After many years of dealing with the insanity that is the Bay Area as well as it's progeny, the High Tech Industry, I've finally gotten content enough with my life to be able to NOT WORK through lunch every day. That doesn't mean I don't like to bring my lunch with me (see the post about the couscous salad and you'll know what my staple diet looks like) and enjoy a little bit of down-time between noon and 1p, but I also like to put that time to good use. Generally, that means I knit over lunch.
Small projects without intricate patterns are the best candidates for lunchtime knitting - socks, scarves (small ones, not the Clapotis! No, no ... NOT the Clapotis), simple bags - generally anything allowing between 5 and 20 rounds to be completed in a 45 minute period. The pattern should be easily "readable" and allow me to stop almost anywhere without causing a serious brain cramp when I return to it in the evening. I've not gone so far as to have a work-only knitting project, but that's coming. Sorry, I digress.
So there I was in my cube yesterday, knitting over lunch and feverishly trying to finish the clasp on the Squatty Sidekick before the start of a 1p meeting when one of my colleagues breezed past. He gave me the obligatory "hey there" nod and then kept going when his mental emergency brake got pulled. The reverse lights came on, he backed-up to my cube, and then said, "Oh wow. Knitting. No one does that anymore. How cute. Good for you!"
Sigh.
Why is it that knitting (and most other handicrafts, by the way) are no longer considered to be noteworthy? I find myself mentally unmaking sweaters, cables, mittens and other knitted items seen on the street to figure out how they were made and if it was human or mechanical hands that did the deed. However, for the unspun masses out there, it's a NiceGirl hobby that's outlived it's usefulness. It's cute. I think knitting gets brushed aside because the amount of skill and talent that goes in to the making of a Thing is not readily apparent to the uninitiated. Because it's an ancient and (relatively) simple craft, and the doing of it has been generally given over to metal contraptions that generate miles of fabric every day, the human version is perhaps seen as a "waste of time". Something we could ... well, outsource. What a shame.
What if we all pledged to teach one person to knit this year? I've got my mark already picked out (and she wants to learn), it's simply a matter of getting schedules to line up. What about everyone else? Are you with me?
If only knitters got the same respect that chefs do nowadays. You think Bourdain would be willing to learn to knit?
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