the Young Old Lady

I was 12 years old when my grandmother bought a knitting kit for me and told me she was going to teach me how to knit. I was an epic failure. She was left handed and I was right handed and she did it completely differently than I had to in order to make it work. I was supposed to be knitting a very simple purse with a beautiful crystal button in the middle and I botched the job over and over again. She would rip it out and would adjust it for me so I felt like I had accomplished something. For months I battled with the needles and yarn, not understanding the mechanics at all and, frankly, I thought it was odd that I wasn't yet in my teens being taught what is well known to be an older lady activity. I felt I didn't have a knack for it and the project was abandoned for months on end.

I attempted a simpler project: making a scarf with just the one stitch. I failed at that too. It became more and more like a cape as I conjured stitches out of thin air. My grandmother was very confused how I was accomplishing this task and was making knots left and right, breaking the yarn over and over. I even decided to take a pair of scissors to the task and learned that it is completely taboo to use scissors on any kind of knitting in the middle of a project. I was not good at detangling, but my grandmother was. She really wanted to teach it to me and have it be a bonding experience for us, and I was a huge disappointment. She had attempted to teach my cousins also, with similar projects and tasks, just looking for someone to bond with, but all of us girls were... well, we were rude and disappointing.

Then she died. It was January, it was icy, she had been buying paint for the living room with my grandfather at Home Depot and was notorious for not wearing her seatbelt unless she was begged and negotiated with. She hit a patch of ice going too fast and flew through the windshield. I was young and was not told what happened immediately after. I knew Dad left in a hurry, as it was his mother, said he was going to a hospital. Mom got a phone call at bedtime, but we didn't know who it was from, they were panicky and she got a scary tone in her voice. She sent me and my two brothers to bed with no explanation, but we knew it had to be bad. She sounded scared. We had an intercom system in the house, with a phone in each room so we could be summoned from wherever my dad didn't want to walk to in order to acquire our attention. So we heard every phone call that came that night. So many phone calls, all night long. People ringing the doorbell, voices from people we didn't know, so many people. By morning, the night seemed like a bad dream. We went about our lives and my dad came out of his room to tell us what happened. We went to my grandparent's house and I was just in shock. I didn't know what to do, I just wanted to be helpful. So I went and found the projects I failed at.

I needed something to focus on, so I found the projects and started studying. So many family members came from all over, and they were all telling stories and spending time together. She was a great lady and I miss her all the time. I dedicated myself to learning how to knit. To study the mechanics and I basically had to teach myself in a time before YouTube (there was YouTube, I just didn't know how to work it, it was still too new), which meant books with pictures and a phone call to the only other knitting person in my entire family: my great aunt on my mother's side, who lives in South Dakota.

I finished both projects that I absolutely failed at when she tried to teach me, trying to convince myself that I wasn't a failure, because I could teach myself and she had taught me as well.

Eventually, my grandfather moved out of that house, but before he did, he got rid of just about everything of hers. Which meant the inevitable, infamous, and deeply complicated KNITTER'S STASH. Yarn and needles and patterns and dozens of incomplete projects. Projects I was then expected to complete. She was famous for giving baby blankets to all the new parents in their friend group. She was constantly making them. There were two unfinished baby blankets in that massive stash that I had to figure out and then complete. The pattern they were derived from was from the 1950's, and all she had was a copy of a copy of a copy that I could find. The internet wasn't the least bit helpful, as I had no idea the magazine it came from that long ago, and the copy was so worn, pieces were missing. Time to teach myself again!

I completed the baby blankets with MANY frustrating attempts and failures and more picture books to figure out what O in a knitting pattern means. (It means yarn over, modern notation is yo.) But I did it! I completed the project blankets and then put her label (yes, she had labels with her name on them, just like the tags on your clothes) and my label (my mom had them custom made for me) on the blankets. The next people in our family to have kids were my cousins. I gave them the blankets that she had worked half and I had worked half. I made them cry. I thought that would make her happy, and I wasn't a disappointment.

I finished a bunch of her other projects as well, learned a lot about how to change colors in the middle, a variety of different stitches, and how to look at a fabric and tell exactly what the pattern was that was being used. These were necessary to complete her complicated projects, for which the patterns had long since disappeared. I also learned that there are specific ways you can cut apart knitting to where it won't unravel horribly. It is incredibly hard and very delicate, but it makes the most amazing rugs.

After a while, I had finished all her projects and had gone through as much of her yarn as I could, adding my own kinds of yarn and making socks and hats and scarves and blankets and gloves and an assortment of other knitted things, I found that I actually enjoyed the projects. I wasn't just using them to grieve, even though that was how it started the needles and yarn frenzy. I liked how kids would stare at me on the bus, or in the movie theater (which is the best place to just let your hands become automatic and not gain weight on buttery or sugary treats) as they would wonder what I was doing. I was told at one point that I fell asleep knitting, but it is hard to say, it was a long road trip and I was quite bored. I felt like I could change other people's perception of the hobby if they saw more young people doing it. So I started grabbing anyone my age or younger, and teaching them how to accomplish the task. Many of them picked it up rather quickly and it became a fad in my social group.

I'm proud of what I have accomplished, from my stubborn, confused, and frankly very rude first lessons, and that is why knitting is my favorite hobby.