Friday, January 31, 2014

Spinning a Yarn

Mom and I were in Virginia, house sitting and kid sitting for my friend who was travelling in Australia.  It was February and Virginia was cold.  Snow and bits of ice still gripped the frozen ground and I was unprepared for the weather.  My grandmother always nagged me and my sister to wear our hats in the winter when we lived in Pennsylvania.  We ignored her.  Hat hair was unattractive and would interfere with our big 80’s hair.  Her words of wisdom came back to me as we wandered through Wal-Mart and I passed a display of $3.98 knitted hats.

Mom swatted my hand as I reached for a pink one.  “I can crochet one for you in an hour,” she declared.  “Don’t buy that junk!”

Back to the house, mom pulled out her crochet hook, pink yarn and located the one-hour hat pattern on her I Pad.  She rocked slowly in the wooden rocking chair, creaking the floorboards beneath her.   With the snow slowly falling outside the window, it was a cozy scene.

An hour passed by quickly, and Mom’s language became just as colorful as the yarn she had on her hook.  She would start the pattern, and then take it apart.  She watched the video over and over on her I Pad.  Four hours into the project, she became so desperate she made me watch the video in spite of my complete inability to crochet.

The long weekend was finally over and after we put the kids on the bus to school, Mom and I headed South for home with me driving the entire way.  Mom was still working on my one-hour hat.

I finally received my hat in May.