When esoteric knowledge areas collide
Sep. 10th, 2009 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieA long, long time ago, my neighbor Mrs. C. taught me some rudimentary knitting. I come from a family of crocheters; I'd learned crocheting from my mother at a fairly early age, and I liked it well enough to complete various projects over the years. Knitting, though - no one was a knitter in the family, but I was defnitely interested in it. It seemed so much faster than crocheting, not to mention there were all those lovely Irish-knit and cable patterns. So my neighbor agreed to show me the basics, and I picked up some basic stitches, how to cast on (kind of; it was always easier to just crochet the first row and then slip it onto a knitting needle) and cast off (ditto). I even made a scarf, as I recall, but that was about it. High school and other interests got in the way, and the only other person my age I knew into yarn was also a crocheter.
So time goes on, and my budding interest in computers turns into professional-grade geekery. One of my jobs required that I teach myself a programming language, Perl, at least well enough to parse someone else's code well enough to document what it did. (That was quite the challenge; Perl can be extremely dense.)
And the world turns around again, and I'm still working in high-tech but just now picking up knitting again, encouraged by a co-worker who is also a knitting fiend. Sitting here this evening, knitting needles in hand, I find myself not-quite-remembering how to do certain things. But hey, I'm a resourceful geek, and my laptop is handy; surely I can find guidance on the Internet.
Only, of course, I wind up searching on "perl" instead of "purl."
Sigh.
On the plus side, I did eventually figure out my mistake and find several nifty sites that helped jog my memory. I have successfully cast on my project and started knitting and purling the ribbing. Time will tell if I can figure out the rest and squeeze out enough time to finish what I've started.
So time goes on, and my budding interest in computers turns into professional-grade geekery. One of my jobs required that I teach myself a programming language, Perl, at least well enough to parse someone else's code well enough to document what it did. (That was quite the challenge; Perl can be extremely dense.)
And the world turns around again, and I'm still working in high-tech but just now picking up knitting again, encouraged by a co-worker who is also a knitting fiend. Sitting here this evening, knitting needles in hand, I find myself not-quite-remembering how to do certain things. But hey, I'm a resourceful geek, and my laptop is handy; surely I can find guidance on the Internet.
Only, of course, I wind up searching on "perl" instead of "purl."
Sigh.
On the plus side, I did eventually figure out my mistake and find several nifty sites that helped jog my memory. I have successfully cast on my project and started knitting and purling the ribbing. Time will tell if I can figure out the rest and squeeze out enough time to finish what I've started.
