Therapy Knitting

Ciao! Io sono una studentessa a di Università Dallas e studio italiano. As you can see, I am busy learning Italian for our upcoming trip to Rome over the Christmas holiday. In an effort to squeeze in more knitting time as well as do my homework, I find myself counting my stitches in Italian. Uno, due, tre...venti..now how do you say 64 again? If nothing else, I will be fluent in my numbers!

My knitting friend and mentor is taking Italian with me and she found a pattern for a short sleeved sweater from Crystal Palace Yarns called "Italian Tee Shirt". We are both currently knitting our "la mia maglietta italiana" with the hopes that they will be finished in time to wear for our final. (Hopefully our professoressa will be so impressed with our knitting skills that she will grade on the curve.) We are using Jaeger Roma yarn and if you have never knitted with this yarn before, BUY some today. It is lovely to work with and very, very soft. Melissa's is in a gentle shade of green called "leaf" and mine is in a reddish-pink shade-reminiscent of stawberries- called "summer berries".

Last night, my knitting friend and I went to Thursday Therapy at Yarn Heaven. While both of us have visited the store and purchased yarn, this was our first foray into a group therapy session. Cherie and I learned to knit at the same time (not quite a year), and I was a little apprehensive about going to an established group knitting session with seasoned knitters. I took my felted footies to work on and Cherie was working on her 2nd pair of socks. We had so much fun. Everyone was very friendly! Several of the women were working on a sweater that was knitted top-down, others were working on scarves and various projects in different stages of completion. Knitting is very therapeutic and as I heard the soft click of needles and let the ebb and flow of several conversations wash over me, all my fears vanished and soon I was joining in. As we knitted away, I realized that we were joining our stitches with theirs in a warm blanket of friendship that allowed the outside world to fade away and we became one.