Knitting club, anyone?
July 29, 2006 | 12:00am
I bought fresh flowers at the market and they wrapped it in an old copy of The New York Times. When I opened it at home a headline caught my eye: "In Hip Areas of New York, Knitting Clubs Form." It spoke about knitting clubs all over New York with women and men as members who meet at poetry clubs or knitting shops to knit together. Now that solves the solitary thing about knitting. Knit with someone else who also knits.
I love knitting. All my friends old and new remember me as a knitting person. I learned it when I was around 12 years old from my aunt Caridad Cruz-Syquia. Tita Caring would pack up all her nieces and bring them to Baguio for a summer of home education. One summer Tita Caring thought she would teach me to knit socks, using four needles and cotton thread. After much grief, shedding of tears and graying of thread, I learned. Socks apparently are the hardest things to knit. Sweaters are much easier. Besides, socks are also much cheaper to buy, so I gave up on socks but I still know how to knit using four needles.
The thing with knitting is usually you have to do it alone because no one else you know knits. It’s easier to find someone who sews, embroiders or cross-stitches, crochets, or does beads. I have only one friend who knits and we have at times sat and knitted together. It’s fun because you can knit and laugh while talking or watching TV but you cannot cry. Crying requires tears and tissues. When you knit you leave the crying behind.
I have a theory that knitting restores your brain after a stroke. I had a stroke in my right brain. To this day, almost three years later, I still have few active emotions, yet I know I quickly get annoyed and angry.
At the Jung seminar, I learned that those emotions come from another part of the brain, the amygdala, leftover from reptiles in our evolution. Anyway, after my stroke I just kept staring into space literally, no images, thoughts or daydreams, just clear blank space, and hardly any night dreams either. My brain’s screen would go dark after sleep and I slept all the time. Then I began to knit and very slowly my dreams returned. My waking hours also lengthened until they finally normalized.
"Tell me why knitting is good for the brain," I implore my two daughters whose sons go to the Waldorf School. Rudolph Steiner, the philosopher who set up that school, believed in knitting. "I’ve been wanting to write about it but I need some academic data to link it to recovery or creativity or something." So far, no decent answer. Panjee said she thought it developed both sides of the brain because one used both hands, two knitting needles versus one crochet hook. OK. Maybe.
Nevertheless, knitting is fun and healthy once you learn it and, as they categorize sweaters in a catalog according to the knitters expertise, I am an expert knitter. Today I have a knitting student. She called me, asked for lessons and I gave her. I haven’t seen her in a week because she’s not supposed to return until she has 15 inches of her sweater knitted. But she is alone. No other student. So I just keep on knitting for myself – the more complicated, the better. I wish I could set up a knitting club.
My daughters and I were scanning the new catalog. "I want that sweater," Sarri said. "It’s boring for me," I said. "You have to choose a style whose knitting will entertain me. I can now knit anything using cotton thread, but I don’t know if it will keep you warm in England. It’s good for our weather here, but you must send me yarn if you want me to keep you warm in winter. We don’t have good yarn here. Only lousy acrylic."
"That’s itchy," interrupts Sarri’s son, Julian, who also wants to wear only plain sweaters, but when I told him it bored me to death to knit them, he conceded and chose a pattern with cables. See, knitting also helps me build relationships with my grandchildren.
"They have knitting clubs all over England, too," Sarri said. "Someone had a wedding and she wanted everything to come from knitting clubs. Finally, on the day itself they even received a wedding cake with knitted thingies from the Brighton Knitting Club!" That’s where Sarri lives now. She wonders if she might learn how to knit if she joined a knitting club.
I taught my children how to knit once. I know that once upon a time Panjee knitted a sweater and Sarri was learning but they both lost interest. Maybe today, with the return of knitting to fashion, they will take it up again. Maybe we will have knitting clubs where people teach each other how to do certain things. We can knit from the cotton thread available here. I can teach you how to knit. Maybe I can die as a writer and a knitter, founder of the first Greater Manila Knitting Club. And maybe, if any post-stroke therapists read this, they might contact me and I might teach knitting in the therapy centers of hospitals. I have been eager to do that but don’t know how or with whom to connect. Then I can have on my tombstone: Mother. Writer, Knitter.
