A Most Interesting Arrangement.

A friend asked me to teach them how to knit. At first, I was skeptical because I had been asked before and I knew that particular person had zero interest in actually learning. But the new friend, really wanted to learn. So I brought my free size 8's from the NYC/Yarn Harlot gathering, nice purple wool, (when I first acquired it, it smelt like fruit loops, the cereal.) and a few other things. I showed - get this - him how to long tail cast on, how to knit and purl and I handed him the needles. I have to tell you, I was extremely impressed with him. Naturally his knit stitches were much tighter than his purl, but we knit for about two hours, and I had him knitting and purling entire rows. The stitches were even and albeit tight, but even and consistent. Much more than I could have said for my first few rows.

I immediately thought of the Yarn Harlot's story of her encounter with a male knitter, how people oohed and awed over his garter stitch scarf, but nobody said a word about her extremely intricate shawl.

His end of the arrangement is to teach me how to inline skate. He taught me last night, and said I did really well. After that we ate dinner and headed over to Barnes & Noble where I parked my ass in front of the knitting section, and came away with two books:

The Secret Life of a Knitter, by the Yarn Harlot and Spin to Knit by Shannon Okey.

I haven't had the time to look or even afford the Spin to Knit book, so when I saw it last night I grabbed it. The Yarn Harlot book was a bit of an impulse buy but I wanted it, because I'm secretly developing a major girl-crush on her.

I knit in Barnes & Noble but the guy-friend wasn't up to knitting in public and I wasn't about to force him. Perhaps later today I'll have him knit some more, it depends if our schedules mesh or not.

I'm going to try and work on my sweater but I'm just slightly nervous about counting and having a potato sack as a sweater. A really nice, green woolen, semi-expensive potato sack.