My grandmother, affectionately known by us grandkids as Grandma Mac, made all sorts of weird and adorable knitted things when I was a child. Every summer during the eight weeks we spent with my grandparents on the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene, she tried to teach me to knit. And every summer I stubbornly refused. I was much too busy drawing maps to secret treasures and plotting the overthrow of dragon lords and coordinating the elven queen's marriage to the man in the moon and captaining pirate ships through eel-infested waters to the land beyond the sun.

Years later, in the spring of 2005, my mother and I took a little road trip from her house on the western rim of Washington State to Grandma Mac's house on the Idaho border. For this road trip we bought all sorts of caffeinated beverages and delicious trans-fat-infused 7-Eleven snacks and two pairs of over-sized good-for-beginners knitting needles.

We spent a beautiful weekend with my grandmother browsing yarn shops, visiting my parents' childhood haunts, and finally learning the bare essentials of what to do with two pointy sticks and a bit of gorgeous wool. I've grown a little more sophisticated with my knitting since then, though I still have and cherish that very first scarf.

The strange thing is that somehow, in all those years between childhood summers filled to the brim with fantastical adventuring and that weekend in 2005, I hadn't quite realized how much I missed my imaginary worlds. I grew out of all that beautiful creativity and moved to Manhattan and surrounded myself with intellectuals and lawyers and the sometimes overwhelming world that is New York City.

But now? Now I've learned to create bridal shawls fit for fairy queens and raiment in the likeness of dragons wings and delicate, ethereal, silken things that whisper and flow and sparkle in the light. And this ability to create something beautiful is a beautiful, an amazing, a strangely powerful feeling.