i knit: a brief history PLUS SOME MONSTERS!

During one of those grade school summer trips to my grandparents house I encountered that yarn and needle thing people do.  That town still hasn't grown over a thousand and with not a lot to do, weeks at my grandparents included a lot of puzzles and John Wayne movies.  I distinctly remember one of those weeks in which my grandmother, seeing me working that Kermit the Frog puzzle again, tried to teach me to crochet.  My kid fingers couldn't quite grasp the twists and draws, but I could chain like a madman. I made an orange rope of loops that stretched to every room in the house.Years later, in 2005 during a semester living in Oxford, I learned to knit and crotchet.  We all lived, us study abroaders, in a house on Canterbury and something about the English Autumn outside the common room window and the old sofas caused us all to go down to the charity shop past the high street and snatch up some old needles and yarn and make a bunch of lumpy scarves.Since then, I haven't been able to kick the habit given my inability to sit in a taskless calm.  But lumpy scarves are a thing of the past.  I've done a number of hats, some sets of gloves, but before my mother came to visit I made these to send home for my sisters:And now, I've finished quite an opus.  The 8" tall monster (10" with the hat) is a gift for my 8 year pen pal.  The pockets will each hold a folded page of the letter I've yet to write.  I was so proud that this morning I took him out for a quick photo shoot.I mean, look at him Work. His. Angles.I made the little guy without a pattern, and I'm just excited to put him in a box and get him on a plane.