So I’m knitting. Nothing out of the ordinary there. I’m making a scarf for a very distinguished older gentleman from church who goes out of his way to be nice to me. There were a few false starts and a made a few changes to the color work motif for this scarf but now I like it. It matches up with the old fellow’s personality quite well. 

So I’m feeling pretty good about myself. I’m feeling quite clever actually. Why shouldn’t I? I’m making something that will surprise and please the recipient and he will (in all likelihood) have no idea how it was crafted.

Except I’m sitting here in my lounge-around-the-house wear. That means a pair of lime green flannel plants, an old stretched out tee and a warm, comfy hoodie with a few bleach stains on the arms. I occasionally put down the yarn and do house work in this hoodie, hence the bleach out spots. Also, I have on a pair of handknit socks on that don’t match anything I’m wearing. My hair needs to be brushed. So do my teeth.

(I found this on tumblr and have no idea who created it. If you do, lemme know! I’d love to give credit.) 

So, yeah. I may be a mysterious and cunning and delightfully wicked crafter but at the moment I look more like a bag lady. However, there was a brief encounter weekend where I looked like the cool-as-ice knitter. It doesn’t happen often! Have to brag about that!

I was giving a lesson to a lady in her 70’s. I’ll call her Dee. She doesn’t drive much anymore so she had a friend bring her. I … don’t know what to call the friend because I forgot her name 15 seconds after we were introduced. I’m bad like that. Dee doesn’t really need “lessons” as much as she needs fixes. Her eyesight isn’t what it used to be. She was there to have a mess-up tinked out and a few dropped stitches put back in their proper places. She also needed me to do a pick-up and knit along the edge of a stole and then add a lace finish.

It should have been a nice little visit, but the friend was pretty irritable. She didn’t knit, didn’t understand what was taking so long, and didn’t really see what the point of it all was anyway. She’d asked Dee “so what are you making there?” at least three times. I get the Knitting-is-for-Grandma attitude from time to time but on this occasion I was getting it from a lady…old enough to be my Grandma.

Hmm.

So when she asked me what I was doing, I told her (in quite the snooty tone):

“Oh, I’m adding a lace edging. It will be Old Shale, a pattern from the Shetland Islands that dates back to the 1800’s.”

Well that impressed the snot out of her. (Yes I know Old Shale is perhaps the easiest of lace patterns. She didn’t!) Her face lightened and her body language changed and she told me that was wonderful. It was wonderful that people still made things in the old way. She asked me how I learned to do these things and how long I’d been knitting. She looked at me with respect.

Ha! I got to be Morticia Addams, however briefly, in at least one person’s eyes. I was still old fashioned but in the cool kind of way. And I didn’t even have to wear a tight black dress or arch my eyebrows or put on flawless make-up or have perfect hair. Ha!

Don’t you just love those moments when a non-knitter realizes that knitting is awesome?