Shattered Image

Lilly cranky? From Knitting?

This saddens me deeply. The peaches and cream image of the "Mother of Knitting", and the epitome of patience will now forever have a snarl on her face when I think of her. This totally shatters my memories of her sitting comfortably in her chair with her little feet planted on her ottoman, (hand-crafted needlepoint ottoman none-the-less), her ipod rocking in the cradle of her Bose sound system, a fire roasting in the wood stove, her rosewood needles neatly nesting in an antique vase, all the while her little hands just a flurry of activity. One would walk into that room and be overcome by a sense of hominess, contentedness and a warm baked cookie from the oven kind of feeling all rolled into one. If you were not a knitter when you entered her domain you would be before long.

When Lilly first taught Jo and I to knit we would meet at her house or mine, and have a few hours of knitting lessons, lots of laughs and mistakes (mine, certainly not Jo's), and a project to work on until the next time. Well, we couldn't wait to get together with Lilly and have her marvel over our project. We would gather around her with our matching trio of knitting bags 'cause we just all had to be alike, mind you. If Lilly had something in her bag, we just had to have it in ours because it made us feel all homey and cozy and Lilly-like. We would jockey for position to be the first to pull out our project and have her look it over and ooh and aah over the colors and texture and...fine handiwork. Usually she got excited over my colors and textures and Jo got the accolades for "perfect knitting" even though when she knits her hands look all cattywampus and you start to wonder how she can possibly be comfortable knitting with such a painful presentation. But, she has been known to finish her projects so I will give her credit where credit is due.

Every once in awhile we would go on a field trip to a LYS and we would trail after Lilly like baby ducks. This is how she got the name "Mama Duck" because every so often we would stray from her watchful eye and do something trivial like knock a display over or send a ball of yarn flying off the ball winder, all the time laughing so hard and standing with our feet crossed so we wouldn't pee our pants. Lilly would get her feathers all ruffled up and come clucking after us. Her favorite line was, "oh dear, what are you two up to now?" After all we were still newbies and we hadn't memorized the rules of LYS conduct and ettiquette.

We referred to her as a "professional knitter" because this is what she was, in our eyes.

Until now....

Cranky or not, we still love her but I would like that homey, contented, home-baked cookie all rolled into one feeling back!