Cecinatrix: Knitting & Crochet Blog Week

I thought I'd step out of my cozy little hermitage a moment and participate in a blog-along event organized by Eskimimi Knits - a blog I've been following on a reader for a while now - you know, in lieu of talking to people. ;-)

It isn't easy for me to break the seal on the vacuum in which I live, work and survive; however, there are occasions where it is worth the effort. And since I love the challenge of a designated topic almost as much as I love to talk...

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week...

Let loose the pigeons!

Starting Out

"How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting?"

No biggie - my mother taught me back when the Earth was still cooling and festooned in shades of Avocado Green and Harvest Gold. Crocheting was popular at the time and my mom was a teacher that loved people so she knew how to crochet. Sadly, I don't know if she learned from her mother or grandmother. I didn't know either woman - women don't seem to live much past 50 in my direct bloodline from that side of the family. My mother did make it to her 50th year, but no further. I miss her. Pop too.

Down Home

I have a Great Aunt (great person, yes, but also - my grandfather's sister) that crochets. She was the first person I knew that could reconstruct an object just by looking at it and figuring out the stitches - all without the hack and slash autopsy that I would probably need.

Haulin' Ass

How old was I? Don't know - old enough to remember but young enough to exhibit the behavior wrought by my short attention span - 8 or 9 probably. I never made anything useful. All I ever wanted to do was make chains. Long, colorfully yarny, big hooked chains. Like a J or K - I don't remember the steroid hooks existing yet.

The Bag Smith

Banner used with humble attribution
if not actual consent

In a generous mood, I say I am easily distracted. "Bores easily" is probably listed on a couple of psychiatric charts somewhere though. Extra curricular activities got more interesting and I didn't crochet again for years. I grew interested again in my late, late 20's. A time when I needed to make with my own hands. Was spending too much time thinking but not creating. After grad school and during my descent into the aimlessness that was my science career.

Mad Lab Assistant Laugh

By then I had begun my isolationistic behavior and with my mother gone, my father terminally ill and living 300 miles from friends and family I did what I usually do - collected information. ie - got a book. Lots of books, actually. I love information! Love to read about doing over actually doing, ironically. But the desire to make was too great and I actually re-taught myself the basics and subsequently dabbled sporadically in the knot-tying with a stick that dare not speak it's name. Eventually settling on the fill in the blocks approach to design of filet crochet, but in no serious way.

Enter 9-11. Already in the early to mid stages of succumbing to a soul-crushing clinical depression with the big "D", I took those murders pretty hard. No, I didn't know anyone in New York at the time. Didn't know anyone effected directly by that massive sudden loss. Still, as I snapped rudely at people that questioned my state - I don't have to know them to be sad at the instantaneous loss of thousands of people.

Grief

I wanted to honor these people, these losses. I graphed out a very primitive filet pattern featuring everything and everyone that perished: the towers, the planes, the pentagon, the rescue workers. It's very primitive and it took me a couple of years to finish it because I kept letting life gett in the way and kept putting it aside. I would post a picture, but I don't know where it is. Most of my life is in storage awaiting the ability to move into a larger abode and it is packed away tightly.

I started playing with filet crochet images as some non-destructive self medication.

Blue Man in Bell

Drugz

It helped immensely. But it got harder and harder to get a desirable level of detail that would still keep the projects small enough for my attention span to embrace. And then I stumbled across fridgies again. Back when I learned to crochet, many of the ladies in my Mother's daily life made and sold small, seasonal yarn appliques as boutonniere style brooches complete with straight pin for securing. I loved those rabbits and shamrocks and stuff. Never occurred to me that they were little building blocks. So I started playing around with the idea of crochet pictures like the felt ones we made for church as festival decorations when I was a teenager.