K is for

 K is for knitting, of course!  Hats for the orphans and tea cozies and sweaters and gloves and even (yuck) socks.  I have a dreadful problem with second sock syndrome, and even knitting two at once on the magic loop doesn't lift me past the nuisance value.  I'd rather do gloves, and they are at least as fiddly.  Hats delight me because they're totally mindless and medetative, unless I decide to go silly with them.  I can knit hats in the dark.  And shawls.  The benefit of knitting a shawl in the winter is that it helps keep your lap warm.

 I had a lot of cotton yarn, so I knit up a slew of dishcloths and donated them to a women's shelter.  Cotton dishcloths are machine washable, absorbent, useable as a potholder if dry, and an adequate scrubber of gunk when wet.  And if life is just too damn much, you can fling a wet dishcloth at the refrigerator and do no damage what-so-ever.

 The "Surprise" jacket is a wonder for using up bits and bobs (or "odds and sods" as some of the gals in Oz say) of leftover yarn.  The surprise of the jacket is that, as you knit it, it looks like a bizzarre , mis-shapen mistake and it's not untio you bind off and fold it that the perfect little baby sweater materializes needing only a simple straight seam at the top of the arms.  I have knit dozens of these for the orphanage.  My addiction to taking in leftovers and throw-aways leaves me with lots of little bits of yarn to work into the baby surprise, and they work up SOOO fast!

As with writing, sometimes the creation process takes over, and I wind up with something I did not intend at first.  I was going to make a nice soft bamboo cowl, but as it grew, I realized that it wanted to be something more.  Something - special.  I present, the Ice Queen's Wimple.  Crystal beads around the edges were mandatory.  It also scrunches down around the throat to make a nice cowl.

Knitting is pleasure and therapy, exercise and meditation for me.  The process of creating fabric by interlacing loops of a single string of yarn using nothing more than pointy sticks and human ingenuity is an awesome act of magic every time it happens.  As I knit, sometimes I think of women just like me down through history who have made the socks and sweaters for their family, washed and spun the wool, created and innovated and discovered new ways to make the task lighter and more entertaining.  Ways to show off their expertise to other knitters.  Ways to improve the necessary garments to make them fit better, wear longer, look nicer.  Whoever figured out the strap heel was a freaking genius!!  When I knit, I know myself to be in the company of domestic goddesses.  And that includes all my knitting friends!!