It will have been all worthwhile.
Please send comments to lilypad@skyinet.net or secondwind.barbara@gmail.com or send text to 0917-8155570.
I love knitting. All my friends old and new remember me as a knitting person. I learned it when I was around 12 years old from my aunt Caridad Cruz-Syquia. Tita Caring would pack up all her nieces and bring them to Baguio for a summer of home education. One summer Tita Caring thought she would teach me to knit socks, using four needles and cotton thread. After much grief, shedding of tears and graying of thread, I learned. Socks apparently are the hardest things to knit. Sweaters are much easier. Besides, socks are also much cheaper to buy, so I gave up on socks but I still know how to knit using four needles.
The thing with knitting is usually you have to do it alone because no one else you know knits. It’s easier to find someone who sews, embroiders or cross-stitches, crochets, or does beads. I have only one friend who knits and we have at times sat and knitted together. It’s fun because you can knit and laugh while talking or watching TV but you cannot cry. Crying requires tears and tissues. When you knit you leave the crying behind.
I have a theory that knitting restores your brain after a stroke. I had a stroke in my right brain. To this day, almost three years later, I still have few active emotions, yet I know I quickly get annoyed and angry.
At the Jung seminar, I learned that those emotions come from another part of the brain, the amygdala, leftover from reptiles in our evolution. Anyway, after my stroke I just kept staring into space literally, no images, thoughts or daydreams, just clear blank space, and hardly any night dreams either. My brain’s screen would go dark after sleep and I slept all the time. Then I began to knit and very slowly my dreams returned. My waking hours also lengthened until they finally normalized.
"Tell me why knitting is good for the brain," I implore my two daughters whose sons go to the Waldorf School. Rudolph Steiner, the philosopher who set up that school, believed in knitting. "I’ve been wanting to write about it but I need some academic data to link it to recovery or creativity or something." So far, no decent answer. Panjee said she thought it developed both sides of the brain because one used both hands, two knitting needles versus one crochet hook. OK. Maybe.
Nevertheless, knitting is fun and healthy once you learn it and, as they categorize sweaters in a catalog according to the knitters expertise, I am an expert knitter. Today I have a knitting student. She called me, asked for lessons and I gave her. I haven’t seen her in a week because she’s not supposed to return until she has 15 inches of her sweater knitted. But she is alone. No other student. So I just keep on knitting for myself – the more complicated, the better. I wish I could set up a knitting club.
My daughters and I were scanning the new catalog. "I want that sweater," Sarri said. "It’s boring for me," I said. "You have to choose a style whose knitting will entertain me. I can now knit anything using cotton thread, but I don’t know if it will keep you warm in England. It’s good for our weather here, but you must send me yarn if you want me to keep you warm in winter. We don’t have good yarn here. Only lousy acrylic."
"That’s itchy," interrupts Sarri’s son, Julian, who also wants to wear only plain sweaters, but when I told him it bored me to death to knit them, he conceded and chose a pattern with cables. See, knitting also helps me build relationships with my grandchildren.
"They have knitting clubs all over England, too," Sarri said. "Someone had a wedding and she wanted everything to come from knitting clubs. Finally, on the day itself they even received a wedding cake with knitted thingies from the Brighton Knitting Club!" That’s where Sarri lives now. She wonders if she might learn how to knit if she joined a knitting club.
I taught my children how to knit once. I know that once upon a time Panjee knitted a sweater and Sarri was learning but they both lost interest. Maybe today, with the return of knitting to fashion, they will take it up again. Maybe we will have knitting clubs where people teach each other how to do certain things. We can knit from the cotton thread available here. I can teach you how to knit. Maybe I can die as a writer and a knitter, founder of the first Greater Manila Knitting Club. And maybe, if any post-stroke therapists read this, they might contact me and I might teach knitting in the therapy centers of hospitals. I have been eager to do that but don’t know how or with whom to connect. Then I can have on my tombstone: Mother. Writer, Knitter.
It will have been all worthwhile.
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