Pooling our resources
Tuesday January 21st 2014, 12:55 am
Filed under: Knit,Life

I took Michelle to a physical therapy appointment today. Her car is not finished being fixed even yet, and she herself is far from it, although there has been some progress and that is a very good thing. (The speeder was doing over a hundred, the second car saw what was coming and swerved into where Michelle was, Michelle did 360s at 65 mph and while doing so was hit head-on by one of those two as they flipped down the freeway, landing upside down. The driver of the second car is a survivor, too.)

I pulled out my knitting. It was going to be awhile.

An older woman arrived to check in. The room was spacious and grandly lit by two-story windows behind where I sat, the waiting room an atrium. It gave me a chance to observe quietly at a bit of a distance: I loved her long braid that she could almost sit on; my father’s mother’s hair was like that, I’m told. I loved the patience and the wisdom in her face–I wanted to be like that when I grew up, and I imagined her as being one of those argyle-sock knitters of the ’50’s who never stopped loving working with yarn. The ones the hippies learned from.

She glanced my way when she was done at the desk, started to sit down, and I looked up again with a smile as she gave it up and got back up and approached me, just too curious. What WAS I making? (She didn’t quite say, too big for a sleeve, too small for a sweater in the round unless it was baby size, too big even for a hat.)

A cowl, says I, popping it over my head to show her, suddenly glad that I’d used circs that were a bit big for the number of stitches I’d started with–couldn’t have given that little demo with a sixteen-incher, that’s for sure.

Ah yes, of course. And she told me of the senior knitting group she’d gotten started. Most there only wanted to do squares, she said wistfully for what they were missing out on, but, she smiled, you could do a lot with squares.

Yes! I mentioned the Linus Project blanket that had been gifted to my friend’s son after he fell 30 feet from a ski lift–he’s fine now, I hastened to add–and how gobsmacked I was that some knitter somewhere had knitted the very pattern and colorway that I had wanted to knit that family an afghan in. When they needed that comfort, it was there for them.

She took a long breath of deep satisfaction from that. Every stitch matters, she said.

Every stitch is love, I added.

Yes! said she.

And with that she sat down and picked up a magazine. (And I thought, ah, so you’ll be using the pool therapy. I wouldn’t riskĀ  good wool anywhere near chlorine either, yes.)


2 Comments so far
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No coincidences, never at all. Two well-met souls.

Comment by Channon 01.21.14 @ 4:18 pm

Just a quick hello….knitting sure is good for connecting!

Comment by Ruth 01.21.14 @ 4:36 pm



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