in the online knitting community. In particular, I discovered Folk Mittens. I made a pair of basic mittens on dpns and was hooked for life.
Out of Kitchen Cotton. And the two mittens are radically different sizes. I've never been so proud of anything I knit. But blogs are so much better than The Knitlist, even though I am forever grateful they introduced me to the idea of knitting with wool.

By the way, I got an "A" on that exam.

Weekend Wallpaper

The love I've known is the love of two people
staring not at each other, but in the same direction.
-Frank Bidart

Seen here, originally from here. A meme. Show the wallpaper on your computer. Easy enough. It's my favorite photo.The beau and I at Joshua Tree National Park last fall. Perhaps we'll do something new and photo-worthy this weekend so you don't get bored of the same one. It's beautiful in San Diego right now, the beau's back from eight days in Texas, and we have a whole 30-something hours off.

For knitting content, here's my old wallpaper, up until about 2 months ago.I'm sure there's something deeply symbolic about the change, but I will say that it did seem a little odd to have all that snow on my computer in San Diego.