Knit Sisters

Before I tell you about Miss A. and our knitting lesson, I would like to take a moment to enlist your aid in persuading my sister to GIVE ME THAT YARN she is spinning. You know, just a word or two in the comments about how you think I could give the yarn a good home and raise it properly to be the best yarn it can be… That would be great.

Because that is really some beautiful handspun.

Meanwhile, my friend Emily and I have had success in finding my wedding gown! I shall be ever grateful to her for helping me sort through the bewildering options. Although I don’t want to destroy the surprise element by showing you the whole dress, here’s a little peek at what the fabric looks like near the hem of the gown:

Emily and the lovely saleswoman, who had an unexpected gravitas and exuded life-wisdom, both endorsed this dress, which has a sweet, vintage quality. The second choice, upon reflection, was just a bit too much in the “hootchie-mama” category: plunging neckline, body-hugging silhouette, va-va-voom trumpet skirt.

The lovely saleswoman said sagely, “It will be your wedding. You will be standing with your husband, greeting people, seeing his family and your family.” Then noting my unimpressive stature, she added quite gravely, “They will be standing over you. You do not want them to see your bosoms.”

An apt point, I thought.

So once the dress was chosen, we could turn back to other things. Like knitting. Emily’s elder daughter, A., had extracted a promise from me when she was three that I would teach her to knit when she was six. To my surprise, she had never forgotten this, which is remarkable given that she’s had to keep it in mind for literally half her life. But such is the power and the allure of knitting!

A. is a very intelligent child, and she has a sensitive and loving soul. She has a poet’s depth of feeling. And she does karate. But she is also a bit of a perfectionist. Her mother was a tiny bit worried that A. might become frustrated in the process of learning to knit and have a slight meltdown. Since people much older and much more experienced than A. have had slight meltdowns over knitting (I mean, just once or twice…nothing major, of course…not the kind of thing that involves screaming and crying and swearing and throwing the knitting in the general direction of the bookshelf where it lands on your copy of the Clinton biography…not that kind of thing), I assured Emily that it would be no problem even if it did happen.

But instead, A. was focused, professional, and completely cool (her full initials are A.C.; just coincidence?). Here we are encountering a slight problem:

Recovering:

And continuing on our merry way:

What was fascinating and wonderful was how much A. improved her knitting skills overnight. Literally. When we came back to it the next day, she had integrated a lot of the hand movements that were awkward for her at first and had gone ahead by proverbial leaps and bounds. It was a delightful thing to witness. I predict a full and productive career for A. as a knitter.

Her younger sister, while still too young to knit, is a dab hand at imitating an airplane:

And a good time was had by all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 10:54 am and is filed under Bridezilla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.