(I’ve already posted this story to my LJ, a while ago, so if you’ve seen it before… well, that’s why, and feel free to ignore it)
Once upon a time, there were three girls called Alison, Clara, and Louise, who went to Guides together every Friday night. They enjoyed it quite a lot, and got the opportunity to do various outdoorsy things like camping as well as indoorsy stuff, much of which they earned badges for. They sometimes did get into a bit of trouble, since Ally and Lou have a tendancy to do slightly eccentric things that have unexpected and unforseen consequences. After all, naming a teabag and dancing the waltz with him can seem like a good idea at the time…. it’s only later, when it turns out that you’ve splashed tea all round the walls of the church hall kitchen and are obliged to pay for the paint to cover it up that you think it was perhaps not the best plan ever. Though on the plus side, the Guide Leaders will never get you to make the tea again. But anyway! This is a post about knitting. I digressed.
So, Ally, Lou, and Clara were Guides. The upper age limit on going to Guides is (or was, certainly) 15. In the year that Ally and Lou were turning 15 (in the October, Clara’s 15th birthday being the following spring), their Guide pack attended the local Scout & Guide joint weekend camp in the early spring. A, L & C were three of the six from their pack to go, and had a blast, as they had done the previous year. By this point, they were beginning to wonder what they’d do after they had to leave Guides. The next step up in the Girl Guide Assoc was the Rangers, but the Scout Assoc had Venture Scouts, who accepted girls as well as boys. One of the local Venture leaders was at the Scout & Guide camp and seemed like a good bloke, so they decided to bear that in mind.
Some time in the later spring, Ally went on a ‘trial evening’ to the local Ranger group. And d’you know what the activity they were doing that evening was? Knitting! See, I *was* getting to the point. Ally came back and reported to Clara and Lou. There were many horrified protestations. Knitting?! OMGWTF, boring!!!!! Knitting was for grannies, and, and……. Knitting?!!!!!1!!!! No Way were they going to spend Friday nights knitting, ohhhhh no. They had to find out more about Venture Scouts. Yes.
Therefore, towards the end of the summer, Ally and Lou went to the Summer Fair at the local boys’ comprehensive, Willy P (A, L & C went to the girls’ one). Why Clara wasn’t there I don’t know, since she only lived just up the road from Willy P, but there you are. She was probably doing some orchestra thing, come to think of it. Anyway. Ally and Lou went, and when they got there they were accosted by Robert M who Ally knew from Church and Lou knew from Junior School. He showed them his big guns (he was in the RAF Cadet Force, as was Lou’s brother), which was slightly baffling to them, and then he went away again. Lou submitted that he fancied Ally (and still believes this was so), but Ally disagreed. So they made up some odes to contest both sides of the arguement, which was fun. And then, they spotted Kevin, the Venture Scout leader from S&G camp. So they nipped up the slope to talk to him, and the conversation went something like:
A&L: Hello!
Kev: Hello girls
A&L: We want to find out about joining Venture Scouts. We’re at St Luke’s Guides at the mo.
Kev: Oh, great! Well, we’re the Pharos unit, and (etc etc)
A&L: Do you do knitting?
Kev: Kni… er….. no. Why?
A&L: Rangers do knitting. We don’t. So, can you promise that if we come to Ventures you’ll never ever make us do knitting?
Kev: Oooookay…..
So that autumn, Ally, Clara and Lou joined Venture Scouts. And every quarter, when the time came to draw up the plan for the next few month’s meetings, someone suggested “Knitting!!”, because it’d become an in-joke since Kev had told all the others what The Three Girls had made him promise. So there were bowling evenings, driving evenings, treasure hunts, camping, hiking, abseilling, canoeing, rock climbing, quiz evenings….. but never any knitting. And Ally, Clara and Lou were well pleased, and never knitted a single damn thing.
Several years passed. About thirteen of them, in fact. Ally, Lou and Clara grew up got older. Stuff happened, tra la la, etc.
And then it was October (as happens, quite regularly, actually) again. Christmas was getting nearer, and Lou was broke. So she said to Char “I wish I could make presents for people, but I don’t have any practical skills at ALL. Bugger.” And Char said “I could teach you to knit, and you could make pressies that way.” Her thoughts on this were pretty much ‘Me, knit? Ahahahaha, yeah, right!’ since the only thing she could ever remember knitting in her life was a small purple dolls bonnet, when she was six years old. But she figured she might as well give it a shot, since she’d discovered over the years that she’s not as completely cack-handed at practical things as she’d been given to believe by her ability at CDT and Home Ec at school.
So Char came to visit, armed with yarn and needles, and Lou found after what didn’t seem like too long a time that it was pretty easy to get into the rhythm of this knitting thang, and it wasn’t as boring and awful as the idea of it had been at age 14-15. In fact, when Char pointed out some of the stuff that could be made fairly easily, it was quite a lot of fun. Not to mention, actually producing something tangible was really satisfying. And then, there were all the pretty yarns, and…. well, you get the idea. So the result was, Lou was able to make presents for her Mum and Dad, and for Ally and Clara, too. And as you might be able to imagine, the fact that it was a knitted thing added extra hilarity to the whole thing after all those years of anti-knittingness. Hee! (If you want to know what the pressies were and see pics, though, you’ll have to wait for another post, because I think this one is far too long as it is)
So there you have it. The story of How Lou Started Knitting After Many Years Of Determinedly Not Doing So. And of course, now that I *have* started doing it, I’ve dived in headfirst, as it were, as I tend to when I get into anything new. Never let it be said that I’m not stupidly obsessive!! *g* Coming next, therefore, will be the photographic evidence. Betcha just can’t wait ;-)
