Joy To The World

Did you ever see the episode of Friends when everyone is making fun of the way Phoebe runs and she explains to them that she always runs as if she is running for the swings?  Remember that wonderful feeling of running for the swings when you were a kid?  You didn't care what you looked like or what  you were wearing--all you new was that you were having fun.

Well that's the way my friend Joy knits.  She knits like she's running for the swings.  She does it purely for the fun off it.  She doesn't care if she knits "right" or "wrong" (that's a conversation for another day--there's no such thing as the wrong way to knit).  When she loses a stitch she makes a new one.

I have a group of friends that I gather with often to celebrate our birthdays.  Last year Joy sent out an email to all of us asking us not to get her things for her birthday but rather to do something special with her or find some tools for her creativity.  Oh by the way, did I mention that Joy is by far the most creative person I know?  Click on the link above to see her photos.  They're fabulous.

Now Joy is my oldest friend (I've know her since first grade--I do have one other friend that I've known longer but I didn't see her all through elementary school so Joy wins the oldest friend trophy) and I knew she would never knit herself socks.  In fact, she had once asked me to make her a pair of socks.  So I bought a sock blank, some dye and printed out the instructions and gave them to her to play with.  The plan was that once it was dyed, I would knit them up.  (They're on the needles now but that's a post for another day.)

Joy bought herself a lovely gift at her LYS as well.  It was a kit with some straight up gorgeous yarn and a pattern for a pair of mitts with a little ruffle around the top and the bottom.  I know that I said that there is no wrong way to knit but the way that Joy forms her stitches would totally screw things up if she was knitting in the round.  I gave her a little lesson on other ways to knit and sent her home with some dps to practice on.

Not surprisingly, this year Joy asked me to actually knit those mitts for her as her birthday gift. 

We figured out what she wanted (blue with pink trim) and I got them started.  They knit up so quickly that it was almost a disappointment until I realized that if I left off the bottom ruffle, there was enough yarn to make two pairs!  Woo Hoo!  I was so excited, I even took them on a trip to the beach.

Aren't they adorable.  And they're even cuter on.

And look how great they look on Joy!  I have a feeling that she may be wearing them as mismatched pairs more often than she planned because they just look so damn cute that way.