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It. Is. Adorable!

This is Madison. She just turned 10 and she’s a knitter. Her mom taught her when she was 8 and she’s made a number of scarves for friends and grandparents. Her current WIP is a light green wool scarf. When it’s finished, she’s going to put pink pom-poms at the ends to jazz it up.

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Now, when I say she’s a knitter, I don’t just mean that she happens to know how to knit. Heck, you can teach a monkey how to knit, but you can’t convince it that starting a knitted sweater for it’s cage mate two weeks before Christmas is anything but a bad idea. Nope, Maddy is one of us (one of us, one of us!). I was showing her parents something in the kitchen and as she waited patiently for the boring grown-ups to finish their boring grown-up conversation, she stood there with her little knitting bag hanging on her wrist and was KNITTING! She’s a standing knitter, people!

She also confided to me that it’s totally annoying that when you give handknits to people, they don’t understand that they have to hand wash it and never put it in the dryer. They need to take special care of this stuff. It’s exasperating for us all, to be sure.

And so what else could I do but drag her up to my apartment and help her on her way to SABLE status. Seeing as how she’s only 10, she’s going to need a HUGE stash, and I did what I could. I let her pick some stuff out and I also gave her some special things I had tucked away. I’ll admit there’s some candy-colored Berroco Plush in there, but there’s also some undyed alpaca.

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When it was time for them to go, I’ll give you one guess what she said. All together now . . . “One more row!!”

Maddy’s dad is Scott, my brother’s college roommate. Because I’m in such a ridiculous state of denial about being 36, I still remember hanging out with Scotty and my brother at the dorms like it was yesterday. It’s like no time has passed and the only difference is that people just don’t think Howard Jones is da bomb any more. Sometimes I’m still taken aback by the fact that he has three little girls (and a female cat, and he’s just assuming that the guinea pig and the parakeet are girls. He also works in an office of 16 people and he’s the only guy. Scott is the very definition of a ladies’ man.)

Maddy’s mom is Shanna, a fellow knitter and real peach! I don’t know her nearly as well as I do Scott and I don’t get a chance to see their family as much as I’d like to. But as soon as I saw Shanna the other night, I forewent the traditional “Hello, nice to see you.” and went with a finger pointing exclamation of “Clapotis!” It’s the customary greeting of knitters in the wild, is it not? It just so happened that Shanna was wearing a gorgeous Clapotis made with this incredible silk/merino that I failed to photograph. It had the perfect texture for that scarf with just enough unevenness in its single ply. You’ll recognize one of her other daughters, Emma, from this photo from Jon’s and my wedding. She’s the short one. Perhaps Camryn (I’m pretty sure it’s “Camryn” and not “Cameron”, but I’ll need a judgment on that. Shanna??) will model something for us someday so you can see her. They really are the sweetest little girls ever, always with the pleases and thanks yous.

Here’s the thing, Shanna is an avid blog reader and yet I can’t link you to hers. Know why? Ain’t got one. That’s right. Can you stand it? All in favor of Shanna and Maddy starting a blog together, say Aye! (and maybe give them at least one good reason as to why they should join us (join us, join uussssss))

Aye! One of the best reasons I can think of to start a blog are all the amazing people you’ll meet. It really is a wonderland of delightful people out here.

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