(Don't) Walk On By

Something occurred to me, today, while reading another knitter’s account of how they surreptitiously touch strangers’ knits:

People might think I’m creepy.

Yarn Charades

Once upon a time, I was the assistant manager of a mall music store (Sam Goody, if you’re old enough to remember them). I thought it was going to be fifty shades of Empire Records, but alas, it was not. Oh it had it’s fun moments, to be sure, but Rex Manning never came to visit and schtupp the resident minx, nor did manager look like Anthony La Paglia. It was just another mall job; Hollywood lied to me again. The best part of the job, by far was not chasing shoplifters through the mall, but playing Name That Tune with the customers:

Customer: I’m looking for a song. I don’t know who sings it.
Me: ok…do you know the lyrics..?
Customer: I don’t know who sings it, but it kinda sounds like two guys
Me: gotcha. Can you hum it.
Customer: random tuneless humming and mumbling of lyrics
Me: um. What about the chorus…?
Customer: something about “bright eyes”
Me: do you mean “turn around/bright eyes”..?
Customer: YEAH!!!
Me: um yeah...that’s Bonnie Tyler; Total Eclipse of the Heart
Customer: Great! Gimme the single!
Me: the song is 15 years old; there’s no single
Customer: oh…then forget it.

Bear in mind, this was before iPhones with Shazam or Soundhound or Songify. I was Shazam. Better than that: I was CawfeeBoy: Music Detective, able to use my ridiculously eclectic music taste (and those of my friends who I’d call when stumped) for good and help those who needed it; I was performing a public service for those in need. i used to love those customers, but mostly because I felt superior to them for their ignorance. Never did I think I’d ever become one of those customers.

Darn Tootin

Please note that this post is pieced together from a couple of“Private Messages” I sent to a gal from Ravelry, with some original content thrown in for back-story and stuff.

My wait for my elusive needles is finally at an end (or, at least, it was). Last week I got an e-mail from the lady (and you know I don’t throw that word around lightly*), who owns DyakCraft, saying my last order (placed November 1st-ish), was shipping; a few days later, I got the shipping notification from Stamps.com.

Service With a Smile

My regular reader(s) know(s) I’m a bit of a stickler nag bitch when it comes to retail customer service. There are more than a few posts on this blog about businesses which provided (in my opinion) sub-par experiences; businesses that I’m resolved to neither use again, nor recommend to my reader(s)/friends. You can read about those experiences here.

There are, though, some businesses that continually do right by me; businesses, products and services that I’ll gladly recommend to you, my reader(s), and my friends. You can read about them, here, but I’d wait until after you read about the following two businesses which are currently setting my heart a-flutter (in a good way).

Live and Learn

“Any day you haven’t learned something, is a wasted day”; that’s what my mom always said. So, for the last 35 years, I’ve made it a point to not waste the day. the 1st eighteen years were pretty much a given; something was always new and, by the time I had reached eighteen, I was convinced I knew everything. Luckily I was wrong and still managed to learn a little something about life every day, the most important of which was that I wasn’t done learning. Fast forward to two years ago when I learned to knit; now, every day was a guaranteed learning experience.

Open for Business

So after about a year of kicking the idea around with CawfeeMate, and with Magenta as my seasoned business advisor, I’ve finally started selling my wares to my adoring public on Etsy! The shop has been up and running for about 2 weeks and I’ve already had a couple of special orders; a former co-worker commissioned a puppy sweater like one I made for Rufus and her friend commissioned a pair of fingerless gloves. I’ve also created a Facebook page to promote the business, so people can see other stuff I’ve made and get ideas for what they may want.

I'm Watching You, Watching Me, Watching You

So blogger has a feature where I can see how many times my blog was visited in a day/week/month or forever. i'm not going to lie; I’m kinda obsessed with it.

on DPNS and Needles

I’m on project/pattern overload.

