My most treasured item is a blue, acrylic sweater my mom knit me. It has a horse on the back and my nickname in block letters on the front: GEN. I only wear it once a year to keep it from fading and falling apart.
I didn’t always treasure my mom. When I was younger, I often felt confused, embarrassed and overwhelmed by her behavior. She lived with schizophrenia her entire life and had episodes of feeling suicidal. She told me she felt so bad in second grade that she went on the roof of her elementary school and wanted to jump off.
Her life was topsy-turvy with high peaks of joy and dark moments of panic, sometimes within the same day. She went through periods on and off various medications, but she never found the perfect treatment plan. She was hospitalized many times. Employment was difficult for her because of the unpredictable nature of her issues.
It’s a mystery to me how she learned to knit, but she picked it up in her early 20s. Through knitting, she found a meaningful method to express her creativity for more than 50 years. Among other things, knitting allowed her to succeed, socialize, calm herself, regain control and participate in a craft on a limited income. I’ll explain
Im glad you got such a lovely jumper.
Sounds like you are proud of the jumper and of your mum.
i love knitting and crewchetting but am not so good at it.
I still chose to do it though.
It sooths me and was great when i quit smoking.
I can only make simple things but would love to learn more but im a bit slow perhaps at learning depends on who is showing me perhaps.
With knitting i can only do back and forth and cant follow patterns.
I tried joining knitting groups but they never had any on when i asked so no one to show me plus ide probably be paranoid about them anyway.
I knitted a jumper once with help of a woman in yarn shop in Sweden (when i lived there).
I would sit in her yarn shop and do some at home and then ask her what next step is and she would show me over and over and over again.
Sometimes i cried cause i felt so awful and like retarded because i could not just “get it”.
I kept forgetting the basic stitch and or how to do things and she kept showing me same thing so many times.
I made a grey jumper and gave it to my x boyfriend who was my best friend.
I then made a grey baby jumper with a smiling sun on it and a seperate smiling sun for him to sew or darn on the big jumper i gave him.
I gave him the baby jumper in case he has kids.
So both jumpers got a sun.
The first adult jumper i gave him in sweden the baby one with sun and etc i sent from Australia.
I later made a vest by myself just going back n forth and then darning two sides together.
Incredibly simple and basic cause i cant follow patterns and forgot what she showed me.
Thats one of my problems is i forget what i once knew pretty easily.
Education etc too.
I later made a jumper with out a pattern just by making 2 rectangles for arms and front n back n darning them together.
Its very basic n simple n not best looking jumper but its wearable and i made it all by myself and am super proud of it and i even wear it out and about sometimes.
