World Wide Knit in Public Day- TOMORROW!

Hello, darlings!

Tomorrow is World Wide Knit in Public Day. Mom and I will be at Santana Row from 1-4PM. We'll be in that center section, in the shade. (Specifically, at the far end of the center island that is across from Ben & Jerry's.)

If you're coming, please bring/wear sunscreen, a chair (if you have one), and snacks. See you there!

Coffee house knitting

Friday night, I was invited by Gretchen to go and see Prezent Tense (sorry, no link) at Mission City Coffee. I’m always looking to expand my horizons- especially if I can knit while I do it.

I packed Henry and the Manifesto, and headed over. Mission City has a little area that they curtain off for (I assume) events with a cover charge. Fine, cool.

Then they turned the lights down. For “ambiance”. We had exactly enough light to sort of see what we were doing- but Gretch was working on a lace shawl, and Henry, as I’ve mentioned before, is a little fussy to knit.

Couple the bad lighting with a little fatigue, and we have an episode of When Knitting Attacks.

I’ve been keeping a page of tick marks to keep track of what row I’m on. Somehow, during all this, 5 + 5 + 3 = 8. Which made the pattern seem… off. Four rows into knitting in the dark, I realize my folly. Couple that with aching hands (because I can’t throw in the dark), it was the time to put my knitting away.

The music was great, very groovy, and the band dealt beautifully with a crackhead fan sitting in the front row.

After the show, Gretch and I were chitchatting by my car, and got to witness the police try to convince the crackhead to get off of a counter at the dry cleaner’s next door. Two very young cops against a wizened crackhead. It was comedy at it’s finest.

So, to summarize, we’ve learned not to assume decent lighting at any sort of coffee house performance, and when in doubt, ask your knitting friends what 5 + 5 + 3 equals.

Sam is Home!

After being overseas all summer, Sam came home last night. I have to admit, I've been so absorbed in my own life (moving, prepping the other house for sale, desperately grasping to the remaining strands of my sanity), that it really doesn't feel like he's been gone all summer.

So, about two weeks ago, he started planning his return home. He asked me to remind my father to re-start his car insurance and told me that he was craving a Ruben sandwich. You can't get a Reuben in Tehran.

So, every subsequent phone call after that ended with "Don't forget to bring me a Ruben when you get me from the airport." There was also a 5 AM phone call in the morning to give me flight details- and remind me to bring the Ruben. And a text message, in the event that I was too asleep to remember.

I worked from home, since his flight was due in around 2 PM. Delayed. Delayed. Delayed. By 5:00 PM, it was due to land at 7:30 PM. I rolled into the airport at EXACTLY 7:30, parked, and waited in the receiving lounge with my eyes glued to the status monitor.

While I am generally a pleasant person, when I am alone in public places I am accosted by perverts and lunatics. It's as if I have a sign on my forehead or something.

(I had an ex-boyfriend tell me it was my own fault for being polite and making eye contact and smiling. It's, evidently, a welcome sign for both the perverts and the lunatics.)

I was prepared this time. As I was leaving my car, I put in my visible headphones and began a Podcast. As soon as I found a place to stand and wait, I pulled my sock out of my purse and began knitting.

Now, I've normally found that the following equation is true:

Knitting in public + alone = Approachable

But last night, it was this:

Knitting in public + alone + headphones = Interesting from a distance.

I am theorizing that this is also true, and will report once I have conclusive empirical evidence:

Knitting in public + alone + headphones + random laughter/mumbling = Crazy knitting lady.

I am calling this the "Golden Rule of Knitting in Public". I have found the system to control being approached based on how I am feeling.

In my peripheral vision, I could see people pointing at my knitting, and in the direct line of my sight, I could see people pointing at my knitting. While I waited (almost 40 minutes) for Sam to get off of the plane and get through customs, I got about three inches (ahem, on size 0's) knit on the cuff of my sock. Not bad for a night's work.

The drive back was nice, Sam and I got to just chit-chat, which I missed. The conversation moved towards politics, as it always has a tendency to with Sam, but it was nice to just be silly (and a little philosophical) with him.

Knit in Public Day!

Yes, the Minions made it out for Knit in Public Day. We even had a Mini-Minion join us!

We chose Santana Row for a number of reasons. Santana Row is this chi-chi, expensive, pretentious, pseudo-Italian little shopping center. Knitting there smacks their indulgent, consumerist ways right in their faces.

It was very public, very in your face. Cynthia and Julie secured AWESOME space in the shade, and everyone had their boba/coffee/tea/Ben & Jerry's. (Ok, if not for all of the socio-political reasons I listed earlier, the presence of a Ben & Jerry's always tilts the balance in favor.)

Nobody approached us, and I only noticed odd looks while I was herding the Mini-Minion and juggling Bobas. I think that was because I was afraid that she would randomly dart into traffic or something, and you could totally tell.

[NOTE: She's a terrific kid who would never run into traffic. In fact, I am much more likely to chase a ball into traffic. She and her little sister are the kind of kids that make it seem like a good idea to have a dozen or so.]

