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Oh dear, I dropped a stitch
(by Jennifer Botkin Phillips - February 13, 2008)
Knit one, pearl two. Oh dear, I dropped a stitch. What’ll I do?
What made me think I could just pick up an unfinished knitting project that has languished in my knitting satchel for years and years? Most of the time my handmade Aunt Margaret knitting satchel is stowed way in the back of my closet, out of sight, and most definitely, out of mind.
From time to time I would muse, “One of these days when I’ve nothing to do, I’ll get back to that and finish those half completed slippers that I began over a decade ago.” Oh, I would pull them out from time to time but never worked on them with any consistency.
Until now.
My special friend, Patricia, a knitter, has been dealing with ovarian cancer and receiving chemotherapy. Oftentimes, when I arrived at noon to relieve her husband from the morning shift while she was undergoing daylong treatments, she’d ask, “Did you bring your knitting?” Silly me, I hadn’t and therefore was missing a great opportunity. If I dropped a stitch or ran into a problem, Patricia was a captive audience to help me out.
One night a group of us, including Patricia, met for dinner at the Emerson Hotel. Afterward, several of us went back to Patricia’s house for desert… and knitting. That’s right – we were having an old-fashioned knitting bee. Patricia’s sister Gail and niece Brook, from
New England , had come down for the weekend, and part of the plan was for her niece to hone her newly learned knitting skill her Aunt Patricia had recently taught her.
That night, I made sure to bring my knitting satchel with the unfinished slippers with double strands of yarn; one strand of pink yarn and one strand of lavender yarn. After dessert we settled into our chairs in her living room and began, the clack, clacking cacophony of knitting needles competing with the chatter of conversation.
The scene stirred up a memory from over 40 years ago when my family and I were visiting my great Uncle Claude and Aunt Dolly in
Southern California . Aunt Dolly was a tall, strong and full-bodied woman with a wide smile and thick pure white hair pulled neatly into a chignon. Aunt Dolly could knit and crochet in her sleep and on this particular family visit, Aunt Dolly taught my mom, my sister, and me, to knit.
I am no master knitter by any stretch of the imagination as I’ve mostly only made the slippers that Aunt Dolly taught our family trio all those years ago. But, I have made enough double strand slippers to keep the feet of my family, and extended family, warm. A new pair of slippers as my family’s feet grew always made for a happy surprise gift. Everyone in the family looked forward to getting a new pair and to finding out what color scheme I had concocted. They also made great gifts and it was a sheer delight seeing the smile on the recipient’s faces from the gift of love knit together in “Aunt Dolly’s” slippers.
When Patricia’s sister, Gail, asked me about the pattern, I could only respond that I didn’t recall ever seeing a physical pattern. The directions seemed to only be in Aunt Dolly’s head and she was long gone. So was mom, which left only my sister, Lezlie, in
Boulder, Colorado . I phoned to ask if she could help me out with a pattern, or directions, but it had been many years since she too had made a pair of “Aunt Dolly’s” slippers. In the end, I had to depend on my own memory of how to continue with the project I’d begun so many years ago.
But isn’t knitting like reviving an old friendship? You simply pick up where you left off without the span of years in between making any difference whatsoever. So far, I’ve discovered it’s not exactly that easy, but not exactly too much of a stretch either, for once the steel needles are in my hands, my fingers go into recall mode.
The other night when I was knitting, I realized that several rows back I had knit a stitch that should have been pearled. What’ll I do? Straight knitting is one thing. Fixing a problem is another. Years ago, I recalled, I was able to undo each consecutive stitch until I reached the mistaken stitch and then repaired it. Could I still do that? I figured there was only one way to discover if my mind still worked. Gingerly, I undid each stitch and worked my way down to the incorrect stitch. Somehow, which I can’t intelligently explain how, I did it! I successfully repaired the incorrect stitch.
Now, if I knit one, pearl two, and drop a stitch, I’ll know what to do!
Until next time… Top Blonde… on the run!
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