My childhood memories of my grandmother frequently consist of her with hook in hand making a blanket, or mittens, or hats. Her favorite hook was made of bone, and she frequently used variegated yarn, though she often still complains that variegated skeins are smaller than solid colors. She would crochet while my great uncle visited. He would talk a blue streak and Grandma would nodded and "mhm" at appropriate moments, although every now and then she mhm'ed at the wrong time, but that never seemed to phase him. Usually when my great uncle came to visit Grandpa would rush us into the kitchen, saying, "Girls, do you want ice cream?" We'd follow him enthusiastically and he would make us a ice cream cones and we sat in the kitchen with him while Grandma visited with her brother. I know now that she was counting stitches, and that she probably did not hear even a fraction of what he was saying, because I have done the same thing myself, sometimes entire conversations can be had without my having any knowledge of the topic. Crocheting is not necessarily a social activity.
Whenever I visit the family home I bring hook and skein. She teases me, saying, "do you ever sit down and not crochet?" During my last visit I sat down with her after having not crocheted for a couple of days and picked up hook and yarn. She chuckled, "I thought you were going to make it all weekend without crocheting." She teases, but she also enables. She has provide me with hooks, yarn and thread, and patterns. She is not outwardly affectionate, but I know that her teasing equals approval, so I am thankful for it.
This last winter I complained to her that I has having trouble sizing mittens. She told me to find a pattern in her binder. Grandma has a shelf of binders, so I had to look through several before finding the mitten pattern. Since I began to crochet she has told me that I should write out the patterns as I do them, and record the colors I use and the people I give things to. After going through binders with recipes and one with schematics on German bombs I finally found the crochet binder. Each page had a list of recipients in the margins, some had yarn taped to the page as sample of what she used. Every project was dated. There was page after page of hand outlines (the woman had six children and 13 grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren, so she has made a few mittens in her time). Patterns from skein wrappers and magazines were attached to pages written in her own hand, as though the were translating the pattern into her own dialect. It was a thing of beauty, and I wished that I had kept a binder of my own, perhaps its not too late to start.
I know though that I could never keep a faithful chronicle of my work. While I inherited her pack rat gene I did not get the archival gene that keeps her from being an out and out hoarder. She dates her mail, even the junk mail. She has boxes of letters from her sons from the 1960's and articles clipped from the paper about family, friends and events (one such article was about my father's sister, which was clipped even before my parents started dating. No one knows why.) I am just messy. I once unpacked a box when moving that contained letters from college, homework and notes passed in Junior High, childhood drawings, newspapers from 1968, and drawings by my Great Grandfather from 1910. Also in this box amongst many things...crayons, yarn, an sticky alarm clock and two straw bags. I create what my father refers to as Meri residue. I've rarely entered and left a room without leaving some debris in my wake. Chaos has been my modus operandi for so long it would be counter intuitive to keep a binder. Maybe, one day she will give me her binder, that would be better than anything I could come up with. I do have a birthday coming up.
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