Most families have at least one or two family heirlooms that they treasure. They might take the form of photographs of relatives, jewelry from an ancestor, or your great grandmother’s china dishes. In my family, we have heirlooms that keep us warm, and that we can fall asleep with. I am talking about the crocheted blankets that my grandmother made.
One of my grandmothers loved to crochet. I have memories of her spending hours crocheting while watching television. She seemed to have an endless supply of brightly colored yarn, and an equally endless supply of family members that she wanted to crochet a blanket for. I think most of us received at least one of her hand made, warm, comfortable, blankets.
She made a pink crocheted blanket for me when I was an infant. I still have it today. I also inherited one or two more of her handmade blankets, over the years. These have kept me warm on cold winter nights. When I am not using them, they are carefully stored in a closet.
When I was young, my grandmother tried to teach me how to crochet. This is one of those crafts that is done one way if you are right handed, and a mirror image reverse of the same technique if you are left handed. My grandmother was right handed, so she tried to teach me how to crochet the way a right handed person would do.
I was a little kid when I first tried learning how to crochet. My hands were small, and so was my attention span. To say that I had difficulties learning the technique would be an understatement. Sometime after I started struggling, my mother tried to help me learn how to crochet. She was left handed, and attempted to teach me how to crochet the way a left handed person would do.
The result was that I was hopelessly confused, at first. Later on, I learned that I was ambidextrous. When I got older, I learned that I could crochet with either the right handed or left handed method, and that it was a really bad idea to shift from one to the other mid-project. By the time I was in college, I was teaching people how to crochet. I could teach the right handed or left handed method. I didn’t have children, so I was passing on the skill that my grandmother taught me to other adults, instead.
As an adult, I have crocheted soft, fat, pillows for the newborn infants of some of my friends and family. Recently, I started crocheting again, which makes me think of my grandmother. Perhaps I will become the person in the family who crochets blankets for all “the kids” and continue a tradition that she started.
Image by Heidi Isaksen-Loxton on Flickr