"The Thing with the Needles..."
Mon., April 21, 03:35 PM
One of my favorite television characters is Ziva David, of NCIS. Ziva is an expert in many things, including being multilingual, but sometimes her experience doesn’t supply the English she needs. Thus she described “the thing you do with the needles” when she could’t think of the word for knitting. I enjoyed that — sometimes I am easily amused.
If you are not into needlework, you may want to skip this altogether. However, I have been asked… A couple of years ago, U.D. told my daughter-in-law (Ms. P.), “you know you are my dad’s last chance at a grandchild.” Well, Ms. P., who loves babies, is surrounded by friends who are starting families, and she and Son are joining the club. Sometime in the early fall, we will indeed become grandparents. So I do need to make a blanket, because that’s the way my mind works. That child really must have something handmade from his/her grandmother. (Okay, you can leave now if you want to.)
I was in college when I started to do complicated knitting, like sweaters and mittens. I did not crochet then. It was only many years later that I learned that a woman I considered, um, not very bright, had begun crocheting. Well, if she could do it, I could do it; I taught myself from a book and became quite good at it. But that was later.
I knitted a sweater and bonnet for my first baby; I used white yarn and brought both blue and pink ties to the hospital with me. A year and a half later, I made basically the same set, but with finer (blue) yarn. M.D. looked fine in blue. A year and a half after that, I knitted a rather complicated blanket — a checkerboard pattern, all one color but with alternate blocks of seed stitch and popcorn stitch. I probably could have done something simpler, but I learned a lot from my mistakes on that project, and Son still has his blanket.
I knitted sweaters when the kids were small, one basic cardigan and one basic pullover, using different stitches and cables to make each one unique. I could make an inexpensive sweater that was passed down from one child to the next and then give it away to someone with smaller children. I began making sleeves on double-pointed needles, with five inches of ribbing at the wrist; the folded over cuffs could be turned down as the child grew. Until I began working full time, I always had some kind of project going.
Last summer I described a granny blanket I had crocheted many years ago. Although I pretty much stopped trying to knit or crochet when I couldn’t see — I always have to look at what I’m doing — I thought I ought to try again. My vision seems to be good enough to do something.
I might have trouble reading directions but, after all, I made the other blanket without a pattern; surely I could use it as a blueprint. Furthermore, the original is worsted weight yarn (fairly large), so it should be easy to follow.
Or maybe not. It’s amazine how much you can forget. Is that slip-stitch or single crochet? How do you do a double crochet? Is that four rows or five? Feeling very amateur, I started with the baby yarn and, after ripping out a few times, managed one square. I began a second square and the gauge seemed wrong; had I lost my feel for this? No, I had picked up a hook that was the same color but a different size.
I think I have the hang of it now, and I’ve completed all of six squares. I’ll try to post a picture when I get it done — before the child starts school, I hope — and maybe by then I will remember what I used to know.
