That time that knitting "took"

I've been playing with string for a very long time.  I'm not sure if embroidery or my first go at knitting was first, but it was certainly as long ago as elementary school age (and that was quite a number of years ago now).  In any case, knitting was certainly one of the early tries.  My mother's cousin was an avid knitter.  My mother used to tell the story of "Cuz" knitting argyle socks during movies.  At some point, very early on, Cuz taught me to knit -- with the usual results of a rectangle with uneven sides as stitches were added and dropped willy nilly as I went.  It was quickly put aside for other activities

A few years later (Middle School age) I discovered crochet -- teaching myself from instructions in a magazine (I still have the pages of that article somewhere....).  One session of help from a very patient yarn shop lady and I was off and running.  The first poncho I made was still in my mother's closet 7 years ago.  It was not long after that that I discovered thread crochet, which was much more in evidence then than it is now (at one point I think there were at least three magazines devoted to thread or lace crochet).  By the time I left for college I was crocheting with very fine thread, using steel hooks inherited from my great grandmother.  During all that time, I kept trying to go back to knitting.  I got better at it, but it never really "took" as something I enjoyed.  Compared to crochet it always seemed to take too long.  (There were embroidery and sewing also to take my time, but this is a post about knitting....)

I continued to crochet and embroider (the sewing machine took a long nap) through college, still occasionally picking up knitting without success.

Then, a few years ago, I went to Plymouth with friends to work on the Plymouth Jacket.  For some reason I will never really understand, I picked up knitting again just before that trip, working on a scarf (that was never finished) on the drive up.  While we were at Plymouth the costume department was working on a project they had launched for knitters to volunteer to make stockings for the Plantation.  I enjoyed the time there so much that I found myself coming home with yarn with which to make a pair.

They took a while, but I kept plugging at it, and finished the stockings.  Somewhere along the way, knitting "took" and I got *really excited* about it.

I looked for and found information about historical knitting.  I made modern socks, hats, and scarves.

Then, less than a year after I had finished those first stockings, I decided to make a silk bag.  Because once I dive in, I dive in.


I've often wondered why it finally "took" some 35-40 years after those days of Cuz sitting with me on the loveseat in our family room.  I think it's the history.  It was when I connected knitting to history that it blossomed for me.  Not everything I knit is historically based (in fact, most of my knitting is modern), but that connection seems to have been the spark that made it sing to me.

The moral of the story?  Never give up?  Find the spark?  Maybe it's just "create."