I knit.

I remember the first time that my grandma introduced me to knitting. I'm pretty sure I was around 8 or so and I even remember the house they were living in. I don't remember if I asked her or she asked me if I wanted to learn or if I was just being obnoxious and she wanted some way to occupy me (probably the last one). She sat me down in her chair and gave me a piece that she was working on (I think it was a scarf) and showed me the knit stitch. I remember how amazing it was that I was able to take that ball of pastel pink yarn and transform it into something. The funniest part is that apparently I taught myself the purl stitch (there are only two stitches in knitting and purl is the other one) because when my grandma came back I still remember her exclamation of "Oh, I see you learned how to purl." At the time all these words didn't mean anything because I still didn't really know what I was doing, I just remember how amazing it made me feel. I however, did not pick it up right away again. I mean when you're eight years old it's kinda hard to have enough money for needles and yarn when no one else in your immediate family knits and your grandma lives about 1,500 miles away.
I picked up knitting again after college. I was living in Eugene and I worked next door to a yarn shop. I remember passing by and always being enchanted. I remembered the knit and purl stitches well enough but I didn't know how to cast on. So I went in one day, bought some yarn and needles and had one of them teach me. I remember meeting resistence because I was left handed. They were nice enough about helping me but it was like I was a foreign animal and being left handed was all it took to stump them. So then I made scarfs because I was basically shown I was unteachable due to being left handed. During this time I moved up to Seattle and I had many more yarn shops to choose from but I didn't really try to learn how to knit from anyone else. I was still gun shy from being treated like I was unable to be taught to knit. So I kept buying yarn and books and making scarfs. Okay, you can only take making so many scarfs until you just want to shoot yourself out of boredom. I still loved knitting so I tried to teach myself from the books I had bought. This was super frustrating because it didn't work. I didn't have enough know how and was nervous to ask, so I stopped. I stopped buying yarn and knitting needles. I stopped entirely.
Then through the magic that Facebook is Jilian found me. We became friends in high school and as life goes we lost touch. Jilian is a rather accomplished knitter (thank you partially to her mom Karen) who had been around knitting most of her life if not all of her life. Jilian made me feel like I could knit. That somehow being left handed didn't make me some sort of enigma and completely unteachable. She did it with such a grace and sweetness that I was immediately comfortable. She taught me other cast-ons, what a gauge swatch is and why it's SO important (even though it's a pain in the you know what), and she piled me with resources and patterns. It also helps that there are now so many tutorials online (one example) that show you what to do if you get stuck. But best of all she got me started again. Thank you Jili, your friendship and (knitting) guidance means so much to me. I'm very grateful that we became friends again.
I have recently learned how to knit in the round, use double pointed needles, ribbing and I am going to try cabling soon. I don't feel like there is anything I will not able to learn with knitting. I'm just going to do it my own left handed way. :) I also have to say that Isaac has been very sweet about it. He's always been so supportive and willing to do what he can (if anything) to help me (aka. go yarn shopping). He asks me about projects I'm working on and gets excited about the progress I'm making. Now if I could just get him into yarn shops, well actual knitting would help too.
Perhaps the funniest thing that Jilian has intruduced me to (well, knitting related) is the Yarn Harlot. She's so frickin' hilarious and an amazingly fast knitter. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go add to my stash.