How It All Started

My paternal grandmother was a country woman. Even though she attended a Normal School, earned her teaching certificate, and taught school for a few years, she returned to her roots and became a farmer's wife. My grandmother loved to garden. She planted vegetables every spring. She grew prize winning dahlias. She also knitted. For the last thirty years of her life, she lived on the edge of a small town near the old farm, but Grandma remained a county woman at heart all her life.

When I was six years old, I began my yearly two week summer visits to Grandma's. I learned to eat cherries straight off the tree, to wash a freshly plucked carrot and pop it directly in to my mouth to savour the true flavor of carrots. As you can imagine, two weeks seemed a long time to be gone from home even though my older brother was always with me. After a few days of playing-in-the-garden bliss, we would stage Peggity, Parchesi and Monopoly marathons. I guess that I got restless because I'd also already read all the books I'd brought with me and I began pestering my grandma and annoying her. So she did what every wise grandma does when she has a bored six year old granddaugher in the house. She taught me to knit.

I took to knitting like a duck to water. I created a plethora of slippers that first year, giving hand knit slippers to every female relative who would accept them. I moved on in a few years to a sweater. Because my grandma was the only person I knew who knitted, my knitting lessons were sparse, and my technique certainly lagged behind my enthusiasm. That sweater was a piece of 'art' but it certainly wasn't wearable. It didn't really matter to me; I just loved to knit.

When my grandmother died (more than twenty-five years ago now), my parents asked me if there was anything of hers that I wanted as a keepsake. When I finally received the message and answered (I was after all living many thousands of miles and eight time zones away), I said, "Just Grandma's knitting books and needles." My parents went looking but found only one book left among her possessions. I treasure it as I do my memories of Grandma patiently teaching me to knit one quiet summer afternoon.

Grandma was a country woman, a gardener, and a knitter. I wonder if she knows that while I'm not a country girl, I am, like her and because of her, a gardener and a knitter.

Earth Day Efforts

Every year, in April, our world celebrates our home, the Earth. Because our natural resources are not limitless, we must focus on reducing our consumption, reusing whatever we are able to, and responsibly recycling as much as we possibly can. I do my part. I turn off lights. I compost.

In my efforts to declutter my home and wardrobe, I regularly give away clothing that I do not wear. Last week, I pulled this sweater, handknit by me several years ago, from the sweater shelf and evaluated its continued presence in my closet. Epic failure. I never wear it because 1) the neck is too tight, 2) the arms are too short, 3) length? too short, 4) it is too wide through the body, 5) and too tightly knit on needles too small for the bulkiness of the yarn. Out that denim colored 100% wool sweater went-- in to the giveaway bag.

With Earth Day approaching, I contemplated the idea of recycling used sweaters to create new items. I've done it before. Felting wool sweaters I've found at the thrift store, I have designed and sewn bags and purses and given them as gifts to appreciative friends and family members. Once, I tried to unravel a sweater knitted with the loveliest yarn, only to discover that it had actually been cut and sewn from a length of stockinette knitting which made it useless to try to recover all those short lengths of yarn. My mind wandered to the giveaway pile in the front coat closet and I thought, "Someone will really score with that denim wool sweater."

Aha! Why can't that someone be ME?

I retrieved the sweater (I do love that yarn!), picked at the woven ends and unraveled the whole sweater. Six large skeins of curly, kinky strands.

I tried not to think about the fact that every one of those curls meant a stitch I had knitted once before. Thousands upon thousands of knits and purls.

Now I am hunting for the next perfect pattern to reknit the denim wool yarn into the next perfect sweater. This time, I will pay more attention to gauges and measurements. And in this way, I will be honoring Earth Day as well.