The main thing that happened today involved one of my grandmother's friends giving me a load of yarn. And when I say load, I mean THIS:
That is just yarn I got given today. (It's not even all of it, because some that's too old to use is in a carrier bag. And the yarn I've bought is in yet another, much bigger, bag. Uh, not that I'm getting way into yarn, or anything.)
Here is a picture with my big Gryffindor mug as a comparison. It's epic! I'm going to be knitting this stuff for ages, and it makes me happy like a kid in a candy store. (Or should that be bull in a china shop? Hahah!)
And it makes me thik about how one of my favourite things about knitting as a fandom (which it totally is) is that it ties you into this huge female tradition of work. And not just that, honouring that work. I was given a whole load of patterns and things today that this friend of my grandmother's had cut out of magazines in the fifties and sixties, variations on patterns her grandmother had. And sure, they say things like "infinitely fetching!" which sound funny now, but I really love feeling a part of a tradition like that, one where the effort and energy women (and men - my grandpa could knit, taught himself on the train to the internment camp he was in during WWII, but mostly women) have put into clothing their loved ones over the centuries is given credit. The lady who gave me this yarn told me all about how her mum taught her to knit, and how she then went on to teach a knitting class during the war, and some of the knitting and crocheting tricks she's picked up. Some of the yarn is leftovers from skeins she used to cloathe her kids, and their kids; now my little brother will get some of that same yarn used to keep him safe and warm.
My trying to work out how to put a White Tree of Gondor emblem on a square for my patchwork quilt might be quite far removed from the first knitters, but we are still essentially doing the same thing. I'm learning the same processes, making the same mistakes, getting a little bit further because other women have gone before. And I think that's really cool.
*yawn* On an entirely different train of thought, I am sleepy and a little tipsy, because I spent the evening sitting outside drinking cider with two of Mah Boys. As much as I love girls - yay! - some male company who can be relied upon to not be arseholes, and when they are arseholes to actually listen and then stop it when the problem is explained, was awesome. It was nice but weird; one of them is getting married soon, and will be moving down south to be with his job and his wife, and I'm going to miss him. I'm not at all sure I like this stage of being a grown-up.
(On the other hand, he is probably going to be working at the hospital I was born in! How random.)