On our way to Charleston, while waiting at Logan for our flight, I had my first substantial knitting-in-public-related conversation. I was working on the entrelac scarf, which was just about in the same state as the picture I posted recently, when a woman about my age walked over and asked what I was working on. She looked, shook her head, and said, “Men knitters are so fearless!” When I think about it, I guess I’m just not afraid of wasting some money on a project that I may not be able to do. Of course, I don’t want to waste a lot of money; but I’m not afraid of failure at that level. “It’s just yarn,” I said. Once I’ve gotten enough over my fear of a chainsaw enough to use it, I can handle the prospect of a botched scarf.
We talked quite a while. She told me how good Stephanie’s second book is, and I told her that I had signed copies of the first and third ones but haven’t read the second, and we discussed what kinds of things we like to work on. She showed me the pattern for the scarf she was working on, in a fluffy mohair blend on about size 11 needles, *knit 1 and yarn over*, repeat all the way across the first row; *knit 1, drop 1 stitch*, repeat all the way back the next row; knit two rows. I was very pleased to find that I can hold up my end of a knitting-related conversation.
After a while I heard the really interesting part. She had been here to visit her daughter over Hannukah. The family went to the Middle East in Cambridge to hear her daughter’s boyfriend’s band play a concert there. For out-of-town readers, that’s probably the premier rock club in the Boston area, at anyrate the one that radio concert reports will list first most often; so I was impressed right there. In the middle of the concert the band did a love song, and at the end of that the boyfriend came off the stage, walked over to this woman’s daughter, and asked her to marry him!
