I just realized this is my second blog post in a week; lots of things going on that are triggering old memories I'd like to share. This one has to do with knitting - or rather, no longer knitting, something I began to learn at age 7 from my Grandma Kate. I wrote about this a couple of years ago when I had just finished an afghan for my grandson. Today's post has come about because I reluctantly just posted my knitting needles and accessories in a local Buy Nothing group.
Letting go of those needles was not an easy decision to make, but they have been gathering dust and I haven't touched them since I made another afghan for my granddaughter Hunter. (She saw Hayden's camo one and wanted a pink camo; believe or or not, I actually found pink camo variegated yarn.) Time for them to be handled over to a younger knitter, or at least someone who has better eyesight and less arthritic hands. My memory may be getting as feeble as my hands, because until today I associated it with my grandmother. As I started to write this post, it came back to me - the needle case is a sentimental thing, gifted to me by a friend quite a few years ago. It belonged to her mother, who I became close to. We called her Grandma Nancy, so maybe that's why in my mind it belonged to my grandmother. Nancy was a knitter, too, and that was just one of the things we shared. I enjoyed quite a bit of use over it since Nancy passed on, looking at it fondly and remembering us and sitting on the couch in my house with our knitting projects. I'll keep the memories; the case can move on. (The case holds some needles I got from Grandma Kate.)
My memories of my grandmother often contain two common elements: some books she was in the process of reading, and her knitting basket with a current project or two. Like her books, she took her knitting wherever she went. She knit on the bus or in the car; she knit while waiting at the doctor's office. It's from her I learned to watch TV by mostly listening while concentrating on a project in my lap. She was the original multi-tasker, and that's how I was raised.
I can almost hear her needles clicking. Christmas often meant a scarf and hat set, or a pair of new mittens. Baby blankets and hats and booties cascaded from those needles by the hundreds over the years I'm sure. She and my Grandpa Harvard were long-time members of First Christian Church in St. Paul, and every winter a 'mitten tree' was put up in the lobby. Knitters in her women's group filled that tree with mittens and hats and scarves and sometimes socks. Families from the nearby housing project were invited in just before Christmas to take what they might need from the tree for their families.
I drew from my memories of the mitten tree one year when I went on a knitting splurge for the staff kids at our church camp. I was homeschooling our kids at the time and had the opportunity to knit while they studied or worked on assignments. We'd come up one winter weekend to the camp and I was struck by the sight of all the wet mittens lined up on the radiators in the entryways. Kids were putting on damp mittens to go back outside - clearly there was a need! Each child got to pick out a color, and I took advantage of the yarn sales at the mall. (Some kids requested slippers instead; some got both, as well as a hat.) My grandma had been gone for about 10 years by then, but she and I had some good talks as I worked on those mittens.
More than a few novice knitters sat beside me on my couch in years past. Those who weren't fortunate to have spent time with a grandma learning the basic domestic arts (mine also taught me to crochet, embroider, sew, and bake) got the benefit of my upbringing. Later on when we farmed and raised sheep, I learned to hand spin wool, which I also taught. (My spinning wheel is also gathering dust, but I can spin with my eyes closed, so I may hang onto that for awhile longer.)
One of my Grandma Kate's last knitting projects was a cardigan sweater for the baby I was carrying. I'd just told her I was pregnant, and she had me drive her somewhere to buy yarn. (An announcement of a pregnancy was all she needed to start in on a new project.) As we were browsing through the colors, she asked me if I had a hunch as to what sex the baby was. I told her I was convinced it was a boy, and so she picked out this beautiful shade of pale blue. At this point, she was losing her battle to cancer and knew she didn't have much longer to live. She looked at me and said I had to promise to put the sweater on the baby even if it was a girl. She knew she'd be gone before the baby came, so this was a very bittersweet project for both of us. She did finish the sweater, and I put Andy in it until it was too tight for his fat arms. Then I passed it on to a friend who'd just had a boy.
As I'm writing this, I am amazed at how she was able to knit that sweater. She was 84 at that point; her fingers must have been more nimble than mine are at nearly 69. I'm struck by the realization that I am now older than the age she was when I moved in with my grandparents when I turned 18. I lived with them in the house on Wheelock until I graduated from the U in June of 1977 and moved into my first apartment. Her housewarming gifts to me? A Tupperware batter bowl, a Betty Crocker spiral bound cookbook, and a basic knitting kit, including enough yarn for an afghan. This was back in the day of harvest gold, burnt orange, and avocado green, so you can picture what the variegated yarn looked like!
I did get that afghan made, and it looked great draped over the back of my rescued-from-the-roadside couch with its gold slipcover. I was living in Bloomington then, but I made regular trips to St. Paul to visit friends and often stayed at the Wheelock house overnight, sometimes even when Grandpa and Grandma were up at the cabin in Cotton (near Cloquet).
Grandma Kate never made it to my apartment; my grandfather passed away suddenly at the age of 68 a year after I moved in, and her life changed dramatically. I moved out of state not long after he died. Eventually years later I moved back to St. Paul, with a husband and a toddler daughter in tow. Fortunately we'd found a house very close to hers on Ivy behind Johnson High School, but she didn't get to that house, either. She had long since quit driving. Cancer had taken away much of her strength, and except for an occasional trip to the doctor, she didn't leave that house until it was time to go into hospice.
But before then, most nights on the way home from work I'd stop to get her supper and then help her to bed. We'd talk about whatever was on her mind. Sometimes it was from long, long ago. I heard the story of her first date with my grandpa, hunting squirrels on horseback at age 16. She laughed when she told me about it and said she didn't think she'd ever shared the story with her children. Then suddenly she shifted from her past to mine, inquiring about what had happened to 'that nice young man' I had worked with when I was 18. She'd long since forgotten his name but had a very vivid recollection of him. I told her I hadn't had any contact with him for a very long time. (Oddly enough, he and I did reconnect a few years ago on a Facebook St. Paul group we were both part of, and I told him Grandma Kate had asked about him before she died. He shared with me that once when he'd been at the house waiting for me to change, she had given him the third degree. He said she was obviously very protective of me and wanted to make sure that if he were a prospective boyfriend that he would measure up to her standards. Neither of them ever told me about that back then.)
One of the very last things Grandma and I talked about before she was moved to the hospice unit at St. Joseph's hospital was to make sure I knew she wanted me to have her knitting stuff because it didn't seem any of the other granddaughters were interested. I cried the day the bottom fell out of her knitting bin - it was an old magazine rack with a fabric sling-type liner, and lord knows how old it was. Most likely older than me.
So to whoever it is I choose to gift my knitting things to, there are a lot of memories that will go along with the needles and the notions. The recipient may never know just how much love is stashed in the case. But I will.
コメント