Nick and I about 1983. He's wearing my favorite creation of all time...The Elephant Sweater! The brown yarn was from Delaine Woolen Mills (I think). You bought single-ply cones in your choice of colors and, through the magic of the special shipping box, which had shelves with holes in them on which you stacked the cones, then pulled all of the plies together through a hole in the top of the box and Voila! (or, "Viola!" as I see it spelled so often online...who IS this Viola, and why is she always coming around?) two-ply yarn or three-ply or four-ply or...well, you get the picture!
I am wearing a store-bought sweater, probably a birthday or Christmas gift from my mom. I think I still have it somewhere. Ahh, that hair! Those glasses! That makeup! Ooh-la-la, it was indeed the eighties! Wish I was still that thin...

I feel like I'm talking to myself...oh, wait, I am...

So I guess I'll talk about knitting. I first learned when I was really, really young. Like, so small I can picture my little legs sticking straight out on the couch as I sat beside my sister, or maybe my mom, can't remember. Anyway, it was probably a scarf. The first project is always a scarf, isn't it? Destined to be tossed aside in a tangle after six misshapen rows, remaining uncompleted and unloved until, finally, someone needs the yarn for something else and unravels it, or maybe just pitches the whole snarled mess. The working yarn is clutched in the grip of death, wrapped around the tip of the needle...Tink!...Scrape!...Rats, I dropped it! And the gauge on those first scarves, nearing 10 stitches to the inch in cheap Red Heart acrylic worsted on the obligatory size ten needles, the yarn is pulled so tightly.

Years passed. Lots of years. It's 1979 and I'm pregnant for our son, Nick, although in these days before non-emergency ultrasounds, we didn't know he was Nick, or even that he was a boy. I think I knitted something for him. I know my mom did--two sweaters, one pink and one blue, just in case (remember, no ultrasound). As he grew, I knitted and crocheted for him: sweaters, hats, mittens, slippers, and yes, even a scarf! Lots of sweaters. One new sweater for each of his first few years in school, and I have the school pictures to prove it.

Then tragedy struck...well, ok, I'm being overly dramatic. It wasn't a tragedy so much as a new phase...Nick was now too cool to wear hand-knitted sweaters with elephants or duckies or yellow pencils or crayons on the front. Go figure! Plus, I went to work full time and had no spare moments for knitting any more. So no knitting for many years.

And that's where I'll leave it for today.