Knitting is a dangerous hobby

Honestly I think knitting is the primary reason why I haven't been blogging as much as I did when I first started.  Well, that and the fact that I don't have internet access at my apartment and have to lug my (admittedly small and very light) netbook with me into work and use the library's wifi.  I'm a lazy slob, I'll admit it.  But the knitting is to blame too.  I've been knitting on the bus to work, at home, while waiting for a ball game to start.  It's getting bad.  I actually have to negotiate when I will put my knitting down and do something important, like jump in the shower and wash my hair so I don't look like one of Downtown's resident homeless when I go to work the next day.

*sigh*

 It probably doesn't help that I've given myself the task of knitting gifts for everyone on my Christmas list this year.  I believe in homemade gifts above all others.  When I was growing up, my family was dirt poor.  So much so that my Mom got in the habit of "bracing" us for the potential of not having a Christmas.  Every year.  But somehow she always scraped together enough to buy some yarn and make us all slippers.  Which, since we only had electric space heaters for most of the time I was growing up, went a loooong way to keeping our feet warm through the winter!  They were beautiful, practical, warm and - even better - they were handmade by my partially blind mother with carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists and she always would give them to us with this self deprecating statement like "I wish I could have given you guys something better" or "I know its not much but" or something like that.  Many times she will talk about how much she regrets the past, not being able to give my sister and I better things, like she had disappointed us or somehow been a bad parent.

It makes me want to shake her and kiss her at the same time.  My Mother is incredibly talented.  She is a master of crochet and has taught herself to knit.  In fact she was the one who taught me when I went back to Ohio last month to visit with her.  She cooks from scratch, makes the world's best flour tortillas, made my birthday cake every single year and baked sugar cookies and cranberry-apple turnovers for every Christmas morning.  She sewed the dress I wore to homecoming and the one I wore to graduation and the one I wore as Maid of Honor at my best friend's wedding.  She taught me how to cook; how to read a recipe and how to ignore one.  She taught me how to suck it up and carry the heavy loads and do without or to make do with what you have.

She is an incredible woman.

Ok, back to the knitting. :)  So far I've knit a pair of bright orange legwarmers (hurry up and get chilly, weather!  I wanna wear 'em soooo bad!), a shawl and two scarves.  I finished the last one just this morning, promising myself I would wait to start the next one until after I've checked my email and updated my blog.  I have the skein sitting in my huge purse.  It's big enough to hold all my purse things and my knitting at the same time and my mama gave it to me!