What To Do? Knit.

Remember the winter of 2009-2010, when it was COLD?  I mean, really, really COLD?  The kind where I had to scrape ice off my windshield with a credit card every morning because I was an ill-prepared Floridian kind of cold?  Well, I never bought an ice scraper.  I never even bought myself a scarf that year.  I suffered my way through the winter like a good southern girl should.

The next winter turned out to be normal.  A North Florida kind of normal. We had some frost, some cold, some warm days mixed in between.  I thought, ahhhh... all is right with the world.

Then, the summer of 2011 came.  *insert record scratch sound here*  Excuse me, I mean, spring and summer.  It has been HOT.  I mean, really, really HOT.  Like, a heat index of 110 for more days than I've ever seen in my whole long, ancient life.

Ahem.

So, anyway....What's a girl to do in this heat?  We don't have a pool.  Otherwise, that's what I'd be doing.  I actually have spent most of my summer working on my new house, though you wouldn't know it by my blog posts.  (I promise I'll get some pictures posted soon!)  After a while, though, painting and scrubbing and cutting and moving things around can only be so rewarding.  So I took up a new hobby.

Knitting!

Yes, you in the back, with your hand raised.  No, of course knitting isn't just a winter hobby!  What?  That's when normal people do it?  Cozied up in front of a crackling fire while the young 'uns play at their feet?  I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.  Here, in the arm pit of Florida, we play outside in the winter and try to find things to do indoors during the summer to escape the mosquitoes and heat rash.  Backwards?  Eh.  Whatever.

I suddenly became obsessed with knitting when my friend came over to visit with her new knitting project in hand and gave me an extra set of needles that she had.  I thought, well,  I've got needles now.  No excuses.  No more telling people, "I wish I knew how to do that!" but never making an effort to learn.  I bought some yarn, parked myself in front of You Tube, and began.

After several starts and stops, re-do's and re-tries, and ten or more videos, here is what I made.  (Psst! It's a scarf.)  Don't be fooled, it actually took me several weeks to finish.  I was so slow in the beginning, I thought I was going to have to declare the scarf fit for mice only and move on to a new hobby.  But each time I picked up the needles, I got faster.  I got better.  My mouse scarf began to resemble a real scarf, and I found that extremely enticing.

The end on the right is where I started.  The odd textured areas are where I made mistakes.  Lots of them.  But, as I told my friend Michelle, who was my second knitting instruction victim, just pretend that didn't happen.  Juuuuust keep on knitting like nothin' happened.  I did a lot of pretending in the beginning.  By the end, though, (see the left side) my mistakes became fewer and I got to spend a lot more time in reality.

I'm hooked.  I've bought more yarn.  I've bought myself some plastic knitting needles that are recommended for use on airplanes.  Did you know you can knit on an airplane?  You can't bring a knife, but you can bring foot-long pointed needles.

I've been teaching anyone who will hold still long enough with my extremely limited knowledge of knitting, just because I want to spread the love.  Noodle has learned. She was my first knitting instruction victim. She was so fascinated with watching me work on my project that, by day two, I drove her up to the local Walmart so that she could buy her own supplies.  She is currently making a sturdy brown scarf.

So now it's nearly September, and I can at least envision the cold weather at the end of the tunnel.  I am now prepared.  I can make scarves.  Who knows, maybe a sweater is even in my future. 

Too bad I can't knit an ice scraper.