The little boy looks at my knitting and then at me. “What happened to that thing you were making?” he demands, as I knit 2 and purl 2 my way through 62 stitches.

We’re sitting together on the same pew after the evening service at church—a fascinating 3 hour polemic about divorce and remarriage. Fortunately, I managed to miss half an hour of it. Now it’s over, and I’m knitting on my cardigan.

“That sleeve? I finished that yesterday. I’m making the next sleeve now.”

“Oh,” he says complacently, and tells the next small child that wanders up, “I saw her finish her sleeve yesterday.”

Which he did, along with a few more young children, all apparently fascinated with my needles. I’m the church’s only visible knitter, and the countless questions don’t stop, no matter how many times that I explain that this isn’t a skinny orange fish, it’s the left front of a cardigan. Or a sleeve. I’m always amused by the cluster of little boys that silently watch as I knit, occasionally piping up with a question or two.

 After 10 minutes, the church is emptying, and I pack up my knitting needles and yarn.

 On my way through the parking lot, a thin, tinny screech met my ears. My bad deeds had caught up with me. Towards the end of the ( very long) service I had started to make faces at the little kid sitting in front of me. We competed at eye-crossing, tongue curling and nostril flaring, capping it off with a grand finale of doing all three at once. Now he was back for revenge, wildly waving his hands and body as he struck a ninja pose.

 ”Wahhhhhhhhh….HIYA!” he yelled.

 Never averse to some abitrary butt-wiggling and hand-waving, I screeched back at him. Struck by sudden genius, I snatched my spare set of size 7 needles from my bag, and started flourishing them like katanas. You don’t wanna mess with the knitters, I thought with grim satisfaction, we carry concealed weapons. At the sight of this unfair advantage, the boy screeched even louder, and we pranced around, screeching and waving like a pair of demented monkeys.

 Like all good things, this had to come to an end, and I stuffed my needles into my bag, skipping over to the car. A chorus of cheerful farewells followed me–

“HI-YAH!”

 I giggled inwardly, and didn’t mind when I later discovered that I had bent my size 4 metal needles into boomrang shapes. After all, we do have to sacrifice a little for our reputations.

I don’t think that I realized how hard winter hit me this year. I was sick for several weeks at a time, and many times for a few days. But since the sunlight has been lengthening and weather’s been warming, I’m starting to feel like I’m coming alive again. Like I’m losing a tough winter skin and now I can feel.

 This became more apparent to me on the two-day trip up to Virginia (with the hotel from hell). White and pale, pale pink cherry blossoms are everywhere, and you soon get a dusting of petals on your shoulders if you stand anywhere near them. We stopped in an enormous Barnes and Noble—I carried the instructions for the sleeve for my sweater, and a neatly wound yarn cake, and both sets of needles. My right front is totally wonky, so I have set it aside and I’m working on the sleeves instead.

 I moved quickly. As any B&N fan knows, the comfy chairs–the fat, stoughy leather ones—always get snapped up fast, and once someone parks their bum there, they could be there for hours. I ran to the craft section, and I grabbed a copy of CrochetMe: 18 Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution, rode the escalator to the second floor, snagged a copy of the Friday Night Knitting Club, just because everyone keeps blathering about it, and I rushed towards the seats. Huge, shimmering windows open out into the world, and the best chairs face out there.

 SCORE! A huge snuggly chair was empty. I hurled myself into it, and immeaditely started to devour CrochetMe. Oh, my, goodness. If there was any book that could convince my older sister that crochet is cool, this book would be it. My crochet skills are sadly lacking, but I want this book so bad, I would learn skills just to make some of the patterns. The designer profiles are also lovely and chatty. All around, an extremely wonderful book.

 Slowly, stress that I didn’t even know that I had started to dissolve in the afternoon sunlight. I pulled my sleeve from the bag, and started to work on the 4 inches of ribbing I need to do. My yarn cake sat on the floor next to my feet, and I sank more deeply into the chair. Once or twice, I closed my eyes. I patted the half inch of knitting I had finished.

 I opened my eyes, and read a few paragraphs from the Friday Night Knitting Club. I giggled at the unlikely occurence of a total stranger asking a random knitter in Central Park to knit them a cashmere sweater. I knit some more. I giggled some more at the sterotypical single mom angst of the tale. I fell in love with the college student accosting the customers to ask them questions for her thesis.

 I shed off the winter gloom, and felt an utter, warm contentment loosen something in my chest.

 I knitted. I felt the sunlight on my skin.

Feeling lost without Magknits? Here’s a list of other online knitting and crochet magazines that you can check out!

• The Inside Loop is a UK based magazine with its first issue out! Go and look, there’s some super cute patterns here.
• MetaPostModernKnitting has a fashion outlook at knitting, and Vestish is a paticular favorite of mine. Unique spin on knitting that I find refreshing.
• The Island of Misfit Patterns is more of a pattern directory than anything else, but I’ve heard from several designers that they will be posting their patterns (or links to their patterns) on this website.
• Knotions hasn’t published its first issue yet, but you can take a survey, and hopefully it shouldn’t be too long until it is live.
• Knitty is stuffed with amazing patterns, and Amy, the editor, assures us that it is here to stay.

 If you have any resources or websites that you think should be included, let me know, and I’ll add them to the list!

 You know it’s bad when you immeaditely suspect that the dark, blurry object on your hotel bed is a small animal.

 It’s only a small relief when you realize that it’s just a hotel advert, tossed there by the same hotel worker who didn’t finish cleaning your original room—the blankets and sheets crumpled in a heap in the middle—and you had to call the front desk to be moved. I found it hysterically amusing that this same person had carefully folded the end of the toilet paper into a neat triangle.

 We–by this I mean myself and some of the family—traveled into Virginia, and the trip was charming, the weather warm and soft. However, if anyone who has traveled anywhere near Washington knows, hotel costs can be horrendous, and so we naturally ended up in the cheapest rooms anywhere. Not to be sued for libel or anything, but a similar name might be Crimson Roof Inn,

 The unmade beds were one thing—the next was the fact that there was no. trashcan. in the room. No trashcan.  What kind of hotel doesn’t have a trash can? That’s right, a bad hotel. I flipped open the laptop, ready to check my blog comments, check my email, blah, blah. After a day of travel, my computer addiction was starting to hurt, hard.

 No go. I managed to find a signal, but it asked for name and password. I hit 0, and asked Hernandez (not real name, but close) what to do. Turns out that not only do we pay $80-plus bucks for the room, it’s an extra $11 for internet access. I looked pleadingly at The Parents, but they were unmoved. They have no blog. They have no pity. Inside, I writhed a little, and tried to watch CI. Gorn twitched and stared and prowled through the latest episode as usual, and I felt a little better.

 I felt a little less better when a total stranger (obviously male) pushes the door open a few inches, looks into our room and hastily withdraws. Apparently, our door doesn’t close all the way, and he amuses himself by randomly looking into unlocked rooms. I giggled a little hysterically. At that point, nothing else was going to bother me.

 My brother slid the bolt shut. No more strangers.

 However, some time later, we heard the charming sound of quarreling adults, a child screaming, and an odd, very heavy thud against our wall–these sounds were not connected, as it may seem, but when you wonder if you’re going to hear a fist-fight next, you just simply resign yourself to the craziness.

 Never again, my friends, never again. Not without internet access.