Scout's Meme

Scout’s Meme:
1. How and when did you learn how to knit/crochet? Who taught you?
2. How has this craft impacted your life? (besides financially!)
3. Pick at least one person to talk about who you have met through the knit-world and why you are thankful to have met them. Feel free to get all mushy.
4. Comment and let me know when you post this in your blog so I can read them all.

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Meet Scout

Scout makes yummy yarn.

1. How and when did you learn to knit/crochet?  Who taught you?

Around about the time I was getting diagnosed with MS, I lost my hands.  Gone.  I couldn't feel them.  I could function ok when I was looking right at them (typing) but I couldn't do my job to the level I prided myself in.  I was a hospital corpsman in a US Navy hospital, in the ER, and I could get blood from a turnip. I could drop an IV in Ghandi.  I specialized in sewing up tattoos after bar fights, leaving them almost as nice as they were when the ink was fresh.  I was good at what I did because I loved it, or maybe it was the other way around, but losing my hands changed a lot of that.

They put me in primary care to work until they knew what the hell was wrong with me.  I became a vital signs technician.  It was just under a month, but I was miserable. I was stumbling, I didn't know why.  And then, one day, after a trip to the nearest naval hospital with an MRI (Okinawa, the Japanese hospitals wouldn't give me IV contrast because of my Japan-induced asthma) I had an answer.  Answers and names are powerful things.  Your name is incredibly important in magical works, it is said that it gives others power over you.  Rumpelstiltskin?  Yup.  Once I knew that it was MS, I was in control again.  And I was going to get my damned hands back.

I had picked up a copy of Stitch N Bitch when I saw it on the shelf at the NEX a few months previous, and I bought some yarn and needles to learn.  It never took off.  Same thing with crochet, which I tried first. This time, however, I was possessed.  I grabbed the book again, and I went to it.  I read the directions harder this time, and I kept reading.  And I met Mr. Continental.  All of a sudden I got it.  And I had to look at my hands anyway, so I was ok there.  I made a swatch!  I did stockinette!  I did increases and decreases!  I made Rockstar.  I figured that I had taken on and conquered Knitty's mellow, so I'd do something tangy next.  I made Boogie. By then I was back in the states (I cast Boogie on in the van to the airport, finished it after a week in the out-processing barracks).  I couldn't afford yarn, so I took what was left over from Boogie and designed my own scarf.  Yeah, even back then I was buying about two skeins too much.  I wouldn't have it any other way.

Being a solitary knitter was a mixed blessing.  When I screwed up I had to figure it out for myself.  The plus side was that since I didn't even figure out that there was a wide community of knitters online until after I got back to the states, I was never fed things like "purling/cabling/intarsia is hard".  I did what I wanted to do.  I chose projects based on what I hadn't done before. Hey, I've been lost in Tokyo.  If you've been lost in Tokyo you can never truly be lost anywhere again.

When it came to crochet, I can thank our good friend Marion (who needs to cut this snowbird shit and just shiver through the winter with the rest of us).  My whole fam-damn-ily crochets.  (that's another reason why I'm so proud of my knitting, but don't tell them, ok?) I tried to teach myself from a book, but I just couldn't. Years later, Marion sat me down and taught me how to make crochet flowers.  That was my Ah-ha moment.  The hook started to feel more normal in my hand, and then I made an amineko.  Yay!

2. How has this craft impacted your life? (besides financially!)

I never realized what a tactile person I was.  I like the feel of things.  I am much more aware of colors and how they go together.  I notice sheep. And goats.  And llamas.  I have yarn in every room of my house except the bathroom and the kitchen.  I have bottles of eucalan in both of those rooms. I turn sweaters inside out, I examine knitwear.  I have walked in directions completely out of my way because the person I was following was wearing a sweater that had a construction that I wanted to crack.  I take weekend trips to yarn stores.  I own 15 tape measures.  I would make a blood sacrifice to Addi if Skacel were but to ask. I am never bored.  I enjoy moments stuck waiting in line or in a waiting room.  I sniff yarn.

When you knit, if you meet a person who knits, you can connect on that and nothing else.  The rest of the relationship is based on so much more, but the spark, yarns and sticks, baby.

Which brings me to

3. Pick at least one person to talk about who you have met through the knit-world and why you are thankful to have met them. Feel free to get all mushy.

I get together regularly with a great group of people on Wednesday nights.  Some of the faces have changed, but the group is always there.  They are my lifeline, and I would probably wither and die without them. 

Two years ago, when I had gotten back from Japan, I found myself working on my yet-to-be-born nephew's, Kadin's, blanket.  It was a really cute intarsia piece with a choo-choo (trains that cute are choos choos, sorry) rolling across the blanket.  It was 9 squares of alternating white and blue.  On the blue squares the train was white and vice versa.  Yeah, you can see a pretty good pic of it here.   I picked it out when I found out my sister was pregnant, and I ran out to get the yarn after hanging up the phone when I found out it was a boy.  It drove me nuts,  I will never use Baby Clouds again, but it was all worth it when I saw his little face snuggle against it.   

I had just discovered that knitters used the internet (who knew?), and I was ready to connect.  "Oh," someone said, "you'll be able to find a group every Wednesday at Barnes and Nobles on South Willow."  One week I went, gigantic blanket in tow, and met the group.  I can't remember everyone who was there, Gina, Donna, Colin were all there.Probably Laurin.  My knitting had become a social tool.  I never had a lot of buddies even in high school.  Let's face it, I'm not an easy person to warm up to.  I'm not nuts about being touched and my sense of humor is a little on the weird side. 

And then there's Chris.  My dear man.  I knit him an Irish Hiking scarf after we had been daiting for awhile.  I used Baby Grande Alpaca (that was his first yarn sticker shock, but that's another story).  I don't know if it was that, or the fact that us knitters are a pushy group (can't be that...)  He had been coming to Barnes and Nobles with me, but leaving us and sitting down with a copy of some all-comprehensive book on motorcycles (this was back with B&N still had the comfy chairs).  One day he decided he was going to learn to knit.  He took my book, a pair of needles, and some Koigu Kersti (baby only gets the good stuff.  He showed me his first swatch and I said "wow, this is great!  Is this my Kersti?") and taught himself to knit.  The only thing I did for him was demonstrate the purl stitch.  He is an amazing technical knitter, favoring cablework, and he is the best damned enabler this gal has seen.  I think it might be part the enabling, and part the fact that when the stablizing force in your life says you should get something, its almost like getting permission.  And absolution.  All in one!

OK, that was fun.  Thank you so much, Scout :)  That was cathartic.

Finished the baby hat, I'll take pictures when the sun is out.  Back to our regularly scheduled knitting.

Comments

[scout]

Thank you for sharing!

[Arleta]

Aww! The choo-choo blankie is adorable, and so is your nephew!
I love that your man knits. I keep trying to get my hubby to learn.

[Marion]

I can't take any credit for your crocheting skills. You quickly took off on your own.
Scout's meme was very interesting and you wrote a remarkable post with it.
I miss the Wednesday evening knitting group. Thank goodness for the net and blogs. I'm always lurking,...in 70 degree weather.

[Yarnophiliac]

I'm not one for meme's myself, but I am so thrilled you chose to answer this one and reveal a little more about your wonderful self. I admire your persistence and courage in face of such a daunting diagnosis. And I am so glad to have found you through our common love of knitting!