Knit wit.

Last night I went a knitting club meeting at the library.  My cake decorating class just finished and I figured it would be a good way to learn, as learning to knit is one of the things on my 101 list. 

I was the first person there besides the little old lady who ran the group.  She was incredibly nice and showed me how to begin.  She was a little deaf, so we had the awkward overly-loud always-repeat conversation thing going on.

Nice Old Lady:  "SO HOW OLD ARE YOU, DEARIE?"

Me:  "I'm twenty-seven."

N.O.L.:  "EH?"

Me:  "TWENTY-SEVEN."

N.O.L.:  "TWENTY SEVEN?  I FIGURED YOU FOR SEVENTEEN.  I THOUGHT YOU WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL!"

This was flattering at the time but it fed my insecurities later.

I was enjoying myself until the next two people showed up:  two 12 year old girls.

At this point, an awful lightbulb went off in my head.  What if I had misread the flier?  What if this was not a general knitting club but one for teenagers and kids?  What if I was the creepy upper-20-something that just crashed in on the kid's knitting club and the nice old lady was too sweet to tell me to get the heck out?

Here's something you should know about me:  I'm a strange mix of confidence and insecurity.  I can fake confidence really well.  I do stupid stuff all the time.  I'm the sort of person who routinely loses her shoe in a mud puddle, drops an ice-cream sandwich on a white blouse, and walks into the wrong meeting room (always full) an hour early.  And I'm good at making it look as if I just brush it off all the while I'm swearing at myself in my head. 

So I'm sitting in a library conference room, knitting furiously, and trying to remember what exactly the flier said.  I search my memory for clues:  was that why the lady thought I was in high school?  Did the librarian who showed me the room give me an odd look?

I tried to search my purse for the flier.  Of course, everyone stops what they're doing and looks and me while I rummage around in it.  After an incredibly long and loud (how in the heck is the stuff in my purse that loud?) minute of searching to no avail, I pull out my chapstick and pretend that I was looking for that the entire time. 

As I knit, I thought furiously.  Finally I came up with a plan.  I excused myself as if I had to go to the restroom, went to the front of the library, and reread the flier that advertised it.  If it was a knitting club for youth, I would politely apologize, leave, and NEVER EVER EVER go to that library again in case someone recognized me.  I would wait until I was home to die from mortification.

As it turns out, the flier said nothing about age range.  When I went back to the room, there were two more women there, both in their thirties.

So I now know how to knit.  And I'm able to go back to that library without fear of humiliation.  I think I'll go again next week--I need to learn how to cast on and cast off.