(Just a warning, this is a very long post with very few pictures. My feelings will not be hurt if you don’t read this, I promise. :)

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I’ve seen a lot of knit-bloggers posting that long list of techniques where you bold or italicize ones that you’ve done or plan on doing sometime, and while I think it’s a neat idea, I can’t think of a more excruciatingly boring thing to read (sorry bloggers). What do I care if someone has done Fair Isle knitting, or knit with beads? Unless there’s a story behind it or some beautiful (or even not-so-beautiful) photos to go along with it, I honestly couldn’t give a flying rat’s ass. The other thing I’ve seen is that “six random facts about me” meme that’s been floating around, and I find that to be a much more interesting read. However, if you know me, you know that I could never limit myself to six things, or if I did, I’d find some loop-hole where I actually told you eight dozen things about me, but hid it poorly in a numbered list with six headings. So instead, I’m going to give you a brief glimpse into my knitting history. Or at least I’ll try to make it brief… we all know I get sometimes.

The Early Years
I honestly don’t remember when I started knitting. Growing up in a fiber-friendly household with a mother who knits and has been knitting since about as long as she can remember, knitting and yarn stashes and knitted Christmas gifts under the tree were never strangers to me. I remember a few occasions when my mother would sit me and my brother down with some cheap acrylic and try to teach us the basic techniques. It never really took, though, when I was a little kid. I have much clearer memories of going to yarn stores. One particularly clear memory is of a trip to a yarn store in Brighton, MI, I believe… I was young enough that I have no idea what this yarn store was, but I remember it was a quick trip. Mom just had to run in and get something, and I was bored out of my mind. The only real project that I can remember from “the early years” (I don’t even remember how old I was when I knit it) was a teddy bear sweater, knit out of this maroon acrylic. And I don’t think I even did the finishing myself - I’m sure mom sewed all the pieces together. And just like that, the knitting was abandoned. It wasn’t until after we moved to Alabama in 1993 that I really started to appreciate trips to yarn stores.

When we first moved to Huntsville, there was a small yarn shop in town that had been open for a million years, owned by these very wonderfully sweet old women. It wasn’t too far from our house, in a sort of ritzy, artsy shopping center. I don’t even remember the name of the shop (though I’m sure Mom could tell you). It was there that mom bought me my first yarn. Not scraps or “learning yarn” from her stash, but my own yarn. I was excited, and I had a hell of a time picking out just the right colors. What those colors were, I couldn’t tell you - I think one was a pale lavender, but… all I remember was the feeling of excitement of starting something new and having my very own yarn. I don’t even remember what the yarn was earmarked for - I’m sure I never finished it. Sadly, that store closed within a year of our moving to Alabama. And for a time, we were without a LYS.

Then another woman came along and opened up a new store. This store was, for a while, a favorite hang-out of ours, if only because there was lots of yarn and knitting notions all around. It wasn’t a very large store, though, and the owner didn’t always stock the things Mom wanted to see. Eventually, that store closed, and Mom pulled together the resources to open her own store.

The Yarn Expressions Years
When I was in 8th grade, twelve years ago, two years after we’d move to Alabama, Mom opened Yarn Expressions. When it first opened, I was still not really a knitter. I think I’d probably dabbled in it, but I honestly can’t bring to mind a single item that I, myself, had knit at that point. The opening of the store was a huge thing for me, though. I was spending more and more of my time surrounded not only by yarn (because, let’s face it - I’ve always been surrounded by yarn - Mom’s got more yarn in her stash than she does in the store itself), but also knitters other than Mom. And it wasn’t too terribly long after the store opened that I set about working on my first real project. It was a simple stockinette pullover with rolled edges, and the yarn was Sirdar Denim Tweed DK in a tweedy moss green. I think I got about half-way done with the front before I called it quits and retired it to UFO status. I stumbled upon it a few years ago, as I was cleaning out my room at my parents’ house when I was in the process of officially moving out. I’m not sure what I did with it (I hadn’t even frogged the sweater pieces), but the yarn wasn’t exactly usable anymore - I found tons of holes in the knit pieces, and the yarn was full of breaks - I guess that 15% wool was enough for the moths.

Despite the actual process of knitting being unable to hold my attention, I was still drawn to the store. I spent a lot of time hanging out there, meeting Mom’s customers, oohing and ahhing over the projects that her employees were working on, and drooling over the newest shipment of whatever yarn had just come in. And honestly, I think it was the Koigu that did me in. Mom had Koigu early. Before Koigu was the hottest thing on the block. Before “Koigu” was synonymous with “beautiful hand-knit socks.” Before hand-knit socks were all the rage. I saw the Koigu, and it put me into a sort of a trance. And I saw the Oriental Jacket, and I knew I had to learn to knit. No, I knew I knew how to knit. I knew I could knit. No, I had to become a Knitter. Capital K. The Koigu did me in.

