I don’t have any crafty photographs to show you today, and quite frankly, showing you my Funky Grandpa cardigan again would be practically pointless because now we are well into the slog down the body of the sweater and it won’t look all that different.

So, instead, I’ve decided to tell you about a conversation I had with Mr. Ink over the weekend. But it requires a little back story.

Now, Mr. Ink is a kind and generous man, but he’s not overly generous with his words. He tends to be very careful with his words, and indecisive about speaking them, and in the end this tends to make him a quiet person. On our first date we were really just trying to get to know each other, and sometimes conversation would lack segue. It was rather that deep discomfort of two introverts attempting to get to know each other in an unfamiliar situation. At some point during the evening he said “I am not that into yarn, you know.” I think my response was something along the lines of “You don’t have to be, as long as you don’t mind that I am.”

A couple months into our relationship, and after hearing him speak to other people very proudly of the things that I create, I decided to ask for clarification. I asked him why, if he’s just not that into yarn, he could speak of it so well, and be eager to listen to what I had going on, and deliberately ask me what projects I had going on. He said “Well, I love what you create, I just don’t want you to put it ON me.” So, we came to a non negotiable agreement. I would not knit for him, and wouldn’t even speak of doing so. This….is not a difficult agreement since I really have little interest in most things that I’d knit for a guy anyhow. And I’ve always got plenty of projects going on, and rarely time to fit much extra knitting into my life.

Last week, he asked for a pompom for the top of a hat that is starting to unravel. I thought that a bit unusual, and while I have not yet made the pompom, I was impressed he’d even remotely think of asking me for something that could be construed as knitting.

And then Saturday rolled around. We headed out to our local bike trail for Global Fat Bike Day. It was a cold day, but not nearly as cold as last year. Mr. Ink has recently realized that the biggest trick to keeping your feet warm is to wear loose shoes. If you’ve got a decent pair of socks and you can easily wiggle your toes, you will generally be warm. We were done with our cold ride, and he was talking about how his feet were cold and he suspected this was because his mountain biking shoes with socks and shoe covers end up being tight. But, that he’d worn heavier wool socks with his sneakers on our last cold ride and had stayed quite warm. I explained how I almost always have warm feet while biking, even when using my summer biking shoes, because I use a nice pair of heavy handknit socks. (Socks that Rock Mediumweight, for the record.) I then said something like “Someday, when you allow it, I’ll make you a pair to see if you like them.” This was completely off the cuff, I didn’t expect a response.

But a response I got. “Oh, I don’t think our agreement really applies to SOCKS….”

“WAIT WHUT DID YOU JUST SAY?!?!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner that the agreement didn’t apply to socks?!” He was quiet for a few moments, and then he said “I feared the slippery slope.”