Yesterday I met a Knitter

Yesterday I met a Knitter. That's Knitter with a capital "K". Her name is Kristina (I don't know if her name starts with a "K" or a "Ch", but the "K" seems fitting.
She came into the yarn store asking for advice on her current project. It was her second project ever and she was knitting a lovely hat for her boyfriend for skiing. She told me she thought it looked a "little big". I agreed it looked plenty big, far too big for a hat. She sighed and agreed and asked what she could turn it into instead of a hat. This blew me away. she didn't get upset. She didn't start frogging, she wanted to know what her wip (work-in-progress) could become instead of what it originally had been slated to be. I looked at it and came up with a couple ideas-a capelet perhaps? She liked that idea and mentioned that she had some young nieces and nephews. I suggested she could cast it off and sew an elastic around the top and make a cute little wool skirt. She liked this idea too. I then suggested we put it it on a larger needle to see how big it really was. I told her this was very advanced knitting and she was already into her designing phase of knitting-very impressive. The project was scrinched onto a 12 inch circular and looked like a giant hair scrunchy. I grabbed a 60" needled and started transferring stitches. We ended up with this

If you look closely you can see the stitches are kind of scrunched on the 60" needle. That means the project has to be at least 70 inches, possibly 80.
There are no words to describe how much this amused me. I was no longer able to be understanding and sensitive and I started laughing so hard I thought I was going to hurt myself...
Kristina took this all in good stead. She laughed too. After wiping the tears from my eyes I made the only suggestion I could thing of. "It's a circular scarf." She really liked the idea and she was excited that she had knit a scarf for herself. "Perfect for skiing!" she said. She also said when she was done casting off she would pick up another skein of yarn to retry knitting a hat for her boyfriend.
The reason why her scarf was so big was she had cast on 96 stitches, which was a perfectly reasonable amount. But she had just learned how to purl, so every time she switched from purl to knit stitches and vice versa on the ribbing she did a yarn over. On top of that her gauge was really loose (unusual in a novice and I think it points to her being a fantastic knitter in the future) she ended up with 312 sts knit in a really loose gauge on 5.5 mm ndls.
Kristina also told me that she was going to measure her stitches and see how many stitches she should actually cast on to make a normal sized hat. I thought that was AWESOME. She immediately understood a basic concept of designing with her second project knitting ever. This woman is destined to become a great knitter!
As she was leaving I told her "You know, people are going to stop you and ask you where you got that scarf because it's going to look fantastic and you can say 'Thank you, I designed it myself." She laughed and looked a littl e sheepish and said, "You know what's really funny? I'm a graphic designer..."

Where did the monotony go?

Ever notice how distractions equal your threshold of distractedness? For example, if you knit a gigantic king size garter stitch coverlet (I am not exactly sure what a coverlet is but it sounds rather large) and you had nothing but 6 billion stitches of insane monotonous knit stitches(...I mean 1 stitch for every human being on the planet...that would make me consider committing genocide...) than nobody will speak to you for days. The phone will not ring. The people in your house will content themselves with non-communication, the cats won't meow at you when they are hungry and there will be nothing on TV.
On the flipside, if you try to do something that requires even a modicum of attention span, like oh say...working at home-everybody wants to be around you. The phone will ring (don't worry it's not for you, that would be a pleasant distraction, but you will have to stop working to give the phone to someone else). Some kid outside will slapshot a puck at your house so that it sounds like a truck drove into your home. The neighbours, after 4 months of blessed silence will decide to play really loud music (loud enough that I know they were playing Aerosmith's version of Come Together, an altogether laudable music choice but definitely distracting). Someone will ask to borrow money and then attempt to make small talk ("What are you doing?" 1 guess as to how difficult it is not to answer "Apparently working so I can earn enough money to lend you some..."). That person will probably come back later asking questions that they could discover the answers for themselves if they cared to. Although I will admit that my bitterness over the multiple distractions have made me a little intolerant of inane conversation.
I find myself in a rather hypocritical mood, at this point I am not really pleased with the fact that things have to balance out.
On the bright side, I did manage to knit a baby sweater. My first completed baby project!! I have been waffling around finishing baby stuff (I still have a baby kimono that needs to be steeked and has been waiting since August). It just feels like jinxing. But yesterday at the yarn store I realized that I could probably knit a baby sweater in super bulky yarn in 4 hours or less and hot damn! I was off to the races!!!!
I knit a design-as-you-go hooded baby cardigan in a lovely olive green merino yarn (Fleece Artist, Big Merino). Less than 4 hours and it has a hood!
I like how it turned out so much that I may write the design down and put it on Ravelry (OK that's a wee bit ambitious I admit, but it could happen...really).
It's a rather therapeutic little sweater even after it's finished. I wanted to gnaw my way through the drywall and shove my head through and scream at my neighbours to turn down the music. and then I looked a the sweater and thought "Oh look at the baby sweater!"
so easy to anger...so easy to please...a woman of extremes I am.