Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Call Me Hank. Call Me Skein. But Skank?

Yup. Skank. That’s what I call ‘em. Those fluffy, colorful balls of yarn that now possess me and all the available space in my closet. My mother’s been a knitter for years. It was one of those things she did that I didn’t pay too much attention to. (Unless it was time to talk about what she was going to make for me!)

And you know the way it goes with mothers. They talk. And talk. And you listen and nod along, and retain about 25% of what they’re yammering about. (Sorry mom. I love you – really. And your conversations are ALWAYS riveting. I swear. I’m just making this up to have a blog entry for today.)

In my mind I knew the words of her knitting – she interchanged “hank” and “skein” at will.

TheMotha, one day, pre my knitting, via cell phone: “I’m in the knitting store now and there are some beautiful skeins here. I see one that I think you’d like. Are you online? Look up Gedefra. That’s spelled gee, eee, dee...”

Me: “Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

TheMotha: “Did you find it? Which coluh (Brooklyn accent for “color”) do you like? Make sure you like it. These hanks are $17.50 a piece. This isn’t going to be a cheap scarf. But mahdohn (Brooklyn Italian for “my god”) this is beautiful wool.”

So the day she was teaching me how to be my own knitter, I combined these two mystery words and came up with “skank.”

Me, in knitting store, pretty confused: “So what kind of skank should I get for my first scarf, mom?”

Skank. I kind of like it.

Not “skank” like the cheap, dirty girl from high school who everyone knew was a slut. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…) But “skank,” the nice, expensive stuff I now carry around with me everywhere -- always on the lookout for a free moment where I can knit a few rows.

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