Weirdly Normal

I was at Borders this past Friday with some of my buddies, and somehow (I don't recall what we were discussing, but I'm sure it was important), the topic of my knitting came up. One of my friends laughingly called me a "Knitting Fiend," much to the hilarity of the others there. I immediately corrected her by saying that I was not a fiend. That among my knitting friends, we prefered to be called "Fiber Fondlers."

Well, this got a similar reaction: slightly confused looks of incredulity, and some mildly hysterical giggles. Finally, A said, "I don't think I would ever willingly call myself anything that has the word fondler in it." The others immediately agreed.

I think I'm going to give up trying to explain myself to the non-knitters of the world. While many people look at me knitting and say, "Wow, that's so cool. I wish I could do something like that," there are equally large populations of people who look at me and say, "I can't believe she's doing that here," or "I can't believe she would spend so much time doing something like that."

So, I think I'm going to go out of my way to confuse them even more. Stephanie has said things much better than I in her blog regarding this, particularly in this entry, although it would be fun to read her next post about it (Grip Getting) as well, when she assigns all the posts. It could be just as interesting to do your sock pictures in other cities/towns/hamlets around the world if you wanted to.

This is such a great idea. Confuse the world! Take sock pictures! Be weirdly normal! It'll be so much fun.

Something to Think About

I read this article the other day -- about St. Patty's Day falling when it does this year. Apparently, according to liturgical rules, a mass for a deceased saint cannot be celebrated during Holy Week. This is causing certain dilemmas in various areas, because people now do not know when to celebrate the day.

You would think the Church would have taken care of this prior to now. I mean, given the fact that St. Patrick's Day always falls during Lent, I would think that those to whom this is an important issue would have foreseen this happening and discussed it already. Besides, the reason for celebrating the day at all is because it's the day St. Patrick died. I don't actually think the dude specifically chose this particular day to die. And even if he had, I don't think he was thinking, "Gee, 1600 years from now, people are really going to have issues with when they're going to be celebrate the day I die. Perhaps I should choose to die some other time."

Personally, I don't see what the big issue is anyway. I'm not Irish, and I don't see the point of celebrating the death of some guy who happens to be the patron saint of a country I can't claim. I mean, no one other than the Scots and the Russians celebrate St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30), and only the French celebrate the feast day of Joan of Arc (May 30). Even St. Nicholas (Dec 6) has a limited following outside of Holland and Russia. And the Catholic Encyclopedia, while giving his feast day as April 23, can't even give an exact date for the death of St. George, the patron saint of England. So, why the big fuss about St. Patrick?

Any thoughts?

Hmmmm.....

Interesting article on CNN.com this morning. I wonder how many people are going to take it to heart. Personally, I think it's a good idea, at least to try.

There's So Much That We Share that It's Time We're Aware

There's this coffee shop in town. It's reasonably independent (there's another coffee shop with the same name in a nearby town, but as far as I know, these are the only two ones in the world) and small. It has a really nice atmosphere, and I like to go there reasonably often -- mostly to work on whatever knitting or writing project I'm working on at the moment.

Coffee shop knitting tends to be socks -- there isn't room in my purse for anything bigger. The interesting thing about it is that eventually, someone will look over at you and ask what it is that you're knitting. This sometimes leads to a conversation about knitting -- as well as other things -- because invaraiably, the person will be astonished that I can actually knit socks.

Several months ago, I struck up a conversation with a woman exactly this way -- I happened to be knitting socks, and she was curious about what I was making. It turned out that she (I'll call her J) was interested in knitting, and one thing led to the other, and pretty soon, we were exchanging e-mail. We've been in touch ever since.

Now, where it gets really interesting is that this past Sunday, I had stopped at the other coffee shop (the one in the nearby town) on my way home from church. I sat down at a table with my current sock and little notebook, and had started a round of knitting. All of a sudden, the women at the table next to me looks over and starts commenting about my knitting. She, too, was interested in knitting, and we started talking about meeting other people who like to knit. After several minutes, we exchanged e-mails. It turns out she has the same name as the previous woman I had met.

Now, what are the odds that I would go to two different branches of the exact same coffee shop and meet two completely different women with the exact same name, all because I happened to be knitting socks both times?

It's bizarre how small our world is.