1. “Fake it ‘Til You Make It” (a mock Fair Isle hat): I finished the scarf in less than a week now I’m determined to finish a matching-ish hat within the next few days. I say matching-ish only because the scarf is striped while the hat is geometrically patterned, but they’re made with the same two yarns.

2. “Toe Me Up, Toe Me Down” (My 1st Toe-Up socks): I’ve seen a crap load of awesome patterns on Knitty for socks that are made from the toe up (as opposed to from the top down) and finally broke down and signed up for the Yarn Girl’s “Advanced Sock” class, this weekend, with my mom. It’s a whole new concept for me and I’m incredibly intrigued. She’s also going to teach me how to work the socks on two circs (as opposed to 3 or 4 dpns) and using a “french heel” (whatever that means). The class is going to run for the next few weekends so I’m going to be engrossed in making the socks work.

3. “Thoroughly Modern Moshe” (My 1st Yarmulke): my photographer brother-in-law just asked me to knit one for him when he shoots Bar/Bat mitzvahs and other Jewish events. So, browsing through Ravelry, I found the coolest pattern which looks fun and challenging. plus I’ve got so much fun yarn in my stash that would really look great as a yarmulke!

4. “Baby Blanket Bingo” (Baby Blanket): yup, another friend is preggers and since I love her more than my luggage, she deserves a baby blanket for the kid*. I found a really cool pattern that I’m excited to try and ordered some washable wool yarn from the Yarn Girl in an appropriately neutral color that should really make it pop. It may take me her entire pregnancy, but I’m determined.


There’s also a ton of stuff on my Ravelry queue and in the book my mom gave me for my birthday, that're cool and challenging**; which is exactly what I want. I like that  i've been progressing slowly and steadily and that every "next thing" I knit has been the next step in the my learning process. That’s why I love this hobby: even when I feel like I’ve got something down, there’s always something new to learn, right around the corner.

now if only i had the time to do them all...

* Blankets are the only thing I’ll make for kids ‘cuz they won’t outgrow them; also, it’s really for the parents anyway
** like this bag that MS and I will, hopefully, knit together like we did with our Wallabys

Wishful Thinking

I'm a simple and reasonable guy, i think. I really don't want alot in life. If Aladdin's genie gave me three wishes, I'd probably be at a loss for what to do with the third one. In fact, with my birthday having just passed, I found myself wishing for only two things when it came time to blow out my candles: time and money.

a Bad Romance

I fear I’m a bad relationship and don’t know how to get out. Worse, I don’t know if I want to get out. No, it’s not CawfeeMate, you boob; the man’s a friggin saint.

It’s my knitting needle dealer.

Snatch

I was perusing the message boards of one of the Ravelry groups* I belong to, the other day, when I read a woman’s post about how she was on the 2 train, attempting to master a the purl stitch, when the woman next to her snatched her knitting out of her hands and proceeded to show her how to do it, without so much as a “how do you do”. Furthermore, after her post, there were about three or four other women who wrote that they had experienced similar, if not identical, situations; perfect strangers taking their knitting from them, without warning, and showing them “the right way” to do something!

Reading these stories, I was absolutely livid beyond words (though not so livid that I didn’t comment on their stories in much the same way I’m about to, here). I can’t imagine sitting on the train or bus, minding my own business, and having some random stranger take my knitting out of my hands, for whatever reason. I really think I’d punch someone if they tried to do that; just out of knee-jerk reactionary, gut instinct. you just don't do that in in New York city; that's how a bitch gets cut.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had people talk to me about my knitting while I’m on the bus or on the train** or even just out someplace***; it’s not every day that you see someone knitting in 2011, especially someone with a goatee. The difference is anyone who ever talked to me about my knitting tapped me on the shoulder or excused themselves for “bothering me”; if they wanted to see what I was working on (like the young lady from this morning), they asked to see it and then waited for me to hand it to them. Even the couple of women who offered advice or pointers didn’t try and take my knitting out of my hands.

