And the Days Go By
Mon., March 2, 12:14 PM
Yuck! When I was in college, we used to call this weiss Scheiss. Granted, that was a very snowy campus. And they never canceled classes just because there was a foot of snow on the walkways. (Plowing schedule was: the roads, where vehicles had to drive; the walkways; and finally the lakes, so students could go skating.) The only good thing that came out of the snowy days was that the girls were allowed to wear slacks to class.
Last time I took Husband to the doctor, he reminded us that we had an appointment on March 2, and he wanted to see him. “Sure,” I told him, “if you’ll promise me no snow.” We all laughed. In March? Well, I waited today until the medical center called me to ask to reschedule; don’t blame me if we didn’t make it!
I began crocheting again because a very dear couple is expecting any minute now and, besides, my sister had bought a huge load of yarn and then decided that she didn’t care to knit it. (I figure I can get at least three blankets out of this.) And then my son mentioned, “we have a lot of blankets, and usually we don’t use them, except to hang on the foot of the crib so the baby can look at them.” It reminded me once again that caring for babies undergoes changes with every generation, despite the fact that mothers and babies have been the same for centuries.
As home heating became more reliable, we stopped putting blankets on sleeping babies. Not only is it safer, but the baby is free to explore his hands and feet. But my generation still used “carriage blankets,” to keep the babies warm when we took them outdoors. I carried my babies in a sling — actually a specialized strap — and I often carried a blanket to put over them if it got chilly.
Now, of course, slings are out of fashion. And you very seldom see a baby carriage. One carries the baby in a car seat. I am always glad that the law didn’t require me to carry my babies in a basket. Just call it personal preference. Probably the best thing I’ve done in the blanket department recently is to make smaller blankets that I call car seat blankets.
One of the knitting processes I learned years ago is to use designs that depend on count, rather than measured inches. In that way, I made one sacque from baby worsted; I made another from the same instructions, using a finer yarn and smaller needles. I had two similar outfits of very different sizes. I figured I can do the same with blankets.
The yarn my sister bought is much heavier than the yarn I was using, but I am working by stitch count. By the time I had finished two squares, I knew I wasn’t going to make twelve of them. The new blanket is three squares by three squares; it is nevertheless larger than any I have made recently.
I started another ripple blanket, and I am reminded of the differences between knitting and crochet. The advantage of crochet is that you can only drop one stitch at a time. Guess what: the disadvantage of crochet is that you can only drop one stitch at a time. Many years ago, when I was knitting a fairly large blanket with a complicated design, I would occasionally notice that I had made an error in the design about ten rows back. But I didn’t have to tear out two thousand stitches. I had a method.
I would drop about ten stitches off the needle, depending on how many stitches were involved in the mistake. After unraveling them past the mistake, I would pick up the stitches on double-pointed needles and knit back up to the current row. Since I can knit left- or right-handed, I didn’t even have to turn the blanket.
That always made me feel very clever. I don’t often get that clever nowadays.
