All life is a road from the past to the future. And what the future will be depends only on us.

Class was insanity. Knitting is the new Pilates, everyone is doing it (including me). Except I would never do Pilates, because exercise can kill you. My co-worker did indeed drive out to the Valley from San Gabriel to attend the knitting class at Lani's. There were two other beginners in the class and both picked really tiny yarn, yikes!, plus me, Shannon, the instructor and a lady who brought her daughter and about 27 unfinished knitting works-in-progress. I meant to tell the works-in-progress lady that her daughter was exceptionally well-behaved and lovely but I forgot, so next week I hope she's there. Needless to say, with that many new people I did not mention ripping out my Tokyo scarf. It would have been an embarrassing diversion and the teacher was already swamped with needy knitters. Shannon and I chatted most of the time, she's working on her shawl and I decided to finish the fuzzy Crystal Palace scarf and maybe finally learn casting off, thereby picking up one ski...

Shannon has been knitting for months now. Sometime last fall she brought her knitting bag and a scarf project over to my place, it was back in the early days of my sudden, new-found singleness. She told me she'd taken a class at Lani's in Studio City and now she's a knitter with a bag full of string that will one day be a sweater. I was interested in her new obsession — yarn and sticks turn into into fabric? That's crazytalk! — but my schedule was full, I was simply too busy being miserable to take up a new hobby. Trying to find a new place to live, trying to figure out how to handle the holidays, trying to wake up each morning and make it through eight hours at work without crying at my desk or talking into my bra while directing traffic on 6th Street, muttering something about marriage being for suckers, film footage at eleven. It kept me busy. But now that's all behind me, thank God. Except the part about talking into my bra. Now that the move is done and I am s...