5 Jan 2022

I spent the last year taking up knitting again.  I learned at the YWCA in the town where I lived.  My best friend, Mary,  and I signed up for classes and the first thing I completed was a sweater for our dog.  It was bright blue.  From there on, I was hooked on crafts.  I learned embroidery in the Girl Scouts and completed a pillowcase or two which I still possess.  I also learned how to sew, making some of my clothing.  I tried an Art class, but that didn't work out too well.  I found out that I am not a creative artist.  In later years, after I was married, I taught myself to crochet and cross stitch.  Many, many gifts for others were the product of all of those skills.  Crafting, in whatever form, provided me with an escape into my own world and gave me a sense of accomplishment with my finished projects.  This has served me well in recent years, especially with returning to knitting again, in that I needed something to occupy my mind and hands in the hours when I wasn't being a caregiver.

Over the years, I had knitted or crocheted Christmas stockings for me, my husband, 2 kids, their spouses and now 6 grandchildren.  But as the grandchildren grew older, they have begun to add boyfriends and girlfriends, so I planned ahead and set a goal of knitting 6 new stockings, one for each of the grandkids future spouses.  My daughter also requested a few for her family.  Surprisingly, I accomplished this fairly quickly.  At the time, I had a few books and patterns for us to choose from.  One day, I wanted to find something specific and on to Google I went.  Well, this just opened up a universe of all things knitting!  I began collecting patterns of all kinds of stockings that I liked.  Then I started knitting them saying to myself - Well, I'll have great grandkids some day too!   So when I finally said, I think that I have enough, I had knitted over 35 full size stockings and many many mini stockings.  And in the course of searching for these patterns, of course, other types of projects appeared. So needless to say, I have tackled them as well. Mostly Christmas themed items, useful and sometimes humorous, such as the tangerine cosies that I made for the tangerines that the grandkids groan at and tease me about every year in their stockings.  No groans this year, just smiles.  

Between the stockings and the cosies, I have unintentionally created new traditions for our family.  The new stockings were brought out at Thanksgiving so everyone could choose a new one if they wanted to.  It will be done every Thanksgiving now. And the cosies may be back next year, although, I will have to make more because alot of them were taken home, which makes me smile.  

                                                     Just a few of the stockings and cosies.

I'm moving on to other holidays now......

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