The knitter on the bus goes snaGROROARRRRWLrl!

"All through the mor-ning!"

One of the charms of living in Austin is that anybody, and I mean anybody, will strike up a conversation with you. They say the South is friendly (minus Atlanta)? Come to Austin. You can step on somebody's foot and they'll invite you out to see some live music with them. People love to talk here.

Yesterday, I was riding a bus home. I've been taking the bus and saving oodles of gas money for about a year now. It's become more popular, with the increased attention to climate change and rising gas prices, and my once-empty bus home has become, over the last twelve months, full of semi-cheerful commuters who ride both the bus and a veritable cloud of smugness as we do not fill up our cars.

In the last three months, another knitter has joined the ride. She knits socks on DPNs, so it goes without saying that she's some to crazy-land with the rest of us. Sock knitters have bought in wholesale, yes? And knitters just loooove to talk about knitting. One of my fellow arts critics in Austin knits nothing but garter-stitch scarves, but she still wants to talk about knitting every time we see each other. My knitting Meetup group talks nonstop for the whole time we're together. My mother and I talk mostly about knitting - not because we don't have anything else to talk about, but we both really like it. (Plus I think my father's short on opinions regarding magic loop vs. DPNs.)

Yesterday, for the first time, the Other Knitter and I wound up on seats across the aisle from each other. I looked over curiously at the black-and-gray variegated sock yarn. (Maybe that should have tipped me off, as black is a color I won't touch with size 15 straights when knitting.) She didn't look up.

"What kind of yarn are you using?" I asked, smiling.

"Excuse me?"

"What kind of yarn is that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh. I guess I meant like brand." Surely she'd seen me knitting, too. I'd just put away the EZ Tomten Jacket a few minutes ago. She had to know I spoke her language.

"It's a yarn I found on Etsy." She turned back to her knitting. End of conversation.

Well. All I can think is, she must be a recent transplant, because that sort of thing just isn't done around here.

I did sneak one or two more glances at her, and I saw that she does this really weird thing with her left hand even though it's continental style, and it's really slow-going. Sucker.