Endings and Beginnings: Reflections on Crafting and Mothering

摘要

As all my friends and colleagues had babies, my mother knitted and crocheted for them. She made blankets, cardigans, shawls, and misshapen teddy bears with fat, plump limbs, rounded bellies and wonky eyes. When my friends stopped having babies she knitted for others, crafting square upon square upon square that were turned into blankets and sent off to charity to warm strangers in the depths of winter. She joined the local church craft group and every Tuesday for year after year, she would walk the few blocks to the local hall and sit with a diverse group of women, bound together by their shared love of yarn. Sometimes they would teach each other new patterns, and they experimented with paper craft and quilting, yet always returned to yarn. Before the meeting she would engage in a flurry of knitting, not wanting to look like she'd let her needles lie fallow in between meeting dates.