Thanksgiving part II

Only because I'm a backwater blogger can I get away with these weeks-old pictures. No big-name bloggers could get away with it. Why am I so late? Because I am so forgetful I never remember my own camera (again, big-name knit bloggers would never be without a camera to document their every little bit of knitting progress), so I am always relying on the kindness of strangers--or other friends and family members--to take pictures and send them to me, or post them on their own websites, as my delightful stepson Ryan does.

Let me just take this opportunity to say that I have the best stepkids in the world. If it were not so, would Kim, Bill's daughter, spend hours knitting with me over Thanksgiving weekend? Look at that. That thing there in her hands is a gauge swatch. *sniff* Its making me tear up just to think about it.

For the past year, whenever Bill gets fed up with my knitting, he says something about taking up whittling so that he has something manly to do while the ladies are engaged with the yarn. But so far he's not done any whittling. I hope Bill was good and ashamed when Ryan started whittling a wooden Santa Claus Christmas Tree ornament.

Ryan was really working hard at that whittling. So hard, in fact, that he developed blisters on his soft computer-programmer's hands. I was impressed by his diligence. And yet...whittling is a craft I just do not understand. He worked for hours to carve this bit at the end of his block of wood to the point where it looked like the foot of a table leg. It will be many more hours before he has his Santa ornament finished. And then he will have...a Santa ornament. Not anything as useful as a scarf or a pair of socks.

But who am I to talk? If somebody were to question the usefulness of my knitting, I'm sure he could make a valid argument for buying $1.99 socks at Kmart instead. Why bother with the dpns and the sock-weight yarn? I could certainly find more socially constructive ways to use my time. I could be volunteering at the food cupboard or teaching music to underprivileged youngsters. Why spend so much time knitting?

Well, I don't intend to write here about how knitting can change the world. I'm not sure it does, really, though many knitters have claimed otherwise. What I do know is that knitting is a fun thing to do with my family and friends. Calming for me, and a slow, meditative creative outlet. Maybe its selfish but I guess we're all selfish in our own particular ways. At least its a fairly benign selfishness.

In other picture news, I just wanted to share another that makes me laugh.

For those of you who don't know him, this is my wild husband Bill with Kim's ferret, whose name is Zoe.

Zoe is the dopiest (is that a word? I mean, she's waaaay dopy), silliest, round tribble of a ferret I ever met. So I love how fierce (to use Tyra Banks' favorite adjective) she looks in this photo. She's like, America's Next Top Ferret Model.