Yarn stores and such

So here's the thing, sometimes I get bored. I know I know, shocking, right? Anyway, when I get bored I knit. Well, usually I knit just in general. But when I'm bored I do it more. When I first moved to Texas, I was bored a lot. So I taught my step-siblings to knit. All three of them. The oldest boy and the girl got bored and quit pretty soon, but the 9 year old boy took a real shining to it. I had assumed he'd get bored soonish, so I had just given him a cheap red acrylic I had on hand. Well, he kept at it. Every time he was here since the first day he just kept on at it. I finally took him to the LYS. Primarily because once he found out it existed, he begged for a week. He had a great time. There were a few moments in time where I probably could have traded him for a nice sweater. I was sorely tempted.

He was actually the only child I saw there who was actually knitting. There was another little boy who was picking out yarn for a hat, but my step-brother was the only one who was actually sitting and knitting and looking at patterns he could make. He also helped me pick out yarn for my mother's birthday present. So I came up with a pretty cool scarf pattern I'll be posting as soon as my camera is working again. It's a scarf, because my mother actually went to Denver last week and didn't bring any winter clothes at all. She's brilliant.

So, what's all this about then?

I first learned to knit when I was in elementary school. My grandmother taught my cousin and I about the same time. I had the common beginners issue that I knit far too tight, I dropped stitches, and could never figure out how to do stockinette (on purpose). I knit about 3 rows before deciding enough was enough and calling it quits. In fact, I didn't pick up a pair of needles once between the ages of 11 and 17. The tell-tale sign, though, was that I still loved yarn. When we would go to Wal-Mart, I could spend aaaaaages in the craft section looking at all the pretty fabrics and beads and....yarn. Just feeling it and looking at the colors.

When I was in high school, there was a brief fad towards knitting and so I went out and bought myself a skein of tacky acrylic pastel rainbow colored sport weight and a set of circulars. First, I only half remembered how to cast on and the only method I could remember left a long tail of yarn after I knit a row. Second, I couldn't make my circulars make a circle. I can't really explain how or why this happened, but I ended up with basically a strip of fabric with a single strand of yarn connecting one end to the other and I couldn't make the two ends come together to save myself. I also couldn't remember how to cast off, so I just threaded the end of the yarn through my loops and called it quits.

Finally, my senior year, I fell in with some freshman goth girls during a clothing design class. One of them knit scarves constantly. Suddenly, it clicked. I went out and bought myself a skein of fuzzy black yarn, a pair of size 9s, and I made myself a fantastically long garter stitch scarf. I loved it. It had finally clicked. That year, I made a second scarf of a similar length out of a pink striped baby yarn. Next year, I went to college and made a drop stitch chenille scarf and joined the knitting club. That's when I finally learned to crochet. When I left that school, I found myself floundering a bit and I no longer had any classes to knit in so I stopped for awhile. At the time, all my yarn and needles fit into a large tote bag someone had gotten as a Free Gift with Purchase from Clinique.

Last summer, I was referred to Ravelry and suddenly I became the girl who has an organizer hanging in her closet to hold the yarns, complains about how most commercial knitting bags scream "Grandma Sylvia's Bingo Knit Night" and only buys knitting magazines. I carefully put all my yarn in ziploc baggies with their weight and fiber content written on the front. I started my first projects based on patterns I didn't make up.

I have finally arrived.