Passing it on

Sometimes, I wish I could turn back time as far as my knitting history.

I learned to knit more than 30 years ago. I started with discount store acrylic yarn and inexpensive aluminum needles. Were there such lovely knitting books back then? I don't know. My patterns came from yarn labels, free leaflets or cheap booklets. I always used patterns. I followed directions and never really learned about what I was doing. Why I was doing whatever I was doing. The pattern said to.

I used to start projects and set them aside. Sometimes finished them years later. Often not at all. There were large gaps of time where I didn't pick up needles, didn't even know where they were.

How different my knitting is now! A growing library of beautiful books full of colorful creations...many with simply ideas to spark my own creativity. A burgeoning stash of wool, alpaca, cotton, silk...even cashmere. All sorts of knitting gadgets including expensive nickel-plated circular needles, teeny birch double points, bamboo. Socks, felted bags and slippers, lace, sweaters. Stalking another knitter (hi, Carina!) and joining Knit Night at Barnes and Noble...or wherever we choose to gather, since the other knitters never showed up.

I'm reminded of when I was young and first discovered libraries. Entire rooms and buildings filled with books! My excitement was tempered with a touch of sadness, knowing I'd never have enough time--enough life--to read them all.

I'm sad in the same way about all of the knitting time wasted. All of the past where I didn't feel the excitement I feel now.

More than thirty years of never taking a road trip simply to fondle yummy yarn in new stores. Decades of not realizing I could satisfy my love of cool socks by knitting them myself...two at a time on two circulars, even. All those years of solitary knitting, the possibility of it being a social activity never occurring to me. Spending ten of those years online, never thinking to pair knitting with that hobby, opening up a world of forums and patterns and how-to's on any technique I want to teach myself.

At least my daughter Em will never feel the regret I'm feeling now. I taught her to knit using Addi Turbo circulars. Her first project was a scarf with pockets, her second a felted bag, and then she moved on to socks on Brittany birch double points (now doing two at once on two circs). She recently started a sweater from a pattern book passed down from my mom to me. I've nurtured her yarn snobbery--she has her own stash of felting wool and sock yarns in both wools and cottons. We pour over knitting books together and can spend hours (and money--lots and lots of money--but we won't talk about that ;-) fondling fibers in yarn stores considered "local" within a fifty mile radius. She joins us at Knit Night and is talking about starting a group with her friends. And she's already bending "the rules," modifying patterns to fit how she wants to make something.

The joy of giving her what I wish for myself and the thought of sharing this aspect of our relationship for many more years...really, what more could I wish for?