Hey gang! Long time, not post, eh? Honestly I’ll be amazed if more than two people even read this, but I gotta start somewhere, right? ;D Oh, and here’s a pic of how I look right now, ’cause I got my hair cut even shorter so I gotta show it!
Hey, that's me!
Anywho, here’s my first Real Blog Post of 2012. It’s about an experience I had recently with someone I work with (all names are fake, for privacy reasons), and my knitting. Please enjoy.
More than a year ago, the temp agency I was working for got me an assignment at a large insurance company in downtown Cincinnati. Originally my job was pretty simple. Using a simple desk scanner to scan insurance applications into the company’s system. The catch was that the department I was going to be working in was more than 6 months behind on this duty, so they were hiring me to make up the difference. Essentially, I was a glorified secretary, but that was about on par with other things I’d done as a temp, so it didn’t bother me. It was a paycheck, and since the scanner took forever I had plenty of down time to scribble story ideas in my notebook and daydream about cute super heroes (or whoever I was crushing on at the time).
Of course, as usual, I was painfully shy around the new people I was working with. I already have a tendency to be very reserved with people I don’t know, and that tendency had only increased during my time as a temp, working with people I might not see ever again once the temp job was finished. It took me at least a week to say more than two words to my coworkers, except when I had to ask for help, which I only did when absolutely necessary. Gradually, I began to make friends with them, at least to the extent of a casual working relationship. One of them, though, was a bit more friendly than the others. We’ll call her Mary.
From the beginning, Mary was very nice to me. She was a bit older than me, perhaps around my mother’s age, and so I think she felt some kind of urge to watch out for me. She surreptitiously warned me when the bosses were in a bad mood, chatted happily about her life and her family, and over all made me feel a lot more comfortable than I otherwise would have been. When the company asked if I had any interest in being hired on full-time, she confided in me that she and the other ladies in the department were impressed by my hard work and politeness, and when they’d been asked how they liked me, they heartily endorsed my being hired on. Indeed, after I was hired, I ended up being moved to a different cubicle, which was right behind Mary’s. Every day from then on we would chat when it was slow, talk about this and that. She gave me some good advice about dating back when I met my ex-boyfriend, and during the relationship that followed. She also helped cheer me up when I felt sad about having to dump him. All in all, she’s a good coworker and a good friend, and having her there makes what can sometimes be a tedious job more bearable.
Now, any of you who know me, know that I have a problem trying to give people too much. I think it’s partly a deep-seated urge that I’m still trying to conquer, to make people like me by doing them kindnesses. The problem is, lots of people will take advantage of that, so I’ve gotten burned over the years. Still, after a while at my job, being in Mary’s company and benefiting from her friendship and experienced advice, I felt the urge to pay her back. She isn’t much for sweets, so my usual tactic of “drown them in cookies/muffins/cake” wouldn’t work with her. After I finished one of my first shawls and took it to work, she ooohed and aahed over it, complimented it, talked about how lovely it was, and I knew then that I wanted to knit her a shawl.
A few weeks later, pretending to be browsing knitting patterns for myself, I brought up a few and asked her opinion of them. She chose a lovely shawl by the same designer who had made the pattern for the one she’d been impressed by, said she liked the colors in one of the model photos (dark purple and grey), and that was that. On my next paycheck, I ordered the yarn and resolved to cast on for the shawl as soon as I received it.
I started the shawl in the first week of October, hoping that I could finish it by Christmas and give it to Mary. Unfortunately, I did not foresee that my birthday gift of a new iPad 2 at the end of the month would cut into my knitting time so badly that I hardly worked on anything throughout the rest of November and December. I struggled, telling myself (as only a master procrastinator can) that I still had time, that the shawl would be finished, that I would work on it as much as possible. And yet time went forward, a few rows were knit, and my iPad games progressed much faster than the shawl did.
Finally, right before the time off I had scheduled for Christmas, I came in to work one day and found a bag on my desk. Mary had bought me a Christmas present, and I was wracked with guilt that the shawl was not done. I blurted out that I was making her something, and it would be done by the time we both got back from vacation. She smiled and thanked me, and things went on.
Unfortunately, the shawl didn’t get finished. And after she’d come back from her time off (which was longer than mine, her having more seniority in the company), I kept guiltily silent, until she asked me about it. She jokingly chided me, and I felt betrayed and angry, because teasing is something I still haven’t learned to take very well. I went home and asked the opinion of my online knitting friends on Ravelry. They helped me calm down and see it had only been teasing, and so work continued on the shawl. I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible, and I’d managed to shrug off the lure of the iPad well enough to at least work on it in the evenings.
Finally, last week, it was nearly done. Tuesday night I realized I had only a few rows until I could cast off, and the next day I told Mary that she would have it on Friday. But she sighed, told me it wasn’t worth it, and made me feel even worse than her light teasing had. I returned to my online knitting friends, upset and ready to throw in the towel, telling them I was going to finish it because I couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore, and give it to her and then wash my hands of the whole affair. Thankfully, one of the wisest people I know on Ravelry helped me see that her response hadn’t been related to me or the shawl at all, but rather other experiences in her life that were making her feel down. I realized that what she had said was something I would have said, back when I was horribly depressed all the time and felt worthless. She wasn’t telling me that my shawl was a waste of time, she was saying that she wasn’t worth the effort.
Wednesday night, I finished it, washed it, pinned it out, and left it to dry by my running box fan. On Thursday night, I took pictures, wove in the last trailing ends, and carefully packed it in tissue paper and a nice little bag. I put one of my Knitterella Gift Tags on it (the blue one) and filled our names out in the to/from lines.
On Friday morning, after unwrapping myself from the winter layers and setting my things down on my desk, I put the bag on her desk. I watched out of the corner of my eye while she finished a task she’d been involved in, then slowly unpacked the bag. At first, she didn’t say anything, and my heart sank. After all the work I had put in, she didn’t like it, and I felt like I was an utter failure. Then, she put it around her shoulders, stood up, and came over and hugged me tightly. Then she walked all around the office, showing it off to all our coworkers, and bragging about how I had made her such a lovely thing. So all was well in the world, the gift was well-received, and I glowed from the praise.
Still, a lesson was learned. The only person I craft unconditionally for is my mother, because she cherishes everything I make for her and uses it as it’s supposed to be used. She doesn’t make offhand comments that make me feel like a failure, because she knows how I would take them. Mary is a wonderful person, a good coworker and a good friend. But she doesn’t know me as well as she could, or else she would’ve known how her comments would’ve made me feel. And knitting something like a shawl, I put so much of myself into it that it isn’t worth doing if the person may not like it.
I knew, academically, the emotional risks I was setting myself up for, taking on this project. But I don’t think I was prepared for how much they would affect me. Perhaps one day, I might knit Mary something else. Something small and simple that I don’t think much about, something that only takes me a weekend or so to finish. Or perhaps I won’t.
What I know is, I’m knitting myself one of these shawls, in entirely different colors, because her’s looks really awesome, and I love the pattern. 😀
All pinned out and dry.
Hanging on the back of my desk chair.
I think it looks great, don't you?
It does look gorgeous. ❤
*hugs*