Today I finished with my cognitive neuroscience exam early. I could have aced it or failed; I’m not sure I care at this point. Maybe I’m forgetting about previous semesters, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never had material this aggressively boring before. I’d signed up thinking it would be interesting, but the course has just turned out to be a neuroscience-specific research methods class. If my Brain and Pathology course last semester excited me so much that I almost regretted changing paths from cognitive psych to English, this class has utterly trounced those regrets. Ugh.
But anyway. It was a lovely day for sitting outside and knitting, not taking horrid exams and complaining about them. I sat and finished up the scarf I’ve been working on for my friend Henry (the same one I’ve only been working on for the past two months…funny how if it had been more complicated, it might have been done much faster!) and enjoyed the summeresque weather. The first bench I tried to sit on was surrounded by gnats (already, le sigh), the second one was too slanty (one of the ends had fallen down). So I sat down right near the entrance to Wescoe and commenced knitting.
Knitting has undergone a popularity resurgence in the past few years, but I don’t really see too many people knitting in public anymore. The first time I saw a girl knitting at a bus stop I was really blown away. I don’t think I ever thought knitting was just for old ladies or anything; I’d just never thought about it. She was making some sort of grayish, reddish heathered shawl, and it looked gorgeous. Then my roomie (hi Sarah!) taught me how to knit, but not to start, and I ended up making…things. My first creations were basically knitted clown ruffles, which in retrospect sounds kind of awesome, but back then, I really just wanted a wearable scarf! I finally got the hang of it from another friend, and since then, haven’t put down the needles.
Lately, I feel a bit of an oddball knitting, especially as I’ve not seen anyone else my age knit in public since the peak of the trend on campus, two or three years ago. I’ve come across a lot of knitters on the Internet, but not so many in my area – all the people I see at my LYS tend to be older than me (well, now that I think about it, it could be because all the knitters my age go to Hobby Lobby for the cheapo yarn). So I wonder if most people just think I’m behind on the hobby trends (the latest here seems to be doing SuDoKu puzzles in class), or dorky, or old, or slightly odd for knitting winter accessories in 75 degree weather. Of course, I won’t let any of these self-image concerns stop me from using every possible free minute to finish projects, by any means. I’ve got to get these scarves and hats done on time! But yet, these concerns are always present when I knit in public.
Today, some kid walked by me as classes let out, stopped, and said, “Hey!” And just kind of gaped at me, as if I were pulling rabbits out of my pants. “What are you doing?” I explained that I was knitting a scarf, “you know, for the spring and all.”
“Cool! Do you knit a lot?”
I looked down at my sack of yarn. “Hehe, yeah,” I said. He laughed and walked off.
Now my self-conscious self kind of thought that maybe he found me an odd curiosity, a bit like the reaction people have at street mimes or organ grinder monkeys. So a few minutes later, my ego was much assuaged by a girl who, bearing no less than three piercings in her nose, said in passing, “That’s really pretty!”
My reaction: Yay! Praise from the girl with three piercings! That’s like badges of honor for hipsters, and she’s got three of them! I am not quite yet hopelessly dorky. Maybe.
Then, of course, any redeeming hipness points are probably invalidated by virtue of the fact that I have just blogged about how a girl with nose piercings thought I was cool. Oh dear. Better to come to terms with my hopeless case of dorkitude.
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