Why I Knit

I learned how to crochet from my grandmother.  I was about 8 or 9 years old and she handed me a hook and some yarn and sat down next to me and showed me how to pull one loop through another.  I made one very long chain.  She then tried to teach me how to double back inside the loops I just created and I must have skipped at least a half dozen or more stitches.  I ended up with a very lumpy looking scarf. that was all the effort I put into learning fiber craft for a while.

A few years later, I decided to give it a try again.  My mother was working on a piece of cross-stitch, and I had tried that craft as well, and found I just didn't have the patience to sit and count out all those little squares.  Of course, in high school, anything that isn't instantaneous isn't worth the effort for a teenager.  Plus,  I was in so many clubs and sports, I never had the time to really sit and work on that project.  I even forget what it was.  I started crocheting it and two weeks later, the yarn was in our donation bin for Goodwill.

It wasn't until college that I actually got into it.  I had purchased some yarn and I was crocheting an afghan.  I ended up making several of these while I reviewed my notes in front of me.  Something about the movement of yarn through my fingers and the rhythm made the whole process of learning molecular biology or pathogenic microbiology less stressful.

After graduation,  I worked on a project here or there,  mainly as the random Christmas gift.  My grandmother was very proud of the fact that I actually had progressed in my skill level, although I never could make things as fast or as beautiful as she did.

About this time,  I met my husband, and his grandmother was always interested in what I was creating.  She finally asked me if I knew how to knit.  I replied in the negative, so she proceeded to pull out her needles and yarn and showed me the basic backwards loop cast on.  She gave me a book and let me run with it,  checking in on me occasionally to watch my progress and helping me correct any mistakes.

I ended up sticking mainly with crochet for a while, simply because I was faster at it.

After my husband and I were married, we had one child, we decided to try for another.  This is when tragedy first struck our family, in a major way.

We had just lost my husband's grandmother, right around her birthday in October.  I didn't feel like knitting or crocheting anything, Alice was that sweet and a very strong influence on me.  I put away my needles.  Then, in January, the baby I was carrying had died in my womb.  He had tumbled around too much inside me and the umbilical cord had become twisted, cutting off everything he needed.  William was stillborn late in January of 2012.

Our son, Arthur, was too young to understand why Mommy was suddenly at home with him and he didn't have to go to day care for 6 weeks.  He also didn't understand that his new baby brother was not coming home with us.  I spiraled, was depressed, and severely bored at home.  I went through old projects and pulled out that knitting book Alice had given me.  I started my first large project; a fair isle cardigan made from angora yarn that I had inherited from Alice.

Stitch by stitch, the sweater came together,  and every passing hour I spent on that sweater, thinking about that pattern was an hour I wasn't focused on my own grief.  I finished that sweater in one month, and decided to tackle a shawl next.  I haven't looked back since.  Knitting helped me to de-stress after the stillbirth.  It helped me to heal.  I healed enough that when, in March, I found out I was pregnant again, I was able to cry for joy, and not in grief.

I will not kid you,  I was stressed out the entire pregnancy, but, as in college, I used fiber art to channel all that nervous energy and stress into creating something beautiful.  In November of that same year,  my husband and I welcomed our youngest son, Everett, into the world.

Nowadays,  I joke that I knit so that I don't kill people.  But it helps me in social situations.  I am socially awkward.  Having the knitting in my hands, though,  helps me to de-stress, first of all, and it also gives a topic of conversation to the people around me.  As an added bonus, knitting also keeps my hands busy so I am not snacking on food or holding a drink.

Learning to knit has been a life journey for me,  and a wonderful pastime.  I only hope that I can keep it up, for there is so much for me to learn about the craft that it keeps me interested in it constantly.  I even hope to one day run my own yarn store, but that will have to wait until both boys are in school, at least.  Funny how two sticks and some string can transform one person.