In case the suspense was killing you, yesterday the organizers of Creativity Week reserved a conference room and led everyone in a rousing session of yoga. I don't know if I feel any more creative, but I have several muscles experiencing a very unique and unusual brand of ache.

There are paint fumes in the hall, and the impending threat of volleyball hanging over my head. I don't know why, but every year the company picnic rolls around and I feel the need to organize a volleyball team. Why can't I just be happy and accept myself as a non-joiner?

This is going to go down exactly as it always did in gym class so many years go. I will stand on the court with my hands clasped out in front of me, running after the ball so as to fool spectators into assuming that I have some intention of volleying it. And then I will yell "GOT IT!" several times as the ball passes serenely over my head. If I ever do inadvertently make contact with the ball, you will see me grab my wrist and wince as an unspoken apology to the team for that tragic mis-bump.

Just so long as I make it through the game without wetting my pants, I'll call it a success.

Sometimes when you have a lot of things nagging at you, the best thing to do is ignore them all.

Here's what I'm ignoring today:

Copy for the back cover of an ultrasound physics book.

Headlines for five brochure concepts yet to be concepted.

Unpaid bills.

Unbalanced checkbooks.

Unvacuumed rugs.

Unlaundered laundry.

Because after all, it's Creativity Week in Creative Services! Yesterday we looked at close-up photographs of various surfaces and tried to imagine what they might be. Monday we ate Jello molded into the shape of a brain. Today we had a homework assignment – bring in 5 to 10 photos of yourself growing up, and refrain from wearing a skirt. I'm a little nervous about what the connection may be.

All right, I know the reality is that most people coming onto this site couldn't give a rat's arse about knitting, and you probably think it's for old ladies. That's what is so very punk rock about knitting. You're making assumptions about me, which makes another nice layer of societal camouflage designed to keep the unworthy out of my elite inner circle.

So husband's promotion to Vice President/Treasurer of his company earned him an office move to the executive wing of the basement. It's much larger and brighter, and it has fringe benefits for me. His old office (a repurposed bedroom) makes a much cozier art studio than the garage. What it lacks in Potato Barn earnestness, it makes up for with padded carpeting and fewer spiders. My yarn moved right in and made itself at home. It's kind of like having my own dorm room without the nuisance of trying to squeeze in a bed and a room mate. Unless you factor in the cat. At least I can trust her not to flake out and try to set the place on fire. Ah, college…

Today is one of those days where you wake up with the motivation to eat right and get in shape, and by 10:15 AM you have eaten all the remaining chocolate out of your desk drawer.

However, for five whole minutes I felt wrapped in the arms of a warm, chocolate embrace. So it was worth it.

Note to self: when selecting sweaters to unravel for cheap, re-knittable yarn, avoid chenille. Avoid it! It is nothing but pain, heartache, and clumps of fuzz. Down with synthetics.

On the other hand, I have high hopes for the much-anticipated unravel of a gloriously soft mohair blend I scored from the local Goodwill for $3. I'm not sure yet, but I think I heard it saying something about wanting to become a hoodie.

You will never believe what I have come to possess.

Someone on freecycle offered a partially knitted red wool sweater that she’d picked up at an estate sale and never gotten around to finishing.

My first thought: Hmm. I could use that yarn!

My second thought: Estate sale. This is the knitting of a dead woman.

My third thought: I Have Got To Have That Sweater.

So I’ve created an idea of her, this knitting dead grandmotherly type. In the middle of a stitch, her red woolen knitting fell to her lap and that was that. The picture she held in her mind of what the finished sweater would look like, her thoughts of the intended sweater recipient woven into each neat stitch, none of that was seen by the relative or caregiver who discovered her. It was simply red knitting, set aside and never picked up again. Maybe grandchildren would see it and glimpse a memory of grandma’s fingers on that yarn for a moment.

I didn’t have a knitting grandma. My grandmas taught me to make banana pudding, showed me how to use pastels, raised tomato plants and demonstrated cross-stitch as we watched Shirley Temple movies.

