Knitting makes me hungry

By Amy Baranski

Note to reader: I meant to post this days ago but held up for some reason...present-time knitting update to come.

I'll knit anything. Give me a ball of yarn. Twenty inches of string. I'll stitch it up. Since my first attempt, I've started to enjoy knitting. Perhaps the recent assistance has something to do with this lifted attitude. Or maybe it's because I have no set destination, so unraveling rows of stitches to start again on an faulty line means little to me.

I have not ventured passed 25 stitches. Although the other night I put two rows of 30 together. But, I left the knitting needles and yarn behind, as they were not mine. I figure that I'm building memory for my hands.

The little  projects pictured to the right were my attempts to bind off. That's the part when you stop knitting. I became delighted when Googling: how to stop knitting. It sounds, in part, like a support group. I'm sure there is one, perhaps laying on the cutting-room floor of an old Christopher Guest  movie.

Out of all my clothing knits are among my favorite. One of of the best accessories I ever had was a beautiful chenille scarf, Merlot in color, knitted by my sister. What a wonderful homemade gift to give during the high holidays.

That brings me back to the point of this month why we chose Urban Homesteading in the first place. When Melissa and I revealed our list of things to try this year I had canning and she had Urban Homesteading. We realized that one was an activity of the other. So we combined the two. My hope was to acquire a new set of skills throughout the home and to try and become more self-sufficient. I am the type of person that would like to hire a maid. While I deeply love cooking I also enjoy the effortlessness of eating out on the town.  So, forcing myself to focus on home economics (the closest I ever got was a personal finance class in high school), seemed like a worthy challenge. And so far it has been.

But we are not perfect and trying new things has many challenges. Among them is will.

Which brings me to one fateful night a week or so ago. It's football season, and since no one in our apartment building has cable television anymore, a gaggle of us headed to the Montlake Ale House. Here I ordered a plate of Nachos--covered in sour cream, and a plate of wings. It was delicious and lovely and I loved every bit: being served, not washing the dishes, lacking investment in the ingredients and the presentation of the food. So knitting makes me...
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