Knit, Pearl! or, How to Knit in the Dark

We were out of electricity for three days. It ran out somewhere, I guess. Trickled off into a gutter somewhere, maybe.

The first day I trekked to the Bank. Closed. Ace Hardware for electric lanterns. Safeway for fresh produce, which is what we lived on, together with bread and butter, bread and peanut butter, and so forth. I made a big salad and rigged up lanterns with batteries, and was reading after dark when my daughter proposed I learn to knit.

I had thrown in the towel on knitting when I went to a not-very-fun class and learned I was doing it backwards, but I had new yarn and needles ready. Pearl learned to knit from her aunt and had just learned to purl for her new project, a scarf for her boyfriend. Whenever she lost track she was counting stitches: knit, purl, knit, purl . . .

So we rigged up a lantern between us and she showed me how to cast on and make my first stitches. She's a good teacher. I started with 20 stitches and by the end of the evening it had accidentally expanded to over 40 stitches, with lots of holes. In the morning I took it out and started over.

The trees are lying in shards in front and behind my house. When I returned from my errands, a great portion of the birch tree was lying where my car would have been, if I had left it there. Seemed like some kind of sign, to me.

By the third day I was sick of salad, sick of sitting in what must have been a 40 degree house, spending time under the covers until it was necessary to quickly leap out of bed, don 2 layers of clothing, eat something, change and go to work. It was a thrill to come home from work in the evening to find the lights on.

I'm using up the popsickles.