Monday, January 29, 2007

Daddy Taught Me Well!

Whenever confronted with a problem to solve, my Father would always look around to see what he could use. His soloutions to problems sometimes makes Rube Goldberg look like a rank amateur! I learned a lot from Daddy about looking outside the box - to wit....

My favorite aunt (the one who taught me to knit) sadly passed away a few years ago and I received several hanks of sheep's wool yarn from her belongings. I've never known what to knit from them as they are of a sport yarn weight, but now that I have just about mastered the fine art of sock knitting, I decided to knit a pair of socks with it.

Unfortunately, the hanks didn't come neatly packaged as a "ball" of yarn and needed to be balled before I could begin. Harking back to my childhood, sitting at the knees of my grandmother, holding the hank of yarn between my palms while she adroitly rolled it into a more manageable ball, I attempted to do the same with the help of H's hands. I don't know who ran out of patience first, him or me, but suffice it to say, I was skunked and put the hank of yarn in to the spare bedroom while I hummed on the problem.

I took it out again today and proceeded to try to unravel the yarn by myself and ended up in frustration. Until....... I looked at the kitchen stools and visualized them upside down. Voila!!! I had "hands" to hold the yarn while I adeptly rolled it into a nice, round ball.

Thank you, Daddy. You taught me well!
The new kitchen multitasker!

2 comments:

Diana LaMarre said...

Well, now that is about the most clever solution I can imagine!

Anonymous said...

Aaah! This made me smile. You are the only other person I've ever heard of who learned about "Rube Goldberg" lessons from their father. My father was very good at that as well, and taught me too. Thanks for the reminder and I love your multi-tasking kitchen stools.