A few months ago I posted a postcard on Postcardx asking knitters to send me leftover yarn and a description of the project they used it for. I am so surprised at all the yarn I have gotten. Every few weeks, and sometimes even a few times a week, I get an envelop with yarn and a story. So far all of the stories are about a new knitter's discovery of knitting and the one I got this week has been my favorite. It's from a kid named Cody, who seems to be just the kind of boy I adored when I was a girl these many decades ago, not just a type of boy but an actual boy. That long ago boy was groovy looking (like a Jewish David Cassidy) and arty, and he would slip these exquistly written notes - with quotes from Patti Smith poems - into my locker that would talk about what he was writing or painting or most excitingly, why our relationship was doomed. He was always surrounded by a cloud of freshman girls but he liked me the best. (Reader, I am still friends with this boy, now a forty something man. He grew up to be a child psychiatrist but unlike the 50 something David Cassidy, he does not play golf).

So here is what Cody had to say. I added pictures for illustrative purposes; his drawings were much better.

"I saw your request for yarn scraps at Postcardx and decided to send some along, even though I haven't been knitting very long. I am a17 year old boy - I had to learn for an independent art class I'm taking where I pick my own projects one month, and the next, the teacher picks.

Ms. Gregory, my teacher, decided I'd knit for a month. At first I thought she was kidding, but alas (after she unraveled my scarf close to three times... I kept dropping stitches) I did learn.

The green yarn is what I started with. I made a scarf that had this general shape (to me, his scarf looked like the Chrysler Building, imagine the windows as dropped stitch holes) . Needless to say, it has not left my room (though I got an A on the project). Last month, for Ms. Gregory, I had to create a piece of apparel. So I made a fedora hat, but I knitted it. Thats the brown string. It's not comfortable to wear, but it looks cool. I did a band of the blue around the fedora. It's a yarn I'll probably knit more with, it's pretty cool looking.

So now you know the history of my yarn. "