1) Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg was the guy who introduced printing with movable type to Europe in 1439. He is more important to who you are today than your great-to-the-25th-power grandmother who lived at the same time.

She gave you her nose, or at least a hint of it, but HE . . . he opened the door to you and your ancestors sharing information across time and social classes.

STOP. Imagine yourself without the written word (or running water but that’s a different subject).

Without him, unless you are descended from an elite royal/political/religious class, your total skill set would be the ones you learned from your family and neighbors. You would know how to survive physically for a while. That’s about it. (Knitting probably wouldn’t be one of those skills though felting, spinning, and weaving would probably be there.)

2) Google

Google exploded the literacy that Gutenberg birthed. Anyone reading this has, at her or his fingertips, access to more information than a person can absorb in thousands of lifetimes. (Probably closer to a billion lifetimes but I’m being figurative here.)

3) Coins Have Two Sides

I just Googled  “YouTube knitting” and in less than half a second I had 24.5 million results. I chose YouTube because, in my latest analysis of survey results, 88.4% of you consult YouTube when you need knitting help.

THE GOOD NEWS IS . . . you can learn practically everything there is to know about knitting for free with an internet connection.

THE BAD NEWS IS . . . you have 24.5+ million options on one source . . . and there are many sources

Let’s say you were crazy-dedicated to mastering knitting on YouTube and you vowed to watch 20 videos per day . . . it would take you only 342.4 years to get through the ones that are there as of this moment. Another thousand hours of knitting programs will be uploaded by tomorrow.

Too much of even a good thing is too much.

4) BREATHE, It’s Simpler Than it Looks

English has over 1,000,000 words. How many of those words do you need to know to satisfy 90 to 95% of everyday conversational needs? About 2500. That’s 1/4 of 1% of the total words.

Knitting is the same. Ma used to say, “If you can knit and purl you can make anything.”

There are other skills, of course, like increasing and decreasing, but she had a gift for simplifying things.

With a limited number of skills and some practice, you can become the greatest knitter in your neighborhood and the most beloved grandmother/auntie/friend who makes sweet gifts. And isn’t that easier that sitting through 125,000 years of YouTube videos?

5) I’m Glad to be Old

I grew up in the 1950s in a household where two languages were spoken, English and Knitting (Cooking too but that’s not relevant here). I don’t remember my mother ever having empty needles.

Ma was the neighborhood knitting expert and she taught anyone who showed up at the door. When they got stuck there was no local yarn shop. They came to our house and Lena fixed it. Always. Every yarn challenge had a solution. It might be ripping it all out (seldom needed) but there was always a solution.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to be like Ma, but in a bigger neighborhood . . . like the world. I realize that’s kind of a silly idea but it’s my guiding light for now.

LIFETIME SCREAMS:

1) 1967, February: Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall, University of Michigan, 5th floor. Sunday afternoon. Homework done. Sun streaming in. Dust motes drift. Having a dreamy phone talk with my dreamy boyfriend. A bat hops out from under my bed. Toward me.

2) 1977, August: Cedar Point, Sandusky Ohio. First time upside down in a roller coaster. Sitting next to my oldest brother. He laughs when I say a word he has never heard his proper English-teacher sister say before. Last time upside down on a roller coaster.

3) 1997, December: Baja California. Narrow 2-lane highway hugging craggy mountain west of Santa Rosalia. Heading downhill, mountain to the right, 1000+meter drop to the left. No guard rail (we don’t need no stinkin’ guard rails).  In a Mini-Winnie motor home driven by impatient husband who wants to pass the truck in front of us. The Mexican driver of the truck waves his arm out the window to keep us back. I say “don’t do this.” Then I go to the back bed, cover my head with a pillow. And scream. Last trip to Baja with said ex-husband.

4) 2015, This morning. Software frustration. Weeks of it. I finally figured out that if I stand on my right leg, point NNE, cough twice and spit on nettles, I can get it all to work together. And the result for you?
 
THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER AFGHAN PATTERN

I swear, I’m getting soft in my old age. Screaming about software for heaven’s sake.

This is an afghan with a sweet story. The pattern costs $4.50 and you can hear the story and see the afghan here . . .

You can buy the pattern here:

cherylbrunette.gumroad.com/l/FMRZg

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After reading (more than once) 24 pages of micro-print and playing around in Excel, I  have learned some things about you and your yarn habits. The hit-me-between-the-eyes-with-a-pool-noodle (because I should have known it all along) surprise? YOUR BIGGEST KNITTING CHALLENGE DOES NOT INVOLVE YOUR HANDS TOUCHING YARN.

How do I know this? Because two weeks ago I started inviting people to join my knitting gaggle. So far . . .

• 358 of you are In the Loop
• as of yesterday, 240 of you had filled out the survey
• 88% of you are hand knitters, though half of you hand knitters also knit by machine
• 1% of you are “expert” knitters
• 8% of you are “beginners”
• 91% of you are somewhere in between

You still rely on books.

58% of you consult them when you need help.

Here was another surprise. 89% OF YOU GO TO YOUTUBE FOR HELP. YouTube just celebrated its 10th birthday. You get most of your knitting guidance from a 10-year-old. Is that prudent? Is it safe?

[This deserves an article all to itself. Later. Soon.]

What do you like to knit?

• 57% of you knit sweaters. This makes sense because I invited everyone who bought Sweater 101 from my website in the last 4 years.
• 58% of you love to make little things like scarves, mitts, socks, hats and shawls
• only 25% of you make blankets and afghans but
• 34% of you make baby things (Hi Grandmas, pregnant persons and friends of pregnant persons)

So with all these mountains and millions of stitches that you all have crafted, what is your single biggest challenge?

Time. That’s it. TIME

And what the heck is this thing called time, this thing you keep trying to find?

One of my favorite definitions is from Albert Einstein: “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once,” or, as a physicist friend once explained to me,”Time is what keeps us from running into one another when we walk through this doorway.”

From my beloved, tattered,1964 edition of THE AMERICAN COLLEGE DICTIONARY: “—n. 1. the system of those relations which any event has to any other as past, present, or future; indefinite continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.”

However you understand it, YOUR TIME (mine too) IS FINITE. And we are swimming in a sea of information and physical stuff and opportunities to watch dogs sing and babies bite their siblings’ fingers, and to share meals with family and to do Sudoku. It’s alluring. All of it.

BUT TIME IS SHORT AND YARN IS LONG. How do we choose?

I recently read an article by Ash Ambirge entitled “Turns Out, You *Can’t* Do It All—So How Do You Pick?”  Her sparkling recommendation? “Pick what’ll still be fantastic five years from now. Leave what’ll only be fantastic for five weeks.” I like that. A lot.

We all have an expiration date. And until mine arrives, I’ll keep showing up and playing with the things I think will still be fantastic five years from now. That lovingly knit afghan will still be fantastic whether I’m here or not . . . and that . . . is a comforting thought.

How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
~Dr. Seuss