Ravelings: The Gift of Handwork

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When I came across this essay published in Interweave Knits Summer 1998, it brought tears to my eyes, and I knew I had to share it. (My kids would tell you that’s not uncommon, I cry at heartfelt TV commercials too.) I love handcrafted connections to the past and cherish them. When you reach the end of this piece, I welcome you to share the gifts that have been handed down to you in the comments.  —Kerry Bogert, Content Manager, Yarn

Image above: Source – Getty Images. 

The Gift of Handwork

by Susan M. Bryson

When I became a mother ten years ago, I was intensely aware of my place in the generation hierarchy. I thought a lot about my elderly grandmother and my weeks-old baby daughter, who share the same name, and it made me sad to think that their lives would overlap for only a brief time. But I felt there was a strong connection between them, and it was more than in name.  One day as I covered my baby for her morning nap, first in a pink crocheted blanket, then in a soft white knitted afghan, and finally in a baby crib quilt, I realized I had just placed layers of love on her, love expressed in the handwork of her great-grandmother, her grandmother, and her great-aunt. 

The accomplished needlewomen on my mother’s side of the family have each developed their particular handwork skills. My sister has continued the tradition, sewing little dresses for my daughter, and once those were given up, making whimsical vests from fabric printed with horse motifs. I seemed to be the only woman in my family who didn’t make something by hand.   

Related: 6 Tips for Raising a Maker

A Surprising Family Heirloom

I was reminded strongly of this by a gift I received six years ago. When my grandmother passed away peacefully at the age of ninety-one, her children sold the farm where she and my grandfather had grown corn and soybeans for more than seventy years. Her daughters, my mother and my aunt, cleared out the old house for the new owner. To my surprise, they sent me the green afghan.   

Ever since I could remember, the green afghan had been draped on Gram’s living room sofa. During our yearly visits from the East coast, that green Iowa afghan covered me while I napped on the couch or read in the armchair. The afghan was so familiar that I’d never really looked at it closely. I’d always assumed that my grandmother, the crochet expert, had made it. I hadn’t realized that its lacy design was knitted, not crocheted.   

Constructed from five-inch-wide strips of four shades of green, the yarn-over motif sprouts leaves two-by-two down the length of the afghan. I found out later from my mother that she herself had made it as a gift to my grandparents.   

The Call to Make for Someone Else

I finally took my place in the family handwork tradition a year ago, when the softness of a knit-shop display of children’s mohair pullovers inspired me to pick up needles and yarn again after a break of twenty years. My mother had taught me to knit when I was eight or nine, but after several garish potholders and some ridiculously long, striped scarves for high-school boyfriends, I gave it up.   

Luckily, the desire to make something for my daughter, plus the fact that the pullover was a small project done on large needles, saw me through. Helen has worn her soft blue cabled vest (something funny happened with the sleeves!) only once, but I learned a lot about knitting while making it.   

Six months and two sweaters, five hats, two scarves, and three abandoned overly-ambitious projects later, I faced the real challenge to my skill and persistence: I decided to knit an afghan for my mother. It gave me the chance to be the one providing the gift of handwork, and to learn something more about knitting for those you love.   

Connection Through Craft

I began the afghan last summer, the day after I had knee surgery. The soft hues and the eighteen-row patchwork pattern absorbed me completely.

And as I knitted for my mother, it was as if she was with me. She was with me during the long days that I lay in bed, knitting as I kept an ice pack wrapped around my throbbing knee. She was with me as I knitted, crutches by my side, next to the pool during Helen’s swimming lessons. And she was with me as I knitted in the early fall, the afghan covering my knees as I sat on a folding chair in the frosted grass to watch her granddaughter compete at a local horse show.

But most of all she was with me during all the months and months of physical therapy. Exercises over, I could lean back, stretch out my legs, put on the ice pack, and knit her afghan until my knee was numb.   

I finished the afghan in time to send it across the country for Christmas. I hope that on the next visit to her grandmother, my daughter will take a nap on the sofa covered by that afghan. Even more, for her sake more than mine, I hope that she will one day take joy and comfort in making an afghan for me.   

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Susan Bryson originally contributed this essay to the Summer 1998 issue of Interweave Knits.   

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Cast On Your Own Family Heirloom!