Maybe it’s because I’m a guy; I don't think a woman would think about taking something (even knitting) out of a guy's hands (even a guy who knits hands); even when the guy looks like me. maybe it's because, with my headphones and body language, I give off a "don't grab my knitting" vibe; I rarely interact with other straphangers. I mean, granted, my Rules for Mass Transit are a bit neurotic and a little over the top, but they work for me. i didn' think that i'd ever need to add "don't grab shit outta other people's hands", that's one we all learned in Kindergarten, no?

* the NYC Bus/Subway Knitters and Crocheters

** There’s this really lovely woman I usually see on the express bus home who was fascinated when I was making my Wallaby, and every time she saw me she’d ask how it was coming along, until I finished it and showed her the pictures I’d posted online; she was equally fascinated by my CawfeeCozies. then there’s the other lady I see in the mornings who, one day, told me that she enjoyed watching me knit on the way into the city every morning; that it reminded her of her grandmother teaching her to knit, when she was a girl.

***just this morning, I was sitting on a bench, outside my office, when a woman walked up to me and told me how great she thought it was to see a man knitting; that her mother had taught her to knit and would be thrilled to see someone knitting on a park bench. She proceeded to tell me how great a job I was doing on the Cabled Laptop cover I was making, walked away, and then came back and asked me to talk to her mom, who was on her cell! They were both incredibly sweet and totally made my day!

the Other Kind of Knitters (or Neither a Lender Nor a Borrower Be)

So my regular knitting shop was closed yesterday when I decided I wanted to try this One Hour Scarf idea I’ve been seeing on the bulletin boards and chatrooms on Ravelry. so i go to Michael’s and all they have are size 13’s in plastic (have you ever used plastic? I haven’t and I don’t know how I feel about them…). So, on a whim, I swing by my other knitting store (the Naked Sheep) and she’s open. Score.

Well I tell her my plan (blah blah blah worsted blah blah blah double yarn blah blah) and she’s like WELL you can use a size 11 or 13 (she said they don’t make a 12; who knew?) and it’ll work just as well but she’s all out of 13s. then she says that she knows me and I’m in there enough that she trusts me, and that if I want to borrow her size 13’s she’d be fine with it. she's super sweet and super nice and really great, but this seems kind of inappropriately kind since i'm not there nearly as much as i'm at the Yarn Girl, and to be quite honest, i only shop there when Yarn Girl is closed; that's my knitting "home away from home". I politely decline and she takes me to the size 11’s. it's all good.

Suddenly, this woman who’s sittin there knittin, leaps up outta her chair and tells me I must borrow her size 13 Addi Turbos*. She’s got the ones like my mom, with the interchangeable cable, etc, only they’re the version 2.0 that people  like. I’m all, Thanks but no and she refuses to take no for an answer. So I’m starting to get really uncomfortable and she’s still thrusting these needles at me like the mother of an ugly fat girl on prom night, but I’m trying really hard not to be a dick to this woman who’s all “we’re a community of knitters” and “this just means you have to come back and show us what you’re working on”, etc. I know, at this point, I’m blushing like a virgin, but only because I don’t know how to get her to leave me alone without jamming the needle in her neck.

So I stop and I’m like, “Ma’am thanks; I really appreciate it and I’m absolutely, positively touched that you’d loan your needles to a perfect stranger, but I really really can’t accept them. I can’t tell you how wonderful the gesture is, and I know you mean it, but I just can’t”. she has no idea what to say. Really. she's dumbfounded that i won't take her needles.  i paid for my needles and got the hell out of there leaving only dust bunnies and yarn balls behind me.

i mean, i get why she was all We Are the World and shit, but it hit a level of creepy i haven't experienced in years. besides: i'm a new yorker; the minute you, a complete stranger, act nice to me, i check my wallet and fight off the crippling feeling of vertigo brought on by instant and incalculable sense of mistrust.

next time i go needles shopping i'm bringing pepper spray.

*these are the Lamborghini of knitting needles, kids.