My Knitting Story

Because we all need a story, right?

Mine starts way back in the '80s, when I spent part of each summer with my great-grandmother at "Camp" (our family term for a summer place in the Adirondacks) in upstate New York. I was the only great-grandchild for several years, so I got a lot of Grandma O time to myself. She was about 70 years older than me, and we got along just fine. She taught me to crochet, to make soup out of random ingredients when you think there's nothing for dinner, to build a fire, to enjoy a week or three straight with no television. She told stories, and did crafts, and just seemed to have a pretty good life, and I loved her.

In 2002, when my daughter was two and I hadn't done summers with Grandma O in many years, she had the first of a series of TIAs, mini-strokes that slowly robbed her of her ability to drive, move with confidence, and, eventually, live alone. She moved into a nursing home, and I finally had the horrible realization that she wasn't going to live forever. After spending some time thinking about, "What would I regret not doing?" I realized that the big thing was learning to knit. I'd always loved watching her do it, and just somehow never bothered to learn during my summertime visits, and knew I needed to grab my chance while I could.

So I packed up my daughter, Emily, gathered a bag of toys and a big plastic-lined tablecloth, bought a skein of yarn and some needles, any old size, and I headed to New York. I spread the tablecloth out on the floor of the nursing home, set Emily up with her toys (and, later, just to be safe, I also dipped my baby girl in bleach to get rid of whatever germs she may have picked up), sat down with Grandma O and learned to knit and purl. Just the very basics, nothing complicated. Casted on and bound off a few times, and then set to work on a scarf.

For the next several months, I was still a full-time grad student and mom and wife and other causes for insanity and busyness, and I rarely picked up the knitting. Once a month or less, just to make sure I still remembered how to do it. Like falling off a bicycle, only with fewer skinned knees; it came back easily every time... once I'd learned it in the first place.

It started off as a scarf, and then I just kept going - decided to make it part of a blanket instead, and knitted the whole skein into a seven-foot-long strip. Then I decided my next step was to continue practicing just those simple knit/purl stitches, on the theory that it would be easier to branch out into patterns if I waited until I was very comfortable with the basics. So I bought random yarn, based solely on liking individual colors and textures, without a single thought to how the whole thing might look, and I made rectangles. Many many rectangles.

And when the little voice in my head finally spoke loud enough for me to hear it, I had to agree: "YOU HAVE ENOUGH. STOP MAKING RECTANGLES." So I stitched them all together, and the result was a wonderful-horrible blanket, very snuggly and comfortable and clashing like all get-out.

My first sweater attempt was for my son, and I finished it in April 2006. I've done a handful more child-sized sweaters, a couple of adult ones, and somehow over the past year this has moved from an occasional hobby to a full-grown obsession. I don't leave the house without my knitting. I read about it. I dream about it. I figure, sure, it's an obsession, and any obsession can be dangerous - but this one makes pretty things and won't land me in jail (especially because I don't think I'd be allowed knitting needles in jail. I'd go insane!).

I want to show off, I want to have a running display of my knitting, but it doesn't really fit into either of my other blogs - I have a family photos blog, mostly viewed by grandmas and friends, and a more traditional blog characterized by my ramblings and thoughts and rantings and whatever else. So this one is for yarn, and knitting, and all things related.