In Which I Fall In With a Bad Crowd

It's official.

We are a gang. A posse. A bunch of bad dudes.

The Knitters of the Friday Knit & Chat.

We scare people. We hang out. We have our territory, and no one else can claim it.

Fear us, people! We have Maxine as our leader.

(Bet you didn't know that just like mild-mannered Clark Kent was actually Superman when he took his glasses off, our Knitting Fairy turns into Maxine when she puts her sunglasses on. Good thing we don't live in Miami. Who knows what would happen if those badass sunglasses met up with Horatio Caine's Sunglasses of Justice. The mind boggles.)

***
There is some precedent for our behaviour, although in England the gang members are a bit older and they seem to favour crochet over knitting.



Young Couple: Oh, well, we sometimes feel we're to blame in some way for what our Gran's become. I mean, she used to be quite happy here until she...she started on the, uh...crochet.

Interviewer: Crochet?

Young Couple: Yeah. Now she can't do without it. Twenty balls of wool a day, sometimes. If she can't get the wool, she gets violent. But what can we do about it?

***
So Friday, as you have come to expect from me, was Knit & Chat day. Starbucks was really humming, I'll tell you. I thought I did well, showing up early (before 10:00, if you can imagine!) but there were the Knitting Fairy (my mentor) and Miss Gail (my chocolate-loving nemesis) who had shown up ahead of me. Of course the two earlybirds were already there, that goes without saying, along with our newest member, Ashley's mom, who comes a long way just to torment herself with knitting our afghan squares.

[At Starbucks we met with some COMPETITION for the comfy chairs. But we are a gang. This is our territory. They were no match for us.]

We had pretty much used up the available supply of portable wooden chairs, and still there were some of us standing around with no place to sit and knit. Starbucks was packed, for some reason. The two ladies who had wanted to sit and drink their coffee and read the paper in peace decided to give it up as a lost cause and quickly relinquished their seats when the knitters showed up in such large numbers.

[We are a gang, people! Fear us!]

I think it was when Ashley's mom made her coat into a cushion and actually sat down on one of the side tables that they came to the conclusion that there was no point fighting it out with us -- we were there to stay.

I decided to sit on my pride and take over one of the comfy chairs when it was offered. That allowed me to consult with the Knitting Fairy [AKA Maxine, our fearless leader] and get a damn good start on my next square. I even came up with the strategy for the crazy number of increases we had to do. (We needed to increase a total of 28 stitches on a cast-on of 48, so I suggested knitting 10, then increasing every stitch for 28 stitches, then knitting 10 again. We both did that and it seemed to work.)

We got all the way to row 10* on the chart (so many complex cables -- and they told me this one was supposed to be easy) before I had to pack up and go fetch The Boy from school. Yes, I call my son "The Boy" on my blogs, just like Lyz calls her son that. This predates knowing Lyz, though. It seems like we have more than just knitting in common. Although there's a big age difference between our two boys, their personalities are quite similar.

Anyway, so there I was, nice and early in the school parking lot ready to pick up The Boy. You have to get there early in the winter, or the few spare parking spots (which get to be even fewer from December through March between piles of snow taking up space and then crazy winter parking) are already taken and you have to park on the road -- which I hate, because The Boy is a creature of habit, not very observant, and I can't help but worry when he has to jaywalk across a busy street, especially if he's carrying a baritone horn.

So anyway, there I was, in the parking lot when all of a sudden this person raps on the window of my car. (I'm picturing someone who is angry, there to tell me about how badly I have parked, preventing them somehow from getting into their car, maybe.) So, who do you think it was?

It was my chocolate-loving nemesis, Miss Gail, there with the Knitting Fairy [AKA Maxine, our fearless leader] to invite me along to Shall We Knit for the Friday night Knit & Chat. (I had been lamenting that I wouldn't be able to go because of circumstances that would prevent me -- some of which are self-induced, I admit.) The deal was that instead of heading over to Shall We Knit as soon as they felt like it, they would hang around in town until the coast was clear and I could sneak away from my family. [They are a bad influence, people. I am slipping over to the dark side of gang membership, and I love it.]

So I said I would be free at 5:00. This was after I finally figured out that my friend, despite being a crazy-stalker-lady, was not an actual threat, so I should put the window all the way down to talk to her.

So this is how I got to go on a Friday night crawl and learn the secret hangouts of my new gang of friends. [We are gangsters, people. Fear us!] They showed me a new thrift store, where I bought some yarn. Six balls of discontinued Patons Linen Look, made in France and very similar in style to the Hayfield Ibiza that I love. I almost bought a cookbook, too, but this was a savvy thrift store and they had looked things up on the internet and instead of being $5 this book was priced at $20, a bit too rich for my blood at the time. (Though it was in excellent shape, and would bring $45 if sold online -- not that I wanted to sell it online. I wanted to keep it for myself. I'm just saying.)

At the Knit & Chat I worked on my cardigan. I have cast on the stitches for the button bands and knit about an inch down from there. I am still doing increases, knitting the shoulders I guess. High point of the evening was when a lady at the Knit & Chat who is creating the most awesome Wizard of Oz socks for Karen's contest told me I knit beautifully. The Knitting Fairy has also said much the same thing, once, when she was looking at the work I've done on the cardigan. Must be the bamboo Hiya Hiyas I bought for the project. Well worth it, I'd say!

Fear me, people. I'm a member of a Knitting Gang now, basking in the aura of Maxine, our fearless leader.

You don't know what you're in for.

* I lied. It was row 12.