Old and New

El Paso, my husband's birth city and home to his grandparents, the last two remaining ones who are his father's parents. His sweet old grandmother's health is failing but she's had a good long life and still has the razor sharp whit my husband said that she had from his first memories of her. She reads crime and suspense novels, keeps up with the events going on in her quaint little desert town and loves to tell stories about the trips they took their three kids on back in the 50's and how my father in law would fall asleep driving. (I think he still does sometimes!)

Oh, and up until a few years ago, she use to knit. She would make stockings for christmas for the children, socks for gifts. Her favorite techniques were intarsia and fair isle. She comes from the old days of scratchy acrylics and even scratchier wool. I brought my Pomotomous socks in the Shi Bui sock yarn that I brought as my traveling project and she fell in love. I could see a bit of the old twitch to in her weathered fingers, begging to pass one stitch from needle to needle. If her mind was as good as her body, I bet I would have had to leave them there, giving the present that only one die hard knitter knows can be given to another: the passion for a craft that connects and binds more than just string.

She asked me who I was making them for. I thought for a moment if I should suggest that I was giving them as a present, even though my FO socks are small in numbers, I'm determined to have these on my feet soon. So I told the truth to which she laughed as hard as she could. She said "Good, you know, everybody always thought I should knit things for presents but what about me?" I showed her a few skeins of my own yarn that I had brought for pictures in white sands and you could feel the pang in her heart as she gingerly stroked the brightly colored skeins of the ultra soft merino. She was quite content to pet them in her lap like some beloved cat that belonged there.

I told her about all the explosions that have rippled across the world in the new found love of knitting. I told her about entralac, knitting toe up, two at once, felting, needle felting, the different mixtures of wool and bamboo, tencel and silk. She learned about the wonderful world of superwash in animal blends. She couldn't believe that what she thought would be a dying art, something that like her, had lost it's breath and was slowly finding it's way to the grave was reborn and living on healthy and robust as it ever had. The smile it had put on her face was rewarding and heart pulling all at the same time.

We talked some more about our working habits, that second sock syndrome has been around for a long time, we share the kindred spirit of having more than one project going at the same time. She felt warmed by how there is a growing love of vintage patterns, one's she probably worked on for the first time when issued by Vogue back in 1943.

Our visit had to be short, but I etched into my memory, happy to share a true link. She beamed at my husband as we were leaving, "You've got a good girl, Mike, she's a knitter." She wished me more luck with my business and before we left, she gave me a gift. Her long shoe box of knitting needles. What relics! So many straight and dpn's in all various sizes and each with their marking color and tops of their era. I will take a picture soon to share.

I will cherish that day and my newly acquired tools, all the road trips they worked on and quiet evenings listening to Granddad playing his jazzy tunes on the piano, being used as drums by my then toddler husband. Maybe one day my grand daughter will be able to pluck them up and tell me of the new explosion and I can tell her about the wonderful woman who had these, how granddad used them as drums and the road trips they took with me. Make the old new again.