I'm in the middle of a Christmas Project that involves sewing with yarn. As I was sewing along last night, I was thinking about my history with yarn.
My mother is a yarn enthusiast. There are caches of yarn all over the house of every conceivable color and texture. And she keeps buying more. There are knitting needles stashed in odd containers in every room. As a child I trailed after her to specialty yarn shops (with eccentric names like the "Loopy Ewe") full of vibrant colors and wonderful textures. She even raised sheep at one point with the idea of dying, spinning, and knitting the wool product. (I remember the sheep being shorn, and some of the wool carded, but I'm not sure much got done with it after that. There were several bags of wool in storage for quite a few years.)
I love yarn. I love the idea of spinning, the aesthetics of a spinning wheel, the idea of dying wool with splashes of different colors. It's comforting and homey. Of course, I don't do anything of those things--I don't even knit. (I have learned to knit at least half a dozen times, but it never quite took.)
My children have no idea of the possibilities of yarn. They don't know that there are yarns available beyond the cheap, horrible brands available at WalMart and Hobby Lobby. When Grandma came to visit last week, we found a yarn store for her full of expensive and wonderful yarns. There were a small group of ladies who were there for a class, or maybe just to work on projects together. They all had that knitter's camaraderie, a sort of comfortable sisterhood that speaks in the language of "knit one, purl 2, cast off." My children were entranced. They wandered around the store, feeling the different yarns and helping with the wool winder. Everything was new and wonderful and beautiful. They all planned to buy each other Christmas presents of yarn (at $25 a skein). That was when we left the store.
Maybe I need to finally learn to knit. Or just move close to Grandma again.
