The Hairy Knitter

I love to buy wool.  For some reason I get all these grand ideas of how I'm going to make this or that and .... it never really comes to fruition.  Well, lately I've been bored and while I do need to watch movies for our business, I'd like to do something with my hands.  So I dug out my wool bin and found some crochet cotton and began to crochet little pot holders. 

After a week or two of this, I ran out of cotton so I decided to "dig" deeper and voila I found this special cotton that I had purchased a couple of Christmases ago for Christmas angels.  I got stuck on the pattern and there it's sat for two plus years.  In the bin was this sparkly dark purple ball of cotton.  Lightbulb! My SIL's 40th birthday is coming up and as she loves dark purple I was going to crochet her a scarf.  Easy peasy! And it was.  Only I thought the scarf should be a just titch longer and I was out of cotton.  Of course, finding a match to the yarn after two plus years was pretty much a long shot but still I had to try.

So I popped into the local yarn shop. Now, if you were going to go into a yarn store for the first time, who would you picture to be behind that store counter?  Is it a sweet little old lady?  Or perhaps a middle age woman brisk and efficient looking?  Or would it be something like this ....

minus the hat, wearing little round John Lennon glasses and a

work shirt, only those warm scratchy wool ones construction workers wear

doing this

I know, I know.  It shouldn't be strange to see a man knitting.  After all, we've gotten past all that stereotypical gender crap right?  *cough*  I mean this guy, despite his tattoos, obviously knew what he was doing as he instructed a customer on how to fix a dropped stitch.  There are a dozen books out there teaching men to knit and apparently some places offer men only knitting lessons.  Still I have to be honest and admit that the first thought that flashed to my head was I'm sure most of the men attending are probably gay. Which considering the only straight man I have ever met who knitted ended up being gay.  Long story, high drama.

So it struck me as odd and after I later recounted to my husband about my foray in to this yarn shop, we couldn't help laughing at the sense of ridiculousness of it all and so dubbed him The Hairy Knitter.  My husband wanted me to go back and get his picture but I'm just not that brazen. 

In the end, I didn't find my match and ended up having to make due with what I did have. Fortunately, when I wet blocked the scarf, it stretched it somewhat and worked out beautifully after all.  She loved it. 



Long story short every store I hit was a bust so I had to make due with what I had.