new old hobby

My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was a child, say, probably six. The first pattern she taught me was for a cotton dishcloth. As a result, my mom gets a kick out of telling the story about how I stood up in show-and-tell in school and announced proudly, “My gramma makes rags!” Well, over the past fifteen years or so, I made lots and lots of dishrags and the occasional plain-stitched rectangular scarf. I also learned how to crochet and made some pretty plain hats and scarves. My dishrag knitting turned into saving these similar-sized squares to make an eventual sort of patchwork afghan thing. Which I am still working on. But I love knitting! I always have. I have a habit of knitting during General Conference as a way to stay awake. I’m not bored; I’m just narcoleptic if I don’t have something to do with my hands.

I have a point to this. This summer I’ve been working at the Hallmark Store, and we carry a delightful book called Crazy Aunt Purl’s Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: the true-life misadventures of a 30-something who learned to knit after he split. Crazy Aunt Purl is the working nickname of Laurie Perry, the author. It’s kind of a self-help book, not something I usually go for, but the stories she tells are true and heartfelt and often funny. Basically, in her antisocial funk after her husband left her, a friend dragged her to a knitting class just to get her out of the house, and she got hooked. The knitting side of it was what originally caught my eye, but it talks about things that anyone can relate to. Starting to date again after the horrific end of a long-term relationship. Insecurities in growing older. Learning to be a whole person on your own. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So her discussion of her knitting adventures, only a minor part of the book, made me think about my knitting, and how I’ve been making the same things over and over since I was six. And I thought, well, I’m on summer break and have nothing better to do, maybe it’s time to go back to my old hobby and learn something new. I already own The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Knitting and Crocheting, a fantastic get-started book that lets you go at your own pace (which, depending on my mood, can be rocket-fast or snail-slow). I bought it years ago (and by “bought it” I mean “asked for it for Christmas”) because it had both knitting and crocheting, so it was like a 2-for-1 deal. So I pulled that off the shelf a few weeks ago and learned how to purl, which as knitters out there know is basically the backwards of knitting. And then I learned how to do stockinette stitch (which, if you look closely, is the weave t-shirts are made out of), and then ribbing, and then checkerboard, and then (gasp) cables! I’ll take some pictures of my work soon and upload them because it’s awesome. It’s amazing what you can do just by alternating two very easy stitches (knitting and purling) in different patterns. Wow. I love it. I love knitting. I made a beautiful ribbed scarf, and now I’m working on a checkerboard one and a cabled one. After that, I want to do a couple more chapters in my book and learn increasing and decreasing and knitting in a circle, so I can make hats and that sort of thing. My brother really wants me to make him some mittens. We’ll see if I have time before I leave on a mission. If not, I’ll learn how when I come back!

I love picking up old hobbies and giving them new life. I’ve also considered painting again this summer, ever since I read Asher Lev. But I don’t want to overwhelm myself. I just want to have fun making things with my hands. It’s productive.