Well, Mom wasn’t going to let me tackle a project like the Oriental Jacket when I couldn’t even bring myself to finish a DK-weight sweater in simple stockinette stitch. She promised me (though she doesn’t remember this) that after I had learned a bit more and progressed to the point where I could, oh, say, finish a sweater, she’d let me start it. She even promised that she’d buy me the yarn and the pattern. I was probably a senior in high school or a freshman in college at that point. And, well… I let it sit. I didn’t do anything about it. I’d still drool over yarn every time I went into the store, but I didn’t pick up any needles and start doing anything about it. I just let my mind wander to this or that project that I knew I was going to make one day. A mental queue of yarns and patterns that I was sure I’d end up making… one day. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I actually started knitting for real.

The College Years
One of the great ironies of my knitting history is that I didn’t start knitting until I was no longer living within a five-minute drive of my mom’s yarn store. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I finally started knitting for real. Still eyeing that Oriental Jacket, I decided to practice knitting with fingering-weight yarn. Mom pulled out a set of dpns and some Lorna’s Laces, and armed with her good friend and employee, Jill, as back-up, she taught me to knit socks. (You wouldn’t think an accomplished knitter and teacher like my mom would need back-up for teaching a 20-year-old how to knit a pair of socks, but you’d be wrong. Mom remembered what it was like to try to teach me to drive, and she decided some back-up, however unnecessary it might end up being, was still a good idea, just in case. And she was probably right. I was pretty hard-headed then.)

It took me about six months to knit that first pair of socks, and I finished it in the wee hours the night before I was flying to Japan to study abroad. Mom offered to finish them for me so I could get some sleep, but I refused - I was going to finish them, and I was going to finish them before I got on that plane, come hell or high water. It was a 14-hour flight - I could sleep then (and I did). So, armed with a freshly-Kitchenered pair of socks that were way too huge for anyone smaller than Hagrid, and a whole slew of new yarns to knit on while I was studying abroad, I flew out to Japan. And I sorta stopped knitting again. I knit one pair of socks in the four months that I was there, and they were nearly as much of a failure as the first pair sizse-wise - the circumference was too large and the foot was too short. On both of them. (I had - and still have, to a degree - this weird sense of symmetry, where even if one doesn’t fit, the other one has to match it, even if it means making that one too small, too. And I was totally against ripping back and making them the right size - once it was knit, it stayed knit, no matter if it wasn’t the right size.)

My first two pairs of socks, looking a bit ragged at this point (because, despite their size, they are worn frequently)

And then the knitting stopped again. For a long time. I still had all this sock yarn I’d bought to take with me to Japan, and in fact, some of it I still have in my stash to this day. Take these two skeins of Lorna’s Laces in Neon, and this Koigu in a colorway that I don’t even remember:

The Era of the Infamous Lone Sock
I started knitting again for the umpteenth time in October of my junior year of college. My friends and I were doing a Secret Santa gift exchange for Christmas, to defray costs, and I drew my friend Hans. I decided to knit him a pair of socks. Shortly after the drawing, I started taking this drug for depression, and it royally fucked me up. For three weeks, I was jittery, anxious, and highly prone to violent, angry mood swings. I could barely go to class or even have a civil conversation with anyone. So I holed myself away and knit like a mad woman. This drug (Effexor XR) had me feeling like electricity was pulsing through my entire body, and I was more fidgety than I’ve ever been in my life. Knitting was the only thing that I could do - I had to keep my hands busy, moving constantly, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything very well. Knitting was perfect. And in those three weeks, I knit 1 3/4 socks. And then, just as the doctor had told me it would, the drug stopped making me crazy and started to work its anti-depression magic. And just like that, I stopped knitting, once again.

Come Christmas time, I hadn’t finished the socks. I wrapped up the one finished sock and gave it to Hans at our gift exchange party, but immediately took it back, telling him I needed it to measure the second sock by, and I promised him he’d have his sock by the time we all came back after New Years. And that 3/4 of a sock stayed unfinished for three more years. In those three years, I graduated college, and moved to North Carolina. Hans even moved to North Carolina (he really wanted those socks). (Actually, he really wanted to attend Duke for graduate school, but it sounds funnier if you say he just wanted the damn socks he had been promised three years ago.) When I moved, I even brought a whole stash of yarn with me to make a gazillion new socks and sweaters, telling myself I’d knit them. But that sock (and Hans) plagued me. Constantly.

The “lone sock” became a gag over the years. For Christmas, he once gave me several single socks (eventually followed up by their mates), and Mom once mailed me a single knitted sock (which, also, was eventually followed up by its mate). People still laugh about it, but I did finish that sock. Hans got his pair of socks at Christmas 2004, three years after I’d started knitting them.

Since then, I’ve been knitting pretty consistently. Lots of socks, a few sweaters, a scarf or a hat here and there… But the point is, after years of on-again-off-again behavior, I’m finally what I would consider a Knitter. Now to dig out that Oriental Jacket pattern from the new Painter’s Palette book, destash some of my Koigu, and get to work on that project I’ve been planning for years.