Two Things

I love little projects that I can finish in a day, little things like this little hat I made today. I decided I wanted a break from the Heavenly Camisole (which I WILL take pics of, I promise). Someone posted this website in one of the Yahoo groups I'm part of and I fell in love with it. I just happened to have two colours of Paton's Classic Merino here at home, so I knitted up one of the hats. I love it! I think I might just make a few more... just for the fun of it!

And for thing #2... Why I knit...

Each knitter has her (or his) own reasons for picking up needles and yarn and crafting something, whether it’s a simple scarf or a complicated Aran sweater. No matter what you enjoy creating, have you ever asked yourself why you do it? Why do you enjoy it? What keeps you coming back to it?

Is it simply a sense of making something out of necessity? If you are, as I am, from European descent, part of the baby boomer generation or perhaps a little older, you probably learned from your mother or grandmother (or even grandfather) who knit to keep themselves and their families warm. I was taught to knit at about the age of seven. My mother told me it was a skill that every girl should learn. I enjoyed it, but dropped it as I grew into my teen years.

So, why do I knit now? A part of the reason is definitely the creative process. Seeing a garment grow, using two sticks and some string is a wonderful feeling. The rhythm of each stitch evolving into the next one is relaxing; there are those who call it the new yoga. It’s meditative, certainly. All of that comes into it. What really keeps me knitting, though, is the ties to my past.

I picked up my knitting needles again after I was married and my third child was a toddler. My parents lived in the same town and often came to visit. On one of those visits, my father saw me knitting and began to reminisce about his grandmother. She lived in an ancient town in the northern Dutch province of Friesland. He would often visit his grandparents and their custom after dinner was to have a cup of coffee on the front porch of their home. His grandfather would smoke his pipe and his grandmother would have her knitting. Seeing the dreamy look in his eyes and hearing the nostalgia in his voice immediately forged a bond between myself and the great grandmother I never knew. To this day, when I pick up my knitting needles, I think of her. She and I have never met, but I know that there is something we would have shared. That’s why I continue to knit and why, one day, I would like to teach my granddaughter to knit.

The ancient art of knitting (it’s estimated to have developed some time between 500 and 1600 A.D.) is passed on through the generations. I love being a part of that tradition. Knitting practical garments or knitting pretty things, it’s a craft that ties us all together with the women and men who came before us.

And that is why I knit.