New life
Monday April 07th 2008, 12:36 pm
Filed under: "Wrapped in Comfort",Friends,Knit,Life

Kathy’s baby’s blanket(This swatch’s worth isn’t a great shot of the colors, it’s still a bit damp in the blocking so I can’t move it near a window yet. It’s more a soft peachy-pink overall in real life.)

In the end, my pregnancy of this project only took two months; no back aches, no morning sickness, I’ve got nothing to complain about. I bought the superwash wool for it from my friend Karen the day she was closing up her shop for good, and I told her who I was going to knit it up for and why. She liked that. It gave her something to be happy about that day.

Which meant I felt obliged to make good on my word to her so that I could show it off to her and she could feel she’d played a part in the joy of the sharing. Which she had. I am debating blogging the little aside that the yarn was terribly splitty and thin and needed tiny needles and took forever and it was like knitting the world’s most monstrous sock for the tightness and it drove me nuts and hurt my hands. This baby was kicking me. Note that I did buy a competing superwash merino from Purlescence after I’d started and gave myself an out–I’m no angel. Heh.

And yet… Every time I stopped and really looked at the fabric that was coming out of my needles, I pictured it wrapped around Kathy’s baby. The Kathy in my book, my friend I grew up with, who’d just had her second baby. She told me that after the death of her father when we were in seventh grade, it had taken her awhile to learn to finally trust life enough to marry, to start a family. She was so glad she finally did. They had a little boy. And now they have a daughter, born near the time of my 49th birthday.

They named her Rachel.  After the grandfather she will only know through those who loved him, Ray. But that love is a powerful thing, and it does carry down through the ages, whether the person is present or no.

I have a lovely bit of wool here in its finished form, worth every minute of my time it took for it to come to be, to say so.


8 Comments so far
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I squinted my eyes until ti turned peach for me :-} It’s lovely.
I finished a pair of worsted weight socks I thought were for me, but somehow knit them too short for my feet. Good thing I know someone who loves blue and green and has the same feet I do, just a hair shorter. Actually I know two people like that, but these are too warm for Ysabeau in California. Amanda in Michigan will love them though.

Comment by Diana Troldahl 04.07.08 @ 1:24 pm

Alison, thank you for all your inspiring blog stories! Thank you for your lovely comments to me, too. I read them over and over. I think about them… I can just about feel your hug coming to me over cyberspace!

Comment by Joanne 04.07.08 @ 2:51 pm

oh that is so pretty – I can see peach in it… lucky Rachael

Comment by rho 04.07.08 @ 4:49 pm

I clicked for a better look & boy does it look beautiful! Some of those kickers turnout to be really good kids! 😉

Comment by Toni 04.07.08 @ 6:39 pm

What a beautiful labor of love! Rachel and her family are sure to treasure it always.

Comment by Channon 04.08.08 @ 6:19 am

It is truly beatiful. So the hardships were worth it.

Comment by Sonya 04.08.08 @ 6:20 am

Very pretty so far, cant wait to see it blocked and in the light!! Hope the baby knows as she gets older that her blankie was knitted with love and also gets to know the Granpa she was named for through pictures and stories 🙂

Comment by Danielle from SW MO 04.08.08 @ 10:02 am

So wonderful. That yarn is like life, rough to deal with sometimes, but those rough patches are always worth it in the end. Our suffering always means something!

Comment by Momo Fali 04.10.08 @ 7:55 am



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