I'm not the type of woman who has an emergency sewing kit tucked into her purse.

Me? I pack Krazy Glue.

In a pinch, I can reattach a button, fix a hem or stitch together a seam, but the universe has given me a couple signs that I'm not meant to be a seamstress — and I'm not talking about meandering stitches, sagging hems or uncentered buttons.

My signals have been a bit more clear, like needing a sewing needle surgically removed from my leg or having my index finger sewn back together after I snipped the tip off with fabric shears in home economics.

If my more general crafting-related doctor's visits are counted, too, there's a strong case to be made against my ability to cut things apart or put them together. That's why I couldn't blame my friends and family for their skepticism when I announced I was learning to knit.

But that's also why I had mixed feelings when my initial attempts left me with back spasms, an achy jaw, stiff fingers and unraveling stitches. On the one hand, OUCH! On the other, I was encouraged that I hadn't lost any blood (knock on my bamboo knitting needles).

I popped some Advil and continued on my quest for relaxation, monotonous occupation and — with luck — a skill that might come in useful over the holidays.

My kids observed me with curiosity at first, then concern and later, frustration.

I couldn't believe that my 12-year-old was watching me at all, since that's about as bizarre as me knitting. I was surprised when the kid who never answers the important questions tossed out a response when I asked rhetorically, "Why won't these stitches stay together?"

"Maybe you have to wait until you're a grandma," he suggested, without a hint of irony.

My 5-year-old was more supportive, keeping her eyes on the prize: the blockish teddy "bear" I'd picked for my first project.

"It's beautiful," she gushed, admiring a long string of uneven stitches too fuzzy to distinguish from each other. "You're doing it!" she cheered, as I turned those stitches into a misshapen blob.

I knew better and kept replaying a video clip on the Internet trying to figure out what was going wrong. My daughter had the instructions memorized before I figured out how to make one proper knit stitch. Finally she snapped:

"Aren't you listening? She's telling you what to do. Can't you follow directions?" I was probably lucky I had a plastic tape measure instead of a wooden ruler or she might have rapped my knuckles.

Rather than defend my ineptitude, I handed her a ball of yarn and a pair of needles and let her have a go. Once she had gotten herself sufficiently tangled, she stopped criticizing me and I took a break to order her a kiddie kit from the Internet.

And that's when inspiration hit. Rather than scouring the Internet for using search terms like "how to knit" or "knitting for beginners," I added the word "kids" to my searches and struck gold.

I could be embarrassed that I needed sing-song rhymes to figure out what I was doing, but when I finally figured out how to bind my stitches all I felt was relief, quickly followed by the relaxation I'd been chasing.

I doubt I'll become a crafting queen in time to hand-make many holiday gifts, but maybe I can start mending my reputation as a crafting klutz.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com. Read her daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.