As the middle-aged father of a very New Woman, the idea that any homemade fashion I create would be enthusiastically adopted is a pipe dream, but I crocheted a snood for my daughter.
A snood is a loop scarf, big enough to double over the head and become kind of a hat, sort of the same idea as the hoody dress Princess Leia wears when saying “Help me, Obi-Wan” in the hologram. It took three weeks, but I kept at it and worked to choose the right color of yarn and not drop too many stitches.
She wore it to school. Several days this week. I saw her put it on in the morning and thought it might not make the final cut of items worn completely out the door, but then it WAS.
I was so happy. I felt like those elves that helped the cobbler make shoes.
We all just started crocheting last year. I’d knitted before, a bit, but it was always hard, seemed to take forever; the two stick thing kind of confused me and I only learned the one basic stitch.
Zoë can knit like a pro: I tried to make a 12 foot long scarf 10 years ago for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary - about seven feet into it she found the width of the piece was highly variable… one foot here, nine inches there. I found it charming. She very quietly bought more yarn and created a perfect finished version before I could get another foot done.
I should know how to knit better. My grandmother taught me when I was ten or so. My summer break had started earlier than my mother’s, so for a couple of weeks it was all bran flakes and plastic slipcovers and daytime television. To be honest, it was my fancy summer camp.
There must have been a sale, but I was allowed to pick any color from the endless aisle of scratchy ultra polyester yarn over at K-Mart, as well as a pair of green aluminum knitting needles – bright green; neon, even. I did not have a “spoiling” grandmother, so this was really special.
Technically, I think she needed me to be busy. Apparently my pediatrician had told this to the family early on:
“He’s doing well, but you should make sure that he‘s very well occupied.”
When my mother pressed him as to the specific reason for this, he replied:
“It’s just probably for the best.”
So there we were, two generations of knitting neophytes and a paperback Good Housekeeping instruction manual. It took a whole afternoon just to figure out the “casting on” part, drinking big glasses of water with those strange oblong white ice cubes that never tasted like water, sitting in front of her television, watching her “stories”.
I thought it was fun. I could have all the water I could drink and I memorized the theme song to “Days Of Our Lives”. When I finally got into the rhythm of the whole thing, I’d finished about a foot of progress, and she came over to check my work.
“Hm. How’d you do that so fast?”
“I don’t know!”
I was too young, maybe, to recognize this look. I had never seen my grandmother’s competitive side. But this is what that was.
“Oh, you made a little mistake there.”
“Where?”
“Back here… you can fix it though, here, I’ll help…”
…at which point she began to pull the yarn out of the piece… three rows, seven rows, twelve rows, seventeen…
“There. Now that should be fine.”
She then sat back in her chair and picked up her own work again, which before had been about half the size of mine, but was now considerably longer than I had left on my needle.
That wasn’t trauma. That’s not what I’m saying. My spirit wasn’t broken on my quest for a lucrative knitting scholarship. I just re-made the thing quietly (at a much slower pace) and then gave it to my mom, a super heartfelt, crazy scratchy scarf; the perfect gift for the beginning of a summer.
I don’t think my Grandmother knew what to do with me. Between our generations was a great deal of societal change…I was a New Boy in a world where the rules were just being written. So the next week, my Grandmother and I also did latch hook rugs, and then after that we tried needlepoint. For a woman of a certain age with a pretty solid opinion about masculinity, she really gave me a lot of room to grow and discover the joy of creation.
Nyaa. Who am I kidding? She had completely given up on me at that point and was probably hoping I could get a little work in town as a seamstress.
Which is hilarious, but I will be taking snood orders beginning in August.
Needles and Pins.