I can learn new things, I know this for a fact. Why, just recently I learned a little more html, I learned a new recipe, and I learned to play a new song on the piano. Heck, I learn things every day. I stuff new things into my mind all the time, working toward experiencing new things and growing as a person.
Why then does there appear to be some things that I just can’t learn? I mean, I learn them, I even learn them the hard way, in ways that involve pain, frustration and curse words, but then a little while later the memory of having learned that seeps away and I am as an empty vessel….ready to make the same stupid, stupid mistake again.
I started knitting the cardie (from the pattern that took hours to work out) and something started bothering me. A little voice in the back of my head kept saying “Didn’t we learn something about this?” Nah, I think. What could there be? I keep knitting but the satisfaction level doesn’t pick up. I decide that it must be the stitch I’m using, rip back, alter the pattern and try again. I repeat this several times (over several hours) and finally, I learn something, a flash of knowledge sweeps over me and in that moment of inspiration I realize what the problem is…It’s not me, it’s not the stitch, it’s not the pattern.
It’s the yarn. I dislike cotton and I hate cotton for Arans. It doesn’t give, it makes lame looking stitches it’s heavy and it hurts my hands. I have officially abandoned ship.

I have learned this before. There has been other baby stuff, several tanks, and one nightmarish descent into hades where I knit Lene a cabled berber cotton sweater that I hope she treasures. There was even The Bird Jacket, which was such a powerful teaching tool that I still feel a little queasy when I think of it. Matter of fact, just after I knit that I lost most of the vision in my right eye. I don’t think that it damaged my vision, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the optic nerve in that eye had committed suicide trying to get away from the horror. I’m going to the yarn shop today and I will get myself some lovely soft wool and knit some little hats out of this yarn (or burn it to complete ash under a full moon while dancing a dance to release me from the cycle of perpetual cotton punishment). If y’all see me picking up yarn like this again, for the love of sheep….stop me.
The antidote?

Yum. It’s the alpaca from Aubergine, and it’s perfect and beautiful and not cotton. It’s going to be a scarfy-wrappy sort of elegant thing. I’m going to knit two ends like this, then some sort of centre lace part, then graft them together. It should be fairly straightforward to work out, assuming that there is nothing the planet would like to teach me about alpaca.

This is my front yard tree, anybody want to teach me something about sour cherries? Like, what you do with 10 million of them?