Twenty years ago I was staying home with baby Alex and feeling lonely and worried. One day in the early spring we walked over to a neighborhood park. Coincidentally, another neighborhood family had also decided to check out the park that evening. We chatted. The phone rang the next day and it was Beth, inviting me over for lunch.
She had three kids at that point, and her oldest was six. I thought this made her a font of parenting wisdom, having a child who had attained the lofty age of six. She was so friendly and hospitable, in a season when I was really grateful for a friend and for her hospitality.
I've mentioned Beth before: when her oldest daughter came to college at Gladlyville U. (I love that post), when we went to the daughter's wedding. In December the girl I first met as a kindergartner had a baby of her own.
So of course I had to knit something. How could I not knit something? But December was a bad month, and the hat I cast on in haste went awry. I've been having one of those weird brain loops going since I took them dinner after the baby arrived: I told her I was knitting something blue for the baby but none of the superwash blue is quite right because what if her husband thinks it's a girly kind of blue and even if I don't care much about that I'd hate to knit something that never gets worn so maybe I should buy more yarn but NO I have too much yarn already and maybe I should pick a different color but I told her I was knitting something blue for the baby but...did you notice we're back at the beginning again?
PHEW, aren't you glad you don't live inside my brain? Picture me like Wile E. Coyote with my Acme dynamite, sneaking over to the mental train tracks where that particular café car runs (that would be the all-you-can-eat Buffet of Crazy) and boldly blowing them up. I made a decision, finally: it is spring. Therefore I will knit something pretty and green. It will be a sweater, even though the weather is getting warm, because out-of-control air conditioning means that cotton sweaters are useful in the warm months too. It will be the Ann Norling baby sweater I have made umpteen times, because it is fast and straightforward and it makes me happy. (Usually.)
Oops, I was going to angle the picture so you could see the battered hard-copy sweater pattern, but instead you can only see a mysterious blue region in the picture. That's the pattern; it is battered. Good thing we have already established that no one reads this blog for the photography. I cast on Sunday evening, and I am hopeful that I can join up the sleeves and body tomorrow. It's a little strange to see how much less surface area a baby has vs. an adult.
My recent knitting projects have all required more concentration than this one does, and it's been unexpectedly pleasant to knit something brainless. Pete asked if I would read the Harry Potter series aloud to him and Stella; we are five chapters in. The copy of Philosopher's Stone purchased in an Edinburgh book shop in 1998 is somewhat the worse for wear. I just bought A Murder For Her Majesty after Lissa Wiley reminded me of its existence, and I think we'll break between Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets for a visit to York Minster. This should be fun: pleasant knitting + pleasant reading + enthusiastic listeners.
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