Pay It Forward (Because You Can Never Pay It Back)

My knitting buddies are looking out for me at every turn.

I mean, there was the whole wheelchair yarn crawl thing.

And at the Starbucks Knit & Chat it almost came to blows the other day, fighting over who was going to give up their "comfy" chair so I could sit down. This gets a bit embarrassing. Seriously, in the smaller Starbucks, the extra chairs weren't very solid, so it truly did me good to sit in a club chair instead. In the larger store, however, the spare chairs are firm solid wood, so they would be fine. It's like at the SWK Knit & Chat, where I try to get a solid wood chair instead of a folding chair. The solid chair makes a real, measurable difference to how I feel the next morning.*

And speaking of the SWK Knit & Chat, I am well looked after there, too.

Lately, I seem to end up being fed by one of the women, E., who regularly travels from this town to New Hamburg on a Friday night. E., I discovered over the course of many "chats" with her, not only went to high school with my neighbour (the one whose son is good friends with my son) but still keeps in touch.

"Well, I must've parked in front of your house, then!" she said.

"I would think so," I said, "because it's the best parking spot on the street for their house."

So yes, E. sat with us at the Guild meeting last night. Hmm, maybe she's the newest member of our "gang", the troublemakers who want to sit at the back and giggle over our own private jokes. Like casting on my sock yet again and knitting with the tail instead of the working yarn. (Still, I used my new Knit Picks Harmony circs and the magic loop method -- sheer bliss.)

And speaking of the Guild, while I was there I went searching for a specific magazine from 2004 because I had seen a pattern that I liked. Luck was with me because that issue happened to be in the library. But no sooner had I returned to my chair with my find, when along comes my long-time knitting buddy Lyz with the book Modular Knits. She had signed it out for the summer, and promptly gave it to me because it contains instructions for knitting modular triangles (similar to the ones I found on the web here when I did my research).



The Guild meeting was great last night. We got to see Sally Melville and her daughter talking about their new book, Mother-Daughter Knits. Well, Sally gave the talk, but they both did a book-signing during the break. I didn't actually have the cash for Mother-Daughter Knits, but I did pick up a copy of The Knit Stitch and got it signed by Sally.

The real Sally.

Melville.

Not the fake Sally somebody pretends to be when a new member joins the Starbucks Knit & Chat "gang".

Then again, I suppose one of the hallmarks of a good gang is that all the members have nicknames. I mean, we already have Maxine. And Sally. I wonder what my nickname would be?

Oh! I know! My nickname will be Gimp.

Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with my bad hip. I was walking with Lyz to the Guild meeting last night using my cane and this older lady (on her own, probably starved for social contact) came up and said to me out of the blue, "Whuju do to yer leg?"

Unfortunately, I have an inner John Cleese who steps in when I am taken off guard by things like that.

"Pardon me?"

So she repeated the question and I (still offended) sputtered, "I was born with..."

Luckily she took this as a cue to continue talking, "Oh, I thought you mighta done sumthin' to hurt yerself."

I am grateful that Lyz is a more gracious person than I am and she took over the conversation from that point.

Another thing which I am grateful to Lyz for, which ties in to the theme of this post, is that there was more mad mohair giftage of the kind I talked about in my last post. Well, apparently the three-generation stash wasn't quite cleared out, because Lyz gave me a whole other load of mohair-y stuff to play with (enough to make an entire third project, should I so choose -- however, I'm guessing that some of it will end up being passed along again to a worthy cause).

At this point, I'm so far behind in paying back kindness, I think I'm paying it forward.


* When I am better in a few months, I will take great pleasure in ignoring the significance of chairs for the next twenty years.