Knitting Groupie

My best friend recently called me a knitting groupie. I suppose I am becoming one. After all, I drove 3 1/2 hours to listen to Crazy Aunt Purl talk for no more than 30 minutes. I came across her blog about a year ago when I was desperately looking for knitting help on the web. I suppose I liked it so much because she is exactly what my ex told me I would become -a lady alone with her cats, and even better, she took up knitting. After all, why not embrace spinsterdom? She took it on with humor and I admire her for that... then she wrote a book and went on tour. I admire that also -just differently.

As for the book signing, I was as intrigued by the crowd as the speaker. What does a crowd of knitting blog readers look like? Women who, for the most part, silently & anonymously read blogs... little windows into the lives of other people... finding connection where we can, wondering at what we can't understand... just anonymous friends. Well... as for the crowd, many were knitting show-offs and I wondered if they had been blog readers, or book readers. The lady sitting to the left of me for example, brought a project to bind-off.... a complicated one. I know she saved that project to complete just for this event... as if "oh look at what I just whipped up!" Others just knitted very fast. There were a few hackers like me, but I preferred the lady to my right who wore the sweater (that looks hand knit) that she bought at Nordstroms -& admitted it when asked! Mostly I liked her for her genuine laugh, not the forced mock laugh that splits the ears like the women behind me... and she came to listen to the crazy lady... not knit. I had contemplated taking my knitting... but then I take my knitting while waiting in line at DMV, or when I'm watching mindless TV... and I wish like hell that I had known how to knit when I was a teacher sitting through the torturous and frequent faculty meetings I was forced to attend.... but to knit as a women I admired spoke... well some inner sense of manners dictates that when someone who is interesting is speaking, I put the needles down. So I scanned the crowd and realized these are my blogging compatriots. These are the ladies that write to Aunt Purl, "no, really, you don't look fat at all" when she looks fat -and knows it. My best friend would tell me, lovingly, if I looked fat... just like she told me I've become a groupie...

And as for the Crazy Aunt... she has a great vocabulary, and she reads, and she is a better speaker when she just speaks...