If you’re not a knitter, you can feel free to let your eyes glaze over.

If you are a knitter, you may find them fascinating & drool-worthy.

Just a warning.

I’ve been knitting, bc it’s Knitting Crunch Time and I’m going to be knitting ever minute until Christmas, when I’m not tattooing or driving or pooping.  I’m not even going to be sleeping.  And I might not even have time to shower.

So if it looks like I’m doing nothing, just look again at my hands and see if they’re tangled up in string.

I’ll just be sitting over here, knitting.

I’m knitting things for people for Christmas, including people I work with.  I wanted to knit a hooded scarf for our artist Marshall, but the only patterns I could find weren’t exactly what I wanted to do.

So I made up a pattern (which I will post soon).  I used large (6.5mm) needles with some heavy weight green yarn that I recycled from a thrift-store sweater.  I overdyed the kelly-green yarn with brown so that it’s a kind of camouflage color.  Since Marshall has a penchant for going to concerts or festivals and then inhaling a little bit too much and wandering off into the woods, I called it We Can’t Find Marshall.

I finished it a couple nights ago and washed and blocked it.  Today I took it with me to work, so I could get pics of it (Wolf modeled for me).  After wearing it a few minutes, Wolf said, “This thing is really warm.  I know it was supposed to be a Christmas present, but we’ve had a cold turn of weather already.  I think Marshal should have it now, so he can get more use of it.”

So I stuffed it into a nitrile-gloves box, wrapped it in a Muddy Roots Music Festival newspaper, and tied two gloves into a bow.

It was a big hit.

1. Two months exactly to Christmas, if you celebrate it.  No pressure or anything.  (To this knitter and also as a mom to a LOT of kids, that is a panicked thought.)
2. I’ve worked and the kids and I have done without a LOT of stuff, for almost 2.5 years, to become a tattoo artist.  Three different times “strangers” sent me a hundred or two dollars out the the blue, which made the difference between eating or not.  And I love tattooing.  But the desk girl here, a long-time friend of my boss, cockblocks me at every turn.  She does NOT refer anyone to me for tattooing, unless every artist is busy and the person wants something right NOW.  She acts like it kills her to have to send people to me for piercings (I’m the only piercer).  She is NEVER nice to me, even though I hauled her back and forth to work, costing me an extra hour a day away from my kids, for 8 months.  I’ve shared my food with her countless times.  I’ve gone home without pay (having to collect it another day) so she could take her own pay for the day, if someone paid with a gift card and there wasn’t enough cash.  But I’ve been back to work for a month and bet I haven’t made $500 because she just will NOT send tattoos my way.  I’ve talked to my boss about it, and it hasn’t helped.  I hate the thought of wasting my brains and life and talent in some dead-end minimum-wage job but I’m just about to go try to get hired as a cashier at Food City or something.
3. Never mind #3.  I can’t top that.