Kris Awesome

Normally, during my lunch hour, I do a bit of reading.

However, I had a physical therapy appointment right before work yesterday. Which means that I had knitting in tow, because I wanted to work on a row or two while I was in the waiting room (I don’t like reading in waiting rooms, not a long enough time for me to really get into it and enjoy it.) So after I ate, I spent the remaining half hour knitting in the break room.

The guys I share an office with know that I knit, because the topic of having too many hobbies came up in conversation once. And Steve knows because he read my MySpace profile. But nobody else has any idea, because it hadn’t come up.

So Nutti comes in, looks over at me, then walks past… and then stops, takes a few steps back, and just stares.

Even though I have breasts and occasionally wear skirts, I’m generally regarded as one of the guys. And so I think it’s hard for them to imagine me as a knitter, because they view knitting as a feminine hobby. All of my other hobbies (the ones that they know about, anyway) just reinforce my “one of the boys” image. But knitting? Not so much.

I think I confused the hell out of Nutti.

And I don’t think I’m ever going to hear the end of that.

My sister once asked me how I could knit with “tiny” needles. In response, I asked how she could knit with broomsticks.

Right now I’ve got four active projects. Two are on US2s, one is on US3s, the other is on US4s.

Shimmer is on 8s. I re-swatched for the back the other day, and the needles felt pretty large; I felt clumsy and awkward while handling them. I haven’t actually knit anything on that size needle for awhile. In fact, the largest size I’ve worked with recently was size 5s. (Okay, I did do a swatch on 6s, but I didn’t get very far, so it doesn’t really count.)

In general, I’m just more comfortable working with smaller needles. Some knitters get intimidated by them, but for me it’s the other way around – larger needles scare me, and I avoid them whenever possible.

I think it’s because my muscles are just very accustomed to working with smaller things. For example, I’ve been doing modular origami since I was seven or eight. I’ve probably folded thousands of 1 1/2″ and 2″ square sheets of relatively thin paper. And my fingers are probably happiest when they’re working with laceweight yarn, which isn’t much thicker than the paper I favor.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d started knitting with smaller needles and thinner yarn. I mean, size 10s with worsted weight felt awkward, and I thought that was just because I was still learning. But maybe, just maybe, it would have clicked faster if I’d been working with finer-gauge stuff.

Oh well. At least I’ve finally figured out what I’m most comfortable with.