(Note:  If you are looking for pictures of my grandson Max — I know Sarah routed people to my website for this purpose — proceed to my "Grandmotherly Knitting" entry.  For a chatty bit about knitting, read on!)

Our September weather has been lovely – blue skies, golden
light, just enough cool breeze to keep one from drowsing away one’s knitting
time.  I have knit outside on our back
deck nearly everyday this week.  On Thursday,
I knit IN THE MORNING!  Right after
breakfast, shamelessly.  If the neighbors
had peeked over the fence, they would have seen me in my “cozy clothes” with a
cup of coffee and my lace knitting – at 9:00 am!

I think I was wise to take advantage of the quiet half hour,
but it felt a little weird.  Morning
always seems to me to be “morning work time” (get the laundry going, make
grocery lists, tidy up, etc.).  I
exercise in the morning.  I shower and
dress in the morning.  I hit my computer,
check my email, blog in the morning.  I
may even linger over a cup of coffee with my husband or one of my kids in the
morning.  But I seldom (i.e. almost
never-ever) knit in the morning. 

Even though my knitting has shifted from avocation to
vocation, I have not yet shaken my tendency to “make sure I get my work done
first.”   Now that knitting is
legitimately part of my work (at least as much as doing the laundry and making
committee calls), I have no qualms about making it a priority – intellectually
and philosophically.  But it feels a
little weird to knit in the morning.

Years ago, when our children were small, my dear friend,
Joyce, would come to my house on Thursday mornings and we would make a pot of
coffee and knit (or crochet or embroider or whatever we were into at the
time).  She would come at 10:00 am with
her youngest in tow (she had gotten her other 3 boys up and to school and had
done her week’s grocery shopping too, I recall).  I had four children too – and was not really
a morning person.   I remember the effort
to get the older kids off to school and to have the living room presentable
(the floor cleared of Barbie paraphernalia and the couch cleared of laundry)
and myself presentable (breakfasted, showered, and dressed) by 10:00 am.  But then we would knit and it was a high point of the week.

By comparison, heading out to the deck in my robe with my
second cup of coffee and my basket of lace knitting seems pretty slack.  Almost decadent (knitters who have, patiently
or impatiently, slogged through the workday, carpools, kitchen and laundry
duties, kids’ baths, kids’ homework, etc. before getting to that golden hour of
knitting will understand).  Decadent,
delicious….

From time to time, me have the opportunity to refresh our
ways.