I'll have to watch movies and knit all day to finish the hat. Not a bad way to spend my b-day.

Today is my birthday and tomorrow is my husband’s. We made a deal this year to boycott store-bought presents and instead make something for each other. No, that’s not true. I’ll restate: I made the plan to hand-craft a present and I imposed my plan on Steve. I told him he could make me anything: a poem, a card, a dinner. Truth be told, he’s miserable about the whole thing. In fact, he actually said this sentence: “I can’t make you a present. This is so unfair! You are going to win!” Win? Win at gift-giving? Men are so funny.

Here’s the thing. Though I do have the clear advantage in the hand-made stuff department, I’m on the fast track to failure. This is as far as I’ve gotten on his hat. His b-day is in less than 24-hours. I don’t think I’m going to make it, especially because I’m dreaming up the design as I go with no graphs. All I have is this inspiration photo of a hat he liked in a store:

Last week I had a grandiose plan to paint him card, write him a poem and present it with a beautiful, Nordic hat. Now I’m down to just a hat. Wish me luck.

Well, this week has been fun. This article  about me came out in 7 Days, Burlington’s alternative newspaper. A few fellow knitters have contacted me, and I can feel the start of a teeny-tiny knitting community percolating.

Here’s how it came about: Last week a friend of mine emailed the editor of our local paper and told her she thought I’d be a good subject for a feature in the arts section. My friend let me know about the email after the fact, which was better. I would have tried to stop her.Needless to say, I was VERY surprised. I was even more surprised that the writer contacted me that same day.

She wrote a wonderful article that I felt  genuinely captured my feelings about moving to a new community, my partnership with my mom, and my old life as “the knitting lady” in Oakland. And she did research on yarn bombing. What a thorough reporter.

Then there was the photo shoot. It cracked me up. The photographer stayed for like two hours and did three different set-ups. For the set-up with the doll, he treated her like she was a real person and kept on saying, “Excuse me, I just have to adjust your skirt….you don’t mind if I button this button, do you?”  How cute is that?  When the piece came out this week, I got lots of nice responses. The funniest came from my friend, who didn’t “get” the perspective of the shot. He said, “Is that doll life-size?” Add to this that the doll looks a lot like me. So he was thinking I had knit a life-size doll of myself. That’s a little too Lars and the Real Girl for me.

In case you’ll are wondering, her name is Benji; she’s American Girl-sized and she has two different outfits: a ballet ensemble complete with toe shoes and a school-girl uniform.