Thursday, February 10, 2011

If your knitting group thinks you're crazy...

  Over the years my knitting and I have gotten our fair share of funny looks.  Recently, there was the disbelief of a coworker when told that I knit every day.  Who could forget the incredulity of a new boyfriend when I took out sticks and string at a minor league baseball game (he married me anyway).  Nothing though can match the stunned silence of the sip & knit group once they saw my journal.

  There we were, innocently discussing how we kept track of the details/errata/mistakes that inevitably come up with knitting a garment.  Some jot down notes on a pattern, some scribble them on scrap paper and tuck them into a book.  Not I, each night I write down the day’s progress in a leather bound journal, coded in different colored inks to correspond to each project.  (Do you hear that?  It’s scrape of chairs backing away from the table).



  At its heart, this stems from a work related duty to write everything down.  Documentation is one of the hallmarks of fine nursing, we write down everything and anything that happens over the course of a day.  What did your patient’s skin/hair/mouth look like?  What medication did they take? When? How much? What route?  Nurse’s are told from day one that “If it is not written down, it didn’t happen”. 

  Until recently I believed that this extended to only my professional life.  Knitting was something carefree, relaxed, free-flowing.  Then in late December my husband’s Aunt Julie called to thank me for the wonderful hand-knit gloves we gave her for Christmas.  The green was beautiful, the cables so intricate, and I had absolutely no memory of knitting them.  None.

  I racked my brain for days.  What was this project?  When did it happen?  5 days later my husband reminded me that his family uses the terms gloves and mittens interchangeably.  (This has become a learn to love quality.  I grew up in northern New England, residents of balmy Ohio play fast and loose labeling their winter gear)  I ran to the finished object pile, sure enough the green mittens made last September were not there.  Puzzle solved, but I was now convinced:

  If not written down, how do you know the knitting ever happened?

2 comments:

  1. It can all be kind of a blur eh? LOL!

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  2. LOL! I don't think you're crazy. It makes perfect sense to me. In fact, you've inspired me to start my own notebook! It's not a leather-bound journal, but I've adopted your "crazy" method, and I love it - thanks! Now there will be TWO crazy people at knitting group. ;-)

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