Threads

Back in my twenties I taught myself how to crochet, but got away from it during my early-to-middle adult years. Five years ago this month, in January 2004, the daughter of a friend, who is now very involved in fiber arts as a vocation as well as a hobby, asked me to teach her how to crochet.

The experience was like getting back onto bicycle after years without riding, and automatically remembering how to do it, recalling why you took it up to begin with, and falling in love with it all over again. I love the feel of the movements involved in crocheting, as well as the texture of the yarn. I love seeing a tangible thing take shape from a single strand of yarn or thread, and the satisfaction of wearing something that I have created, or of giving it as a present to someone else and seeing them wear it.

During 2004 and 2005, I crocheted numerous items of warm and wooly apparel. At that point, I had begun preparing mentally for a geographical move, although I didn't know when it would happen. I didn't even know where. I had an interest in the Portland, Oregon area, but figured I'd travel there first, and then when the circumstances of my life allowed it, I'd make the move. I knew that wherever I ended up, it would be someplace where there was real winter weather. So as I sat in my house on the warm and muggy Mississippi Gulf Coast, crocheting away, I visualized myself sometime in the future, living in a cold climate and wearing the scarf or wrap I was making.

And here I am. As fortune and fate would have it, I had stored several of the finished pieces, along with a few items in progress, on the top shelf in a closet. They were among the few things I was able to salvage after Hurricane Katrina, since they were above the high water line.

This is a scarf I crocheted during early 2005, from a pattern I downloaded off the Internet. It's made with Coats & Clarks' TLC Essentials "Villa" variegated acrylic yarn, using an unusual "cross-stitch" crochet stitch. I have been wearing it a lot this winter and have gotten numerous comments, as well as questions about the stitch from other crocheters. It's a neat feeling to wear this scarf while I'm shoveling snow from my driveway here in the Pacific Northwest, and to remember where I was in my life at the time I was creating it, as well as what has happened in the interim.

Comments

[Sharon]

Your scarf is beautiful. I marveled at the thread that connects your thoughts while you made it to your current place in the world.

[Kitty]

Thanks. As you can see, you can't always control how the color pattern is going to come out when you use variegated yarn. I told that to a friend of mine who commented on this photo, and he said, "but that's great! It looks like the crochet version of the tie-dying we did back in the 60s." :D