I was recently asked for a writing sample. There are fewer things I've found more difficult to write about than "whatever you want". I bounced ideas around for awhile... Favorite yarn... Why I love to knit... My favorite thing that I've made thus far... Which of course got me thinking about the first thing I ever made. It was a scarf, Lion Brand Thick & Quick Chenille, black, no fringe, knit on periwinkle-colored plastic size 11 needles. I wanted to make it for Adam, the boy I was dating at the time. I was 15 and he was my first real Boyfriend. And now I can't remember whether I gave it to him for his birthday in the fall or for Christmas that year. Or why I picked that yarn, even, other than it was soft and wasn't too expensive for my budget at Michael's that day. But make it I did, all five and a half feet of it. I was extremely proud at the time, though I'm sure if I saw it now I would cringe. I wrapped it up and gave it to him on either his birthday or Christmas, and he was appropriately pleased and wore it thereafter.
Sitting in the hall at school a few months later we realized that there was a run in it, probably five rows in, right by the cast on edge. I was mortified, horrified, and generally dramatic as I was wont to be at that point in my life. I insisted on reknitting it, snatching it back and not letting anyone see it. It was the end of February by then, and the season for scarves was coming to a close, but I was determined that, since we were clearly going to be together forever, the scarf would endure as well. I remember sitting at home on the couch, holding a half-unraveled scarf, my sister grabbing the yarn and pulling it into the kitchen, then running back to me to repeat the process. After winding the yarn back into an enormous ball, I proceeded to reknit the thing, meticulously counting the stitches every few rows. I presented it to him a few days later, whole and run-free.
Two weeks later, we broke up.
I eventually got over my heartbreak and we did become quite good friends again. He continued to wear the scarf all through high school and college. We didn't see each other often, but he said he wore that scarf on every single cold day and he'd think of me each time. Likewise, whenever a non-knitter asked me about my craft and the inevitable question about the first thing I made came up I would think of him. Last November he came to my birthday party and we fell to chatting. As the evening wore on, he told me he had some bad news: the scarf was gone. Stolen, he thought, out of his coat sleeve at a big party. He declared it to be the end of an era, asking me at the same time if I could make him another scarf just like that one. I said of course I would make him a scarf, but it wouldn't be the same.
And even if I could recreate that exact piece, made out of three whole skeins of a yarn long since discontinued, I wouldn't. It wouldn't be the same scarf, with the little tail poking out that I could never quite get to stay hidden. And we aren't the same people we were when I knit it the first time (or second). It wouldn't mean the same thing.
It's good, I think, as knitters, as creators of warm and cozy things, as givers of handmade gifts, that we keep in mind not only the projects we make, but who we make them for and why we even bother. It's true that I've given people things I've made which have gone unappreciated. Things that have been relegated to the back of closets, the bottom of drawers, never to see the light of day again. And knowing this has happened has made me gun shy, perhaps even a little jaded at times. But then there are those times when I get a text from a friend or an email from a relative, or maybe just glimpse a post online... and it's right there. That thing that I made them this past holiday season. That thing I made for her bridal shower six years ago. It's an afghan on a bed in the background of a picture or a hat right in the foreground, on the person who I made it for. It's on their hands as they type on their phone, writing to say they're thinking of me because I'm the reason their hands are currently toasty warm.
It's being at my parents' house, wrapped up in the afghan my mother made for my father when they were in college, sitting next to a table covered with one of the dozens of doilies that my grandmother crocheted.
It's thinking about the next afghan I want to make for my own home, and how someday my own kids might use to to make a cushion fort, like I did with my other grandmother's afghan when I was little.
It's good to keep these things in mind. People outside of the yarn world sometimes think that knitting is very solitary, but I've found the opposite to be true. Aside from the large number of friends I've made, both in person and online in the global yarn crafting community, I'm constantly connected to the ones I love both through the gifts I've made and those I've received.
Take that, store-bought scarf.
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