Let me begin by admitting I can’t knit to save myself. If I were faced with a sinking sailboat and the requirement I knit myself a line to reach the dock, I would likely have to raise hand to forehead and go quietly down with the ship. I’m only fractionally more reliable with actual nautical knots.
But I can crochet. Don’t ask me how, but my saintedly patient mother — having despaired of my knitting and sewing skills — managed to teach me how to crochet. I remember making granny squares for a blanket, perhaps in junior high school. I can’t picture the finished object, so I suspect she stitched it together and donated it to some charitable bazaar…
So when Jolie, a good friend at work, was expecting her second child, I committed myself to the project of making her a baby blanket.
Back when the pregnancy was announced, my mama was in fairly good nick, so she advised me on yarn suitable for tender infants and how much to purchase. Between then and J’s due date, a stroke excised a considerable portion of Mom’s memory. This left me to retrieve, from who knows what dusty mental filing cabinet, the knowledge of how to crochet all on my own.
I brought a ball of yarn and a hook with me when I went to visit Shawnie in New Mexico. As she drove us through the strange, arid landscape, I watched the pinon pine and let my fingers grope for the patterns, dimly remembered in muscle memory, until the rhythm returned. And behold! row upon row of yarn twisted itself into something resembling a blanket. Wonky in parts, but long enough, and apparently cosy enough, to make both new mother and baby smile when I finally finished it.
I had reason to remember all this last weekend. My mother, watching me use the leavings of J’s blanket to crochet a cat basket for the Feline Friends bazaar, asked me to find her own crocheting bag. I placed the yarn, the hook, and a partially completed project in her lap, and watched — amazed — as her fingers began to form the loops and twirls of crochet.
We chatted, she laughed, as her busy fingers tied that yarn into a proliferation of swooping loops unrelated to the project begun months ago. But what fun she had! And I can always unpick the knots and let mum start again a-fresh, the next time she asks if I know how to crochet.
Photo courtesy Pexels.com.