Made With

Made with love.

I think of this phrase often when I pull out my knitting needles to work on whatever project is tucked away in my knitting bag.

I think of grandmas baking trays of cookies for their grandkids. I think of my own great-grandma crocheting a baby blanket for me, a dozen great-grandchildren in. I think of friends who take pride in making Halloween costumes for their kids each and every year. I imagine the patience and sweetness and, yes, love, going into each and every one of these endeavors.

People, nothing I knit is made with love.

Don’t get me wrong, I always knit with plenty of emotion. But love? I don’t tend to knit when I’m feeling beatific and peaceful. No, I pull out my projects when my hands need something to hold onto. When the rest of me feels as though I may fly into a million pieces, knitting becomes, quite literally, that something to hold. This past year has shown me just how steadying having two knitting needles in my hands can be. I’m usually trying to find my sanity through knits and purls, not knit it in there.

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I learned how to knit about a year ago, on a cold, mid-February Sunday morning. I’d been interested in knitting for a while. I watched several women at my church—old, young, and in-between—carry their knitting around in bags, getting in stitches during coffee hour or in the sanctuary. I saw them nod along to sermons or sing along to hymns without even stopping to look at the work in their hands.

It was Nancy who caught me on the stairs one day as we arrived at church the way we always did, in a flurry of too many children and winter coats and mittens.

“Would you like to learn how to knit?” she asked without even a hello. There was a sparkle in her eye as we walked down to the church basement and the kids sprinted ahead for cookies and small cups of juice.

“Yes!” I said, stunned at this random invitation being extended to me, somehow offering me exactly what I’d been thinking about for months. Call it an answered prayer that I’d never even bothered to pray or divine intervention if you will; we were in the middle of our church. “I’ve been wanting to learn for a while!”

“Meet me on the couches in the adult library next Sunday,” she told me, “Don’t worry about anything. I have extra needles and yarn. I’ll teach you.”

The following Sunday we met on the worn, cast-off couches. She arrived armed with a pair of needles and a brilliant purple skein of yarn to show me a basic knit stitch. It felt awkward and wrong in my hands. I kept forgetting if I needed to have the yarn in the back or the front of the stitch, mostly because I didn’t even know what that meant.

“Under, not over,” she would say from where she stood behind me. She put her hands gently on mine to correct me, though the yarn always felt like it moved too fast for me to understand what was happening. It was intimidating, me vs. those two awkward needles and a pile of yarn. I was convinced that although women had been doing this for centuries, it would be me who would be a failure, me who would never, ever get the hang of it. But, by the end of our twenty minutes together, I had a couple of lumpy rows of stitches.

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Read more about my knitting adventures over on Coffee + Crumbs.