But knitting is my own. It’s something I’ll try to teach to every grandchild or anyone else who wants to learn – because it's knowledge that is meant to be passed on. It's part of a tradition of people who have each calmly and purposefully turned string into clothing one single stitch at a time, like a loud hum of a thousand things working quietly in unison. You infuse potential, ideals, outcomes, and random thoughts into each inch of fabric, weaving in pieces of yourself as you go. It's magic, in the very oldest sense of the word.

And this is all probably why people seek out communities or religion or something, but I'm happy just knitting and knowing it's there.

As I looked through the box of red sweater pieces, I was seized with an overwhelming Amelie-like urge to complete the sweater, locate the person for whom it was originally started, and anonymously send it compliments of the deceased.

It's just been nothing but good news here lately. Congratulations to my brilliantly entrepreneurial husband and his partner, who have just incorporated their business.

I believe this officially makes me a trophy wife.

*Glitter.*

And if that weren't exciting enough, I've discovered the slickest little ballerina-style slipper pattern that knits up in just a few hours and uses a single skein of yarn plus some ribbon. I'd post the link, except that some of you just might be getting them for Christmas, wink wink.

I do believe congratulations are in order!

Dear Tiny Baby Pudding, this silly sentimental blog entry is dedicated to you. Ahem:

Into Being

Be unafraid of jumping.
You are the work of generations
of selective engineering.
You are DNA empowered, engendered, enlivened,
Foreseen from subatomic destiny
to stand on a thousand cliffs without collapsing,
Your atoms fixed securely into a state of undispersing.
Rocks that crumble from the edge were never meant to hold you.

Stitch Klatch meets tonight at 7! (The Coffee House, 177 Hilltown Village Ctr, off Olive -- 63017 if you're into Mapquesting)

Tonight is special. With my sketchy and limited ability to instruct, I'm going to give a go at teaching someone how to knit. I have packed extra needles, yarn, and photocopies of illustrated, step-by-step instructions from a book that is so much better at explaining things than me. So if you want to learn too, come have coffee with us. I can't promise anything except that there will be coffee, and that at some point I will confuse myself and forget what I'm doing.

I feel especially cute today because I'm sporting one of these. His name is Morton and he'll be perching on my hip for the next 24 hours, because apparently when you mention to your doctor that you've been feeling fluttery and short of breath it makes him think of setting the two of you up.

Morton is neither funny nor charming, we have nothing in common, and has already felt me up and elbowed me in the spleen. I want to find an unsuspecting girlfriend to dump him off on and then crawl out a bathroom window, but I'm too polite to do anything but keep glancing at my watch.

I know they're not going to be very impressed with the "symptom diary" I've been asked to keep, either. Instead of writing down things like shortness of breath, my log is looking like this:

9:42 AM. Morton poked me in the side. Intense jabbing sensation.
9:43 AM. Cannot get comfortable.
9:44 AM. Ow! Motherfucker!
9:47 AM. Wires are uncomfortable.
9:48 AM. Shifting position does not alleviate jabbing.
9:49 AM. Morton is being inappropriately familiar.
9:49 AM. Jabbing!
9:50 AM. Ow, quit it.
9:50 AM. Ow, quit it.
9:50 AM. Ow, quit it.

Please do not ask me to show you my electrodes, because I won't.

Look what my dad got me for my birthday! Except he doesn't know it, and wouldn't know what they were even if I told him. And my birthday was actually about 10 months ago. You see, I found the birthday card he'd given me in a drawer just the other day, and there was cash inside! Way to re-present.

But speaking of birthdays, my sibling J$ is another year older. I did not call my brother yesterday on his actual birthday, and for this I now hang my head in shame...

--> Shame <--

...and in celebration of the great event, I'm knitting him this with the aforementioned needle set. (The brightest among us will immediately observe that the link is not yet active, as the item has not yet been gifted. And given the massive amounts of traffic this site sees, who knows how the word might leak out…I think I see someone from CNN reading right now! Ahem. Thank you, that is quite a bold little skirt I'm wearing today, isn't it. Don't pretend like you didn't notice. Why yes, I'd love an on-camera interview.)