Once Upon a Mattress (Stitch)

Carol Burnett as Winifred in "Once Upon a Mattress"

This is for those of us who grew up on wonderful television broadcasts of Broadway classics like “Peter Pan” with Mary Martin (OK, now that I look back on that one, she is rather grotesque as young Peter), “Cinderella” with Lesley Anne Warren, Celeste Holm, and Walter Pigeon, and this classic — “Once Upon a Mattress” with Carol Burnett as Winifred.

Having just completed quite a lot of mattress stitch, I felt it was a fitting tribute to my now better-honed skills in that area. It’s a funny thing with knitting (or any other skill one is learning, come to think of it) — the things that used to strike fear in my heart as a new knitter have, after three years of obsessive knitting, become… well, much easier. And not only are those things easier for me to do, they actually look pretty good, too. I’m sure you can recite the litany of scary knitting things with me, knitties: Kitchener stitch, seaming, lace, knitting with tiny needles… (And I must say, I had a proud knitting in public moment about a year ago when working on a sock on two circ’s – size 1 Addi’s with regular fingering weight sock yarn – and a woman came up and asked me if I was knitting with wire and thread!)

I know this is probably a real non-brainer for most of you. You do something more, practice, you get better. Our moms and dads told us that all the time. But get this — they were right.