THE MAGIC OF KNITTING
Discovering a passion for the craft, thanks to both her mother and her father
ABOUT THE AUTHOR As a child, Connie began working every summer on her grandfather’s strawberry farm in Mckerrow, Ont. She was one of 12 cousin “pickers.” Eventually, with a diploma in nursing she went to Ottawa and there saw the movie Blue Hawaii and decided that was the place to be. Eventually, with Hawaii’s never-changing seasons, life became boring and her dreams of the Canadian Arctic flourished. Returning to Canada for Expo 67 led her to the Arctic for the next 40 years. Now retired, Connie is back living in Ontario, taking creative writing courses online and writing about her life’s journey—with her knitting always at hand.
More than 50 years ago, I was introduced to knitting at my father’s knee. He was babysitting us one evening and while my three younger siblings were amused in their own unique ways, I was absolutely bored. I sat on the floor near him in the warm, flickering glow of the oil lamp. The soot that had gathered in the lamp’s chimney, not bad enough to be cleaned as yet, subdued the flame.
Dad had just read the latest Dr. Seuss story from the children’s page of mother’s Redbook magazine. I ventured closer and was pondering the contents of my mother’s knitting basket on the floor nearby. She was making a navy-blue, cabled cardigan with fine wool, using two small steel needles about ten inches long. I remember asking Dad, “How does this work?” He shrugged his broad shoulders and suggested that perhaps we could look at it, take it apart just a little and see if we could put it back together.
As he began the dismantling process the twisted loops of the fine cable pattern design were slipping off in all directions, faster than our four hands with matching pudgy fingers could control. Dad did not appear concerned by the pile of twisted yarn that was accumulating at his feet, nor did he even appear to notice. Needless to say, taking Mother’s knitting apart was a lot easier than putting it back together. It was not a particularly successful adventure and we abandoned the project while we thought it was still salvageable.
I was always very close to my father and admired his skills at taking things apart and reassembling them with such dexterity. After all, he had built his own tractor for the farm with an old engine and scrap metal, and it worked. He promised to teach me to drive in the spring and I looked forward to it with great anticipation. I would be a very competent twelveyear-old, maybe the only one on the road. In the interim, it was winter, and keeping busy was our current challenge.
Although on that particular evening, my father and I had mutually accepted defeat, the idea of learning