Day 91: Knit Me a Sweater!

The Sunday after Christmas, I helped throw a baby shower for Boston Lindsay at my parents' house. She is one of the many women in my life that is expecting a baby in the spring.

All of these pregnant friends means lots of baby showers in the months ahead. My mom mentioned months before, “You need to learn how to knit so you can make these new moms some gifts.” I think she was kidding.

I was not. And on Day 91, I made my mom teach me how to knit for the thing that I’ve never done before.

My mom walked back to her room and returned with two knitting needles and some yarn attached to a scarf that she had already started. I told her I didn’t want to knit a scarf. There was a reason for my challenge here: I wanted to knit some booties for Lindsay’s baby. Or a hat.

She looked at me, annoyed.

“I don’t know how to knit booties. But if you don’t know how to knit at all you’re not just going to start with making booties,” she said. “You have to learn the basics.”

Once again, my impatience had reared its ugly head. The learning, the perfecting of skills is just not something that I want to deal with. For knitting. Or for anything, really. I’ve tried a lot of things in my 29 years, but I am a Jack of all trades, master of none. I hate that about myself.

Like most skills, there is a natural order of learning to knitting. Learn the stitches, practice them, and once you've mastered the basics, then you can move on to make booties, or hats, or whatever.

I wanted to sit down, learn to knit, and crank out a few pairs of booties right away. I fully expected to take them to Lindsay before I returned to Atlanta and she went back to Boston.

My mom killed that dream. Instead, I learned to knit and purl on her practice scarf.

My dad, who snapped a few pictures of me trying to tackle these stitches said sarcastically, "Wow, I can't wait to read about this in the blog."

True, knitting does not make for exciting reading, or cool pictures, so I'll do us all a favor and keep this short. I look pretty miserable in this picture, but I'm not. That's just intensity. Knitting intensity.

Expectant moms in my life, you can all rest assured that I'll be consulting your registries for your baby gifts this spring. I don't think I'm going to be knitting any booties anytime soon. But if you'd like a piece of the hideous practice scarf my mom and I have been working on, I think I can make it happen.