How A Tragedy Brought Me Back To Crocheting

I crochet simple items for family, friends, and charity, practical items to wear, or items to use in your household everyday. Simple patterns, a splash of color, immaterial, as long as it blends. I appreciate the complex, the unusual, and respect the gift of creativity in others. It wasn’t always this way, but something extrodinary, that brought me to this magnificint place in the timeline of my life.
My mother taught me how to crochet at age nine. It was a hobby I visited-on-and off, until one tragic day in August 2008. My husband, age 52, was hospitalized for 8 weeks after suffering a stroke. I was devastated, my brain suddenly over-saturated with medical information, my body in a state of shock, and my heart heavy with pain and sadness. One afternoon, I returned home to pick up a few things. I looked up on the top shelf of my closet, and gently reached for an old, small, ball of pink yarn. It felt so soft, and immediately made me relax. I then picked up “ONE” cold crochet hook beside it, which instantly warmed up in my hand. The hook seemed to glisten, as I lifted it up to the sunshine peaking through the window. This was the very first moment in my journey, into the comforting world of yarn. A hobby that would calm my soul, in a time of stress, and change, and provide for me a place of Zen peacefulness. The rhythmic motion of the pulling of the yarn through tiny loops, repetitively, was soothing, healing, and magical. How could such monontonous simple stitches, stowed away in the back of my subconscious mind, resurface automatically, in my time of need? It was somewhat extrordinary how the simplicity of a single-crocheted stitch, could suddenly find its way back to me.
My crochet hook and yarn was with me at all times while at his bedside. It later accompanied me to the follow-up doctors and physical therapy appointments. “What are you making” was the prelude to each newly inspired conversation. Curiosity among countless people, spurred incredible conversations. “A simple scarf for my daughter” was my humble reply. One scarf soon became ten. Endless stories flowed from different people, each time somebody saw me with a different color yarn. It never occured to me, how one strand of yarn could be such an “ice-breaker” and able to provoke such scintillating conversation in a room full of strangers. It never dawned on me how a simple act of unraveling balls of yarn, transforming them into endless scarves, could impact and influence so many people, and at the same time, give me so much needed peace, comfort, and meditation time. I thank the Lord.
Thankfully, my husband returned to work in 2009. Today, I thank my mother, who planted that seed for me to sow, who taught me how to make my first chain stitch. Teaching me to crochet, unknowingly, became a bridge to something more meaningful in my future. Nonetheless, by September, I yearned for more. I became inspired by all of what yarn could do, but it was what I personally couldn’t make it do, that lead me to my next inspiration.
I picked up “TWO” knitting needles, a ball of yarn, and put them into my purse. My new journey began.

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