Thank you to my lovely mom Frieda for sharing with us today:
Esther wrote about people in our family starting projects they didn’t finish right away. When I was in grade school at a school for missionaries’ children, we entertained ourselves for hours making doll clothes. The fad at the time was to play with little dolls about three inches high. I learned to knit and crochet and made endless skirts, hats, dresses for my tiny doll. I soon learned that, though I liked to knit and crochet, I quickly got bored with long projects, so I seldom attempted anything for larger dolls. In high school and college I would start a few larger projects, but they were usually left unfinished.
But I started one pair of men’s socks I was determined to finish. Socks, after all, would not be like knitting a whole sweater, something some of my friends did regularly. I had actually bought the yarn instead of using left-overs other people gave me from their projects. I found the pattern in a magazine. The socks would be simple to knit, but I thought they looked impressive, with stylish clocks up the sides. I don’t even remember which high school boyfriend I had in mind when I began to knit the socks.
I finished high school, and all the way through college, I would knit on these socks for a few days, get bored with them, and put them up for later. I finally finished one, but what can you do with one sock? After all that work, it seemed a shame not to make the mate, so I started it.
After I graduated from college and was working in a public library, the ladies I worked with showed me a cute pattern for baby booties they were all making. This was something I really liked—I could finish a pair before I got tired of them and start on some of another color. I gave away several at my friends’ baby showers. Everyone said this particular type of bootie was the only one that the baby couldn’t kick off as they tied securely around the ankles. When I quit making them, I had one pair left that all my children wore.
Soon after we married, Hal told me he didn’t really like for me to knit when we were together. (When else would I knit?) I was surprised since his mother crocheted all the time, not only things like afghans, but even a whole double-bed bedspread, not of yarn but of fine thread. On deputation trips, Hal wanted me to be looking at the map and watching road signs. That was reasonable. But at other times, it just seemed to him that he didn’t have my full attention when I was knitting. (Oh, well.)
When we had been married over two years, I ran across the socks. The second sock only lacked the ribbing around the top, so I decided to finish it. By this time we had baby Sara and were not together constantly as we had been as newly-weds. I surprised Hal with the socks for his birthday. They were even his favorite color, blue.
He was polite and wore them once or twice. He said he liked them, but sometime later, I saw he kept change in them in his dresser drawer! For one thing, he finally told me, socks with clocks up the sides were no longer stylish. Probably the fact that they were made of warm yarn and the temperature where we lived in Nicaragua was always hot had something to do with it. Anyway, that was my last knitting project.
Leave a Reply