Lilac Knitting

Scout asked:

Scout’s Meme:
1. How and when did you learn how to knit/crochet? Who taught you?
2. How has this craft impacted your life? (besides financially!)
3. Pick at least one person to talk about who you have met through the knit-world and why you are thankful to have met them. Feel free to get all mushy.

I don't honestly remember learning to knit. I assume my mother taught me, as she knows how, but she's not very good at it. My father's grandmother knew how as well, was pretty good, but she'd spent her whole life in a sewing factory in Montreal, and didn't want to teach me to do anything. She was kind of grouchy.

I remember being so little that my mom's long metal needles doubled as Peter Pan swords when I wasn't knitting with them. I remember that I didn't like purling as much as knitting, but that by the time I started knitting again in high school (when I finally learned to cast on), I could do them both pretty easily. It was college by the time I was knitting feverishly, and in a lot of ways, I'm self-taught, as my mother regularly calls me home to fix her knitting.

How has this craft affected my life? It's made me more Buddhist. I can let go of the quest for perfection more easily now. I can calm myself down by picturing the twist of a long cable, imagine the ins-and-outs of Norwegian colorwork. I can take a few breaths and tackle a problem that looked too big to imagine the same way I do complicated lace pattern. One stitch at a time. It's made me more loving. With a tangible way to show someone "Look -- I love you!" I am more likely to reach out, even when I don't have socks in hand.

Someone I've met through knitting? Well, that would simply have to be AlisonH. I've tried before to put into words the wonderfulness that is Alison, from the first time she sent me a box of yarn when I was too poor to eat anything but mac&cheese to the back and forth emails the day I was reduced nearly to tears because my grandfather had died before I even got to meet him, before he even knew I was alive. When I've had no one else to cry to, know one else who could understand, Alison has been there for me. And she's amongst the first people I tell when something good happens, because no one jumps for joy like Alison. She knows the highs, and she knows the lows, and she's not afraid of either place.

Knitting? Tomorrow. Smiles to all.