Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Take Up a Hobby

A bunch of us at my job have gotten together for a "Biggest Loser" contest. Each person kicks in $100 and on May 5, the one who lost the highest percentage of body weight gets the pot, which is up to $2,000. To complicate things, the firm's charity committee is donating $5 per pound lost to Oxfam. Long story short, since health and vanity are obviously not strong enough incentives for me to lose that last thirty pounds, I now have greed and philanthropy to shore them up.

This is one of the reasons I've taken up knitting. I figured I needed something besides eating to do with my hands in my leisure hours. The other reason I took up knitting is because of my friend Wiz Knitter (N.B. Daaaaamn yooooou). I'm sure she didn't go out of her way to indoctrinate me or anything, but what she did do was introduce me to the concept of the online knitting community, and from then it was merely a matter of time.

Because knitters? Are crazy people. Intense, compulsive, possessed of a majestic illogic. Here is a knitter who lusted after a particular fiber for months, finally procured it from a foreign land and then put it in her yarn stash where it stayed for a year before she figured out what to do with it. This is the site for the Knitting Olympics, where contestants begin a project the moment the Torino flame is lit and have to finish it before the flame goes out. Finally, this. Clearly any activity undertaken by such sumptuously eccentric people is one it would behoove me to investigate.

So I'm going to be making this. It's my first attempt at knitting in the round, so I foresee drama. But one must move beyond scarves at some point, mustn't one? Of course one must.

Word count: 17,472 (+8,020, but mostly second draft so it's not quite as impressive as it sounds. Sorry!)

4 Comments:

Blogger Wiz Knitter said...

You are awesome! Welcome to the crazy world of knit-blogging! I'm going to make sure my sister-in-law Mary visits your blog, because the two of you are hilariously alike in many ways, and now have knitting to share as well.

One of the benefits of knowing knitters is that are all geeks of the highest and best order, who are obsessively loyal to each other and ALSO buy many, many copies of each others' books (see yarnharlot.ca if you doubt this). So when you do publish your novel, there will be a whole bunch of knitters in California reading it.

8:38 PM  
Blogger kathy monahan said...

Oh, good, I needed a third reason. I was feeling a little skimpy with just the two. :)

The hat is going at the speed of light. I started it last night at 6:30 and it's already 5 1/2" high. I might try mittens next if my hubris is not violently struck down by decreasing the hat.

10:55 AM  
Blogger spinnity said...

And here I am, as promised, the sister-in-law. Congratulations on 5.5 inches of hat, you are a star! Sounds like knitting in the round went just fine. Good luck with the decreases, the decreasing (get it?) and the writing.

Since Rebecca converted, I will mark this in her log book. 2 more and she gets the toaster!

11:35 AM  
Blogger kathy monahan said...

Oh, man, if the knitting coven gives out kitchen implements I'm going to start proselytizing right now.

Thanks for dropping in, Spinnity! I'll swing by your place later today.

4:33 PM  

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