Knitting Zen

I wound one of the skeins of Lush into a ball over the weekend, and it took me a LOT longer than it should have, because I made a complete mess of it. I don't have a ball winder; I just tried doing it myself. For the other three skeins, I'm going to enlist Bob, my personal ball winder. Or, I guess, he's not the ball winder part, he's the part that holds the yarn.

Thinking about that made me think of a long, long time ago when we were first dating, and I was crocheting a lot of handbags out of Aunt Lydia's Rug Yarn. I don't even know if they make it anymore, but it came in a lot of wonderful colors, and at the time (early 70's), there were a lot of patterns out there--Woman's Day and Family Circle, mostly--for Irish crochet interpreted in rug yarn. Big, ten-inch wide roses in pink and white on a background of green.

I don't remember what happened to any of them; rug yarn stretched out of shape, and they probably got dirty and I tossed them, or maybe I gave them away. But I remember sitting on the couch with Bob, with him holding out his hands and my draping them with a skein of yarn, and winding it into a ball.

Those purses went really well with my handmade patchwork granny dresses . . .