Last week one of the commenters on my blog asked me about when and how I learned to knit and I decided to respond here. It’s not a long story but it comes with pictures.
My mother was not a knitter. Maybe in reaction to her own mother, who was a high school art and home ec. teacher, she didn’t sew or knit, though she had an eye for design and color that I envied.
One of my prized possessions, however, is this pair of socks, knitted by my mother for my father.
My mother’s sense of humor is clearly evident in the bell she sewed on the pointed toe of one of the pair; the socks’ lack of symmetry (and lack of similarity to the shape of a human foot) meant they were never worn and probably accounts for the fact that I still have them more than 50 years after they were made.
All of this means that I did not learn to knit from my mother. Instead, I was taught by a dear friend when I was first in graduate school in Ann Arbor, MI in 1983, otherwise learning to be a geologist. Knitting was something that I could do when I wasn’t studying that felt productive and didn’t make me feel guilty for avoiding school work.
Since that time, knitting has come and gone in my life. Sometimes I knit every day, other times I don’t knit for months on end. A return to graduate school (this time to earn a PhD in education) resulted in another period of intense knitting. This sweater was knitted during my first month in Madison, WI as I waited for classes to begin.
Living in Maine brought on another knitting phase. I made a lot of things during that time, including this hat (knitted from a pattern designed by the wonderful knitters at the Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney, VT)
and this scarf that I dreamed up all on my own.
While in Maine I also took up sculptural knitting, enrolling in no fewer than three classes on the subject and creating all kinds of things including fruit
and eggs.
As regular readers of this blog know, I have been knitting a lot since moving to Portland. One of my favorite recent projects is a collaboration with the grandson of a good friend. Last spring I received the following detailed drawing in the mail
and made this hat based on his specifications (this picture is of the prototype — I made another, larger, one that I sent to the designer).
knitting a life 
Love this post! And you…
Thanks. Can’t wait to see you.
love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you know how i learned to knit? Oh yeah….
😀
love you. I CANT WAIT
Do I know how you learned to knit…..hmmmm…Oh yeah…Can’t wait to see you either!
Liza! Love your knitting history…. And those fruits! And eggs! Such cleverness with yarns…… I would have thought it passed to you from a grandmother but you took it up in grad school. Yeah, that was my feeling about baking breads — a sense of start, middle, and end and a huge sense of accomplishment while the dissertation took a temp backseat… S. is loving her “lettuce” hat!
I will send this on to all appropriate hat/knit personnel.
Classy sight!
My mom used to knit animals for the Christmas tree that looked like your pears. Wonderful.
Some day I’ll tell you about my sock.
Sculptural knitting! That is my favorite new thing I never knew about. Also, I now feel inspired to design things that someone, some day, somewhere, might knit.
I have knit all kinds of things — including an artichoke. And masks.
Wow… how the student outstrips the teacher, again! I have done very little knitting since my children have chosen fleece clothing over wool clothing… since birth. Bummer. When I was young and knitting all kinds of Scandinavian sweaters, I somehow pictured making little ones for my own kids. No luck.
Your sculptural knitting has inspired me… maybe I will get back into it… but not for clothing.
My most meaningful knitting project in the last few years was finding about 18 inches of the torso of a very complex sweater that my mother had started many years ago (she’s been dead for 16 years)… it was still on her round needles, complete with the 7 colors of yarn. I finished it as a pillow, and now I have a piece of my mother to snuggle with on the couch. I will always treasure this object!
Love you.
Ah, Ra, outstrips in no way! Your knitting still and always will inspire me.