I’m going to reveal my age when I tell you that I remember a summer long ago when DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince ruled the airwaves with the hip hop classic “Parents Just Don’t Understand“. This was long before iTunes & all the cool techy stuff kids have these days. If we wanted to listen to a song over and over ad nauseum (as teenagers are wont to do) we had to keep our radio tuned, our tape deck loaded, & our fingers lightning fast in order to hit play/record at the perfect moment to capture our latest teen anthem. R. Darling even remembers fishing in Alaska one summer & all he had to listen to was the Top 40 countdown he’d recorded off the radio (complete with DJ interludes) before heading out on the boat. Ah, the mix tape days.
But the tables were turned last week when I caught a doozy of a cold and my 3.5 year old just didn’t get it. I’m sorry but I do not want to sift through the questionable contents under the couch for your missing car parts or play “garbage truck” (which consists of running continuous loops through the divider between our kitchen & living room, shouting DUMP! every time you are dumping “garbage”). Nor do I want to “play with you” when I am hacking up green junk from my lungs, coughing until my eyes bulge & generally feeling like refried plague. Sometimes kids just don’t understand…..
When I’m feeling my worst I always turn to some kind of comfort knitting. Yes, I’ll admit that I rather selfishly felt “good enough” to knit, but not good enough to play Knittymunchkin’s games (bad Mama!!). I recently pulled out a project from last summer that has been hibernating for much too long: 64 Crayons (ravelry link) by Amy Swenson. As per my usual MO, I started this in a fury of fanatical excitement, only to be distracted by something else (ooooh, shiny!). But over the past year I’ve been slowly collecting more colors of Noro Kureyon for Knittymunchkin’s blanket & I figured it was high time I had something simple & soothing on the needles.
The yardage on Noro Kureyon seems to vary greatly & I had a couple strips I’d made last summer that just needed another 20 rows of knitting or so. I had a couple balls of Noro that I’d purchased online (and therefore hadn’t had the privilege to see in person) that were borderline ugly. So I cut out the prettier colors & spliced them in to finish up the other strips I’d started last summer. It was the perfect excuse to use my new nostepinne.
I’d been wanting one of these for a while & picked this one up for $10 at my LYS’ annual Stashbuster Sale in August. It’s a lovely thing, but I didn’t know how to use it. Good thing it’s not that summer I was talking about at the beginning of my post! I just consulted the mighty intrawebs & behold, I made me a center pull ball old school style. I’m certainly not winning any ball winding contests here, I’m slow as molasses & just as sloppy, but it works great for little odds & ends that are left over that you don’t want getting all tangled up. I love it! Maybe someday I’ll even let Knittymunchkin use it….