Knitters find love and obsession

A lot more than show and tell goes on at my knitting group.

We can tell what kind of day people have had by how talkative or quiet they are. When they are expressive, it keeps the meeting interesting.

Recently, Sandy Vela of Hidalgo told us about her memorable birthday. It actually started two days before her birthday when she found a boyfriend. It was also the day she got hosed down with cold water.

She wasn’t looking forward to her day, because it meant she’d be another year older. So, she didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary when they asked her at work to cover the reception area there.

She sat at the desk as a co-worker had the misfortunate experience of opening an envelope that contained a suspicious white powder. That brought a visit from the men in HazMed suits, who power-washed her.

Sandy told us the story the first time we met her at the Knitting Club, at the end of that long day at work. She and her sister-in-law, Ida Vela of Mission, stopped by Hastings bookstore to meet the club. When she mentioned her birthday, I said, “Well you need a drink to celebrate.”

“I need two,” she replied.

Then she told us about the white powder incident, which later tested to be no more dangerous than indigestion tablets.

What a story. What bad luck. We knew she would be a good fit for the group.

As it turned out, one of the guys in the HazMat suits who responded to the incident ended up becoming her boyfriend. It must have been her chattering teeth and running mascara that won his heart.

Her sister-in-law, Ida, has her own ordeals with which to cope.

A counselor at a junior high school, Ida is working on what her husband calls the “Endless Sock.” The heel isn’t working out. So she rips it back and gives it another try. We consulted a sock book, and we thought we had it figured out. But we hadn’t. She ripped that one out, too.

Sandy encourages her to use different instructions for the heel, but Ida is determined to master those particular directions, which she printed off the Internet.

I understand obsession, especially a sock obsession. The patterns and lovely yarns enslave you and force you to do their bidding.

Ida says she specializes in “singleton” socks. Ida makes only one before moving on to a different pattern and yarn. Sandy feels sorry for what she calls Ida’s “lonely” socks.

The knitting group now has a proper name.

It was christened Valley Chachalaca Yarnsters. Someone recently suggested we wear name tags, convention-style, so we can learn each other names. We would have to wear a bumper sticker across our chests to print a name with that many letters.

I am handing out name tags at tonight’s meeting with a shortened version of the club name: ChaCha Knitters.

You can comment on knitting and crocheting projects, or your own harrowing day, at the group’s Web site: groups.yahoo.com/group/chachayarn.

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Nora N. Garza is a County Extension Agent with Texas Cooperative Extension of Hidalgo County, a part of the Texas A&M University System. She can be reached at (956) 383-1026.