I hereby motion for the the Board (you) to recognize this, the month of November, the year of our Lord Two-Thousand and Eleven as my one year knitting anniversary.
When I began to knit, I felt much like the character Happy Gilmore in the movie of the same name when he registers for a golf tournament and says: “I’m a hockey player but I’m playing golf today.”
Except of course, in much more crafty terms: “I’m a quilter but I’m knitting today.”
I felt like a foreigner in a foreign land when I first started knitting. It was a land in which I’d never heard the language; my hands fumbled the needles and yarn awkwardly: clearly I didn’t know my way around. New people, new places, new abbreviations, new techniques and new terms.
But it was a friendly land with helpful people and unlimited [online] resources. These two things helped me acclimate to my new surroundings and eventually I began being productive in this new land.
And now I don’t want to leave.
I was in crafting limbo when knitting came along; it really filled a void that was left behind when I had to put all of my quilting supplies in storage. I love to keep my hands and mind busy as I’m watching tv or otherwise sitting around, and knitting was the perfect, compact hobby for that.
And recently, when we were in housing limbo, I started a project that I will show you today. That’s another thing about knitting: it’s so easy to start a project and put it on hold. It’ll wait for you in a small little bag until you’re ready to pick it up again. Handy!
So, back to the project:
Here is the Ravelry link: Felted Messenger Bag. I included pattern notes on my Ravelry project link (along with a few more pictures): Limbo Like Me.
For you non-Ravelers, some pictures:
I knitted a big, big, oversized bag (mostly) according to the pattern linked above. I put my laptop on top just to show scale.
And then I felted it, which means that I put the wool bag in the washer in hot water and washed it for several (12?) minutes, checking on it every 4 minutes or so. I didn’t plan it this way, but after it was felted, it was a perfect fit for my laptop!
