Thursday, August 07, 2014

What I Learned From Yarn

There's something really, truly relaxing to me about yarn.

I'm not certain if it's the feeling of the yarn gliding through my fingers, or the fact that it takes only a tiny amount of time to make something really cute with yarn, or if it's some more transcendental connection I have to sheep - but whatever it is - I really dig yarn.

Occasionally I will knit or crochet something.  Usually something small.  I tend to grip needles and hooks way too tightly and my hands end up going to sleep, so, usually I stick to other yarn-using activities.

Like pom poms.

Or wreaths.

I first started my yarn adoration in 1985 when a college friend (and fellow fraternity little sister), Michelle, taught me to knit.  We had been cast as jury members in the school's production of Inherit the Wind.  The production was done in the round, so most of us weren't able to leave our places at all during the show.  The two of us were elderly women who sat in seats and knitted, commenting from time-to-time on the happenings of the trial which was the play.  So, you can imagine, after many weeks of practice and several weeks of performances, I had quite a number of knitting hours under my belt.

I share my somewhat-lengthy yarn adoration period with you so that you might better feel the idiocy in what I did today.

After nearly 30 years of loving yarn, I still took a skein of yarn, rooted around in the center of it for the loose end and decided not to ball the yarn.  Again - as thousands of times before - I somehow thought that the outcome would be different.  That I'd somehow mange to use the entire skein, pulling from the inside without getting it all knotted.

Of course - as usual - I was wrong.  About 30 minutes into my pom pom making frenzy, I was faced with an ugly, knotted, tangled, twisted mess.

Without hesitation, frustration or even a sigh, I slowly began un-knotting, un-tangling and un-twisting as I wind the remaining yarn into a ball.


This is more than an hour into the balling.


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