A Simple Yarn

I find it so hard not to have something for my hands to do.  While listening to the sermon or riding in the passenger seat, if there is no handiwork, I always wind up looking at my hands, and worrying them.  I wouldn't bite my nails, but I'll pick at the dry or rough or calloused places, and pull tiny shreds into sore spots.  But I settle down with work: knitting needles are some of my dearest friends, and a sewing needle is a close second.  Over the years I have turned out baby blankets, sweaters of all types and sizes, caps, hats, scarves, mittens, two afghans, booties, and a pair of knitted dolls with clothes.  My present passion is dishcloths.  They fit so easily into the shoulder bag when in progress, and I can finish one, make a second, and start a third in the course of a normal day. 

Grandma taught me to knit.  I cannot remember how it came about, whether I asked to be shown, or whether she offered, ...but I have a strong feeling that it was her idea.  She had a way.  I might be reading, while she sat at the breakfast table of a Saturday morning, watching the birds while writing in her diary, and she'd say quietly, "I wonder if you'd like to learn to knit."  "I wonder if you could learn to make paper dolls."  "I wonder if you and I might take a walk, by and by."  Whatever she suggested always sounded like the best idea for right then, without any hortatory subjunctive or direct command. 
So one day she rummaged out some yarn (Red Heart acrylic worsted) and a set of four double-point plastic needles, such as you use for socks.  And she had me knitting a mitten.  As long as I was there under Grandma's watchful eye, I did alright.  We finished the first one, and I was all in a lather to get the second one to match before my weekend visit came to an end.  When I went home, it was with my trophy mittens and a pair of straight knitting needles. 
I set up to practice at home, using the leftovers from an afghan my mom had crocheted for me.  It was done in stripes of yellow, gold, light, medium and dark oranges, separated by broad white bands on which orange and yellow flowers were worked in duplicate stitch.  The ends were fringed in all the colors.  I never liked orange in any shade, and the fringe annoyed my chin, but I learned to put the afghan under other bedcovers because its weight was very welcome.  There was little to no heat in our house. 
Since I was never one to follow the directions for very long, I struck out boldly and forgot the vital step of switching the working yarn to the front before a purl stitch.  Trying to establish a "knit one, purl one" ribbing for the bottom of a sweater back, I soon found myself all in a tangle with too many stitches and no slack between them.  Frustrated, I flung it down, cried a little, and found something else to do.  The next time Grandma was around, she calmly corrected the problem.  And I was off again, going for the gusto of creativity.  I got some mohair with a metallic strand in it, and made a pullover vest that used a complex stitch pattern of knits, purls, knit two togethers, yarn overs, slip-knit-pass slipped stitch over.  The pattern repeated after so many rows, and I needed to keep a running checklist on a piece of graph paper.  The intricacy of the pattern was somewhat overshadowed by the hairiness of the yarn, but Grandma was impressed.  More than the finished product, I coveted her praise and took pride in hearing her remark, "I taught this child to knit and to purl, and look what she has done with it." 

By the time I knew her, Grandma's hands were already a little arthritic.  Veins stood up and her knuckles were sometimes a bit swollen.  She would have cracks in her fingertips from winter cold and dryness.  But she could do just about anything to make me happy and comfortable, with her hands.  I can remember being young enough to sit in her farmhouse kitchen sink for a bath.  She steadied me on the scale one day, when I weighed twenty-two.  Grandma's hands folded paper just so and cut out a string of paper dolls holding hands.  They made crepes for breakfast: time was when I could eat eight of them, spread with butter and brown sugar and rolled up with maple syrup.  Her hands darned my ballet tights and mended damaged hemlines.  She taught me how to embroider: the outline stitch, the French knot, and the lazy daisy and the feather stitch.  She played the piano, sometimes hymns, but more often once-popular songs from sheet music stored in the piano bench.  There was a latch-hooked rug for your feet or pillow for your back just about anywhere you looked in  her house.  And she grew plants.  Her hands wandered over them after watering, pinching off spent blossoms and any withering leaves. 

When she began to spend summers in that part of the Adirondacks that was her native country, Grandma's hands were busy with sundry needlework projects whenever she could sit on the porch. 

I'm only seeing it this moment, that my busy hands are in part a reflection of what I learned from Grandma's hands.  Such instruments should be usefully employed, to bless and bring  comfort to others, and to keep us out of trouble. 

As with so many of the things I love to do, I find in knitting a metaphor for life.  Read and understand the directions.  Choose fitting materials for the project.  Take time to check the gauge.  If you don't fix the small mistakes when they occur, eventually you will have to unravel a whole bunch and start over.  And especially, "the back of your work should always be as neat as the front."