Ede and The Esthers

Leaving aside what it says about my 20-year-old self that I preferred the company of my grandmother's friends to friends my own age, my last post got me thinking about my grandmother Ede and The Esthers, Esther K and Esther A.  The Esthers were neighbors and also attended the same small church as my family.  Esther K was a year-round resident; Esther A wintered in Florida.

Esther K taught me to crochet.  Esther A taught me to play canasta.  My grandmother taught me not to put up with shit from men.  Now if you've gone all Friday-Night-Knitting-Club on me and are imagining that sharing-of-female-wisdom-across-the-generations that goes on in all our Book Club books, stop.  Get that image out of your head right now. Mostly we shared snarky gossip about neighbors and fellow church-goers and I complained about my seemingly endless supply of loser boyfriends (I didn't listen so well to Nana in those days.)

Even more entertaining was that my grandmother was always mad at one or both of The Esthers.  Frequently The Esthers were mad at each other and tried to recruit my grandmother and me to one or the other side.  Usually it started on the phone.  One of them took offense at some minor, and I do mean minor, slight, hung up on the other, and they were off and running. I'd listen to my grandmother's version of the conversation in apparently perfect word-for-word detail.  Later on I'd wander over to visit whichever Esther was the offender/offended to get her side.  It still amazes me that women in their seventies could act like such middle-schoolers. Ede complained that Esther A called Esther K on Monday and Tuesday but didn't call her until Wednesday.  Esther K complained that Esther A was so busy at church introducing her house guest to the pastor that she didn't introduce the guest to her.  Esther K and Ede thought Esther A 'put on airs'.  Esther A thought Esther K was bossy.  The Esthers thought Ede was a busybody. 

These women were in their eighth decade, not in eighth grade.

I guess if there was any wisdom to be learned from my time with Ede and The Esthers beyond how to crochet, how to play canasta, and not to take shit from men, it is that being old doesn't automatically mean being grown up - and I don't mean that in a necessarily good way.  As I move closer to their age that may be an important lesson.

Handicrafty

Apropos of nothing other than the mere fact that I haven't posted for an obscene length of time,  I discovered yesterday that I remember how to crochet.  It has been at least 20 years since I crocheted anything - and back then it was delicate doilies and antimacassars, but the above is my double crochet - maybe not perfect but pretty darn good for not having picked up a hook in a while.

I have also been re-teaching myself how to knit and that is having mixed results.  I did knit much less than I crocheted so I think muscle memory is key here.  Of course, yesterday when I tried to figure out how to do a double crochet stitch I immediately went to the illustration and written directions.  After a half hour of failure and frustration I took a deep breath, closed the instruction book, and using what I had gleaned from the previous half hour, sat back and relied on muscle memory.  Before I knew it I had finished a whole row.

But I think the fact that crochet comes more easily to me is based a lot on who taught me.  My grandmother crocheted but her friend, Esther K. (as opposed to Esther A.) taught me.  I sat in her living room hours during breaks from college while she taught me how to make my afghans rectangular instead of 'blobular' and fed me tea and cookies.

When someone attempts to teach a family member, higher than normal expectations combine with higher than normal desire to please to create at best, an unstable learning environment.  I am definitely a better crochet-er because of  Esther K.  The knitting I will have to master on my own.  

I Want to Knit Again

This is the Icebreaker speech I gave at Toastmasters a couple of weeks ago:

"I have not knit in over 20 years.  The last time I knit I made myself a sweater.  It was a very nice sweater but it had very long arms.  Now I have long arms so normally that would not be a problem but this sweater was made from a stretchy mohair yarn so each time I wore it and had it dry cleaned the sleeves got longer and longer and longer until finally they were a good foot longer than my actual arms.  I eventually had to get rid of the sweater and I haven’t knit anything since. 

But when my book club read The Friday Night Knitting Club and decided that in addition to discussing the book we would all begin a knitting project I got excited.  The book was quite enjoyable and I began to have visions of the scarves and wraps and shawls and bags I would knit in fabulous silk, cotton and wool yarns.  I had already decided that I was giving up on sleeves so sweaters would no longer be an option.  I was pumped.  Unfortunately, due to family commitments I was unable to attend the book club meeting but I did get a report from my friend Karen who picked both the book and the project. 

The project, a scarf, was billed as a two hour effort; all ‘knit’ stitches, nothing fancy, no purls, no yarn-overs, no slip stitches or anything complicated.  It was knit with a double strand of yarn so the idea was to pull one end from the outside of the skein and one end from the inside, hold them together and knit with the two strands.  This is harder than it sounds.  According to Karen much wine-fueled hilarity ensued as the yarn got increasingly more and more tangled.  Eventually everyone managed to get untangled, cast on the 12 stitches and even actually knit a row or two.  The evening was declared a success. 

The next day Karen dropped my yarn and knitting needles off at my house so I could catch up.  I read the directions, discovered that I had the wrong size needles, decided that I would cast on 14 stitches instead of 12 to make up for using slightly smaller needles and then I set to work.  The outside end of the yarn was easy to find.  I began to root around inside the skein to find the inside end.  Then the tangling began.  Two hour project indeed.  After two hours all I had was a mess.  I was supposed to have a scarf not a bagful of purple spaghetti.

Every night I tried to untangle the yarn with less and less success.  Eventually my daughter, who, incidentally, was effortlessly creating a mohair and cotton confection with a definite lacy pattern on scary-looking double ended needles, suggested I cut the yarn at the knot and keep trying.  I thought cutting was the easy way out so I soldiered on.  Still I had no success. 

My husband is a casual fisherman.  Fishing lines frequently get tangled and he is quite good at getting them untangled.  I thought that if I sat on the sofa with my purple pile of spaghetti and looked sad he might take pity on me and do the untangling for me.  Sadly he did not rise to the bait. 

Eventually I cut the yarn but it still didn’t help.  Time was running out.  It was two days before our next meeting and everyone supposedly was bringing their projects.  I didn’t have a project; I had a mess.  So I did what any sane person would do, and what I should have done sooner, I went to buy more yarn.  This time I got two skeins so I would only have to deal with the outside end and the proper size needles.  Then I got busy.  Luckily by the time the meeting rolled around I had about 20 rows done and it actually was beginning to look like a scarf. 

At the meeting we shared our projects, at least Karen and I did.  The others said they ‘forgot’ to bring theirs but I think that was code for ‘I was embarrassed to bring mine.’ 

Karen decided against giving her scarf to her daughter-in-law as a birthday gift.  It would likely send the wrong message as Karen had picked up a few stitches along the way and the shape of the scarf was definitely not rectangular.  But she is thinking about a baby sweater for an expected grandchild and I still have the visions of scarves and shawls, so I think I will continue. 

Our next book is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  I hope this doesn’t involve cooking."

Here is my finished project:

 

I have a new project.  It is supposed to be a felted hobo-style bag.  Clearly I have not made much progress.