I came across a poorly-worded, complicated lace pattern that I really liked and wanted to incorporate into one of the shawls for my book. I’m certainly no beginner, but there was a definite disconnect between what it said and what the results I wanted would be.
I thought of a friend who can knit lace in circles around me (hi, Chris!) and wished it were a time and day I could reach her. But it shouldn’t be so hard… But it was hard, definitely. I thought in frustration, I don’t GET it!!
And found myself, to my surprise, instantly thinking about my Grandmother Jeppson. I had barely known her before she’d passed away. She had headed her local Red Cross chapter’s knitting group during WWII, and once wrote that she felt that if she could just knit enough fast enough for the troops it would somehow bring her three sons home sooner. (They all made it back okay.) Grandmother.
Suddenly, it felt somehow as if she were standing right there over my shoulder. I looked down at the work in my hands. There was a sense of brightening and then a delighted, Oh! I GET it!! I immediately did that pattern in full, correctly, despite the typos and problems in the original. I did it!
I never did put that pattern in my book, though; how to do what I did was not easy to describe, and if my write-up turned out not greatly better than the original, how on earth exactly would I send my grandmother to go help others out?