2. Sharpen one end of the wood with a pencil sharpener until it reaches a dull rounded point. Sand the wood with medium-grain sandpaper until smooth. Give it a final sanding with fine-grain sand paper.
3. Rub needles with mineral oil, lavender oil, sesame oil, or coconut oil. Make polymer clay beads or felted beads for tops. Paint them or shape them into animals, monsters, mushrooms, or whatever shape you choose. Be creative! If using polymer, make the bead around the needle and then remove.
4. Bake beads in oven for 30 minutes. Take out and cool. Glue to needles.
Other ideas for needle toppers are buttons, shells, and acorn caps.
DEAR MRS.WICKS,
My brother asked me to a jazz club with him the other night. I brought my knitting along in my purse. When I took it out, my brother looked stricken. “Please tell me you aren’t going to knit in a jazz club!” he hissed. “Don’t you realize how uncool that is?”
“Other than the poor lighting, I don’t see a problem,” I replied, switching on my mini flashlight so I could cast on for a cabled scarf. My brother was so embarrassed that he actually moved to another table! Later he said that people were staring and pointing at me. I never noticed. I was too busy knitting and listening to the music. So tell me, Mrs. Wicks, what is wrong with knitting in a jazz club?
Sincerely,
Uncool in New Orleans
DEAR UNCOOL,
While your knitting may have caused a stir on this occasion, I applaud your determination to stay on your needles! Musical events are an excellent setting in which to knit. The fact that you even thought to bring your flashlight seems most cool to me! I am quite certain that one of America’s great wits, Dorothy Parker, would agree.
Portrait of Dorothy Parker, by Luis Quintanilla
If you don’t knit, bring a book. (From a withering review of a musical she attended). Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