KIP-ping (Knitting In Public)

Some knitters are of the opinion that Knitting In Public (KIPping) is alienating. As in "Oh, it makes you uncomfortable that I'm sitting here knitting during [activity]? I'll just put it away. Is that better?"

I feel that these are the same people who conform in every aspect of their lives in order not to ruffle anyone's feathers. I won't sacrifice my own comfort for the comfort of strangers, and although I have been approached by a number of crazy people when KIPping, that hasn't been enough to stop me.

I knit in the movie theater (sans the dorky/cool light-up needles). In fact, at V for Vendetta, I found that I could do all of the tricky parts of a sock in the theater. Woo! I knit through my "optional" lunch meeting, which spurs conversations of all kinds before/after the main topic of the meeting is discussed. I knit my way through high school and college, finding that it helped me concentrate on the lecture.

Why hasn't it been an issue for me? Because I can maintain eye contact, and participate in the conversation while I knit. Not normal eye contact either. The "staring contest" kind of eye contact, which is a little creepy. But the point is made, and I only do it the first time my ability to participate in a conversation while knitting is questioned.

I usually knit socks in public, since they're super-portable. However, I found that while I was watching Carnivále and working on my Peaseblossom socks, I goofed up a couple of times on the mitered squares. There was some profanity involved while I frogged; There is nothing more frustrating than screwing up something so simple because of the riveting subject matter that the show deals with. These are not "meeting appropriate" socks, simply because of the potential for both swearing and showing my co-workers that I rip things out.

(Ripping= not being super-amazing, like they believe me to be. It's like seeing Superman trip on his cape. Completely undignified and it just doesn't fit expectation. My readers/friends in real life know me better than that- blasts of profanity, ripping and all.)

The most awkward KIPping experience I had was when I was dating Zak- after his truck had died. I had driven him to SCVC Rehearsal, and instead of spending the whole time driving home and back, I took an aran sock that I had been DYING to start- but hadn't had the peace to get familiar with the pattern.

Memory Montage Sequence

I found a Starbucks near the corps hall, got my latté and a table, and started knitting. For about ten minutes I was grooving and in a very Zen knitting place.

A woman parks herself at my table and starts chatting with me about knitting. I was polite (but had to put down what I was working on, since it required my undivided attention at that point), but the conversation went like this:

Crazy Woman: * talking at the speed of light about how she knit while she was high because it made her head feel good*

Jasmin: * Trying to pack up without her noticing, because you don't want to make a crazy person think that you don't want to be around them. *

(45 minutes passes in this fashion)

Crazy Woman: I have to go outside and have a cigarette now or I'm going to choke you to death.

Jasmin: * Throws everything into the bag, runs to car, locks door, drives like mad to corps hall, where she pulls in just in time to pick Zak up.*

FO'ing like a Mo'Fo' and Knitting in Public

I've been on a crazy sock kick; AND I've finished 8 projects so far this month. Woo!

Knitting in Public
There was a thread on KnitFlame about how it's innappropriate to knit in meetings. One idiot woman posted that one should ask EVERYONE in the meeting's permission to knit through a meeting that the other members of the meeting ichat/gossip/play solitare/doodle/sleep through.

I think not. It's not because I'm a raging individualist. It's because it helps me focus. I knit in such a way that isn't distracting, and most meetings I knit through are the ones that are on my time (i.e. mandatory lunch meetings). Some meetings are appropriate to knit through, some aren't.

Don't tell me whether I can knit through things that I pay to attend. And I do. I knit through college, I knit through movies, and I knit through theatre. It's what I do.

I had this horrible journalism professor in college who had convinced herself that I never listened in class. Her class was useless; it was all about the "good ol' days" when she was a high-profile editor, not about how to interview or how to write a good article. I suppose that's what you get from someone who only has a Bachelor's degree. (This criticism has a point- the college has a policy of "only highing the highest accredited people in their field". All my other professors actually taught. Her journalism class was sitting around, wasting four hours of our lives each week chatting about how it used to be.) This particular professor also told me I was wasting my life by getting married. Oh, and she's such an independant thinker that she started smoking, andsmoked two packs a day to "fit in" with all of the other editors. Way to march to your own drummer, lady.

Anyway, the last week of class, we were talking about judgement in selecting photos, and she referenced a comment she had made the first week of class. None of her "stars" [read: "favorites"] knew the answer, and I let the silence hang in the room for a good thirty seconds before I looked around the room, looked her in the eye, and gave her the correct answer.

What did her dumb butt say? "Wow, all this time I thought you weren't listening."

I didn't answer with, "Wow, it's not like you're teaching."

Just for the record, of all of her "stars", none of them can hold a job that can feed them or clothe them. The moral of this story? People who think you aren't listening aren't saying anything worthwhile.

Oh yeah, and at my lunch meetings, everyone thinks it's cool that I can knit and talk, and not look at my knitting. Boo-yah!