Tuesday, July 31, 2007

What Other Knitters Know


The fate of the world depends upon the benevolence of knitters. With a few exceptions, notably Madam Defarge, we tend towards patience, we have thoughtful observations, and we never smuggle anything that can cause extensive harm to the population.

With those words I must also concede the fact we do still smuggle.

Last Saturday evening, I attended a birthday celebration which was a continuance of the previous Thursday festivities. The event was held at the Oregon zoo and included a performance by Portland’s own Pink Martini. It was the perfect location for a lovely concert. The sunset followed by starlight glowed over the audience as the not-to-pungent scent of the elephant compound wafted and intermingled with the smells from picnic baskets and beer. And, as every Portlandian knows, there are few better ways to celebrate a birthday than with a beer, or two. I do not judge.

I hold no shame as I admit my tendencies towards smuggling as I’m certain I’m not the only knitter who uses perfectly good wool to hide things from time to time. Once as a small birthday gift, I smuggled a medium size pizza into a showing of Blade Runner carefully tucked away inside of a pre-felted Lamb’s Pride bag. A few excess skeins on top of a plastic bag covered pizza box and until now, no one except the birthday-girl and me was the wiser.

I also hold no shame as I admit my tendency towards using knitting as a seemingly harmless tool for social dis-interaction as I’m certain I’m not the only knitter who uses perfectly good wool to avoid uncomfortable social situations from time to time.

Let’s visit Thanksgiving, circa 1998:

“Sorry Auntie-so-and-so, I cannot comment on the (imagined) insult Cousin-so-and-so expressed as I was busy counting stitches.”

Fast forward to last Saturday and reflect upon these important facts:

A number 1: I’m tired from working all day.

B number 2: I’d like to relax by knitting on my small Asian farmer while enjoying China Forbes’ dulcet version of “Hey Eugene” without interruption.

C number 3: I need to spend one evening free of the inevitable query, “Hey, are you knitting a Voodoo doll?”

D number 4: I need at least one beer to maintain the universal knitter’s measure of patience.

E number 5: It is not within my budget to purchase three, $7 beers, because I will certainly need more than one beer to maintain the universal knitter’s measure of patience when the inevitable query is hurled with much force towards my ear holes. I’m trying to believe it is not intended as a racial slur.

So, I smuggled beer under a Merino Alpaca sweater inside of my knitting bag because I know no Muggle will venture lower than two inches into knitting. With all of the needles, I suspect they are afraid knitting is communicable.

When the question was popped, I popped the lid off of my frosty brew and responded sweetly with, “Why yes it is. Now may I please have your name and a lock of your hair?”

3 comments:

MonicaPDX said...

Oh LOL... voodoo doll? Grief. Some people - er, most, apparently - have no imagination. This saga is hilarious. And let's hear it for the smuggling!

(ok, did this try to go through twice, or was it the usual Blogger 'we wanna see verification again' thing?)

Tiggywinkle Knits said...

Ok, so I have to confess that I mis-read B Number 2 as "sitting on my Asian farmer" until further down in your post when I had to go back and re-read in order to make sense of the story. But then, I suppose if you had been sitting on an Asian farmer, that would have provoked an entirely different kind of comment from the muggles.

V said...

A most excellent response!

And, um, out of curiosity, what do you carry your knitting in? I need something large enough to hold beer and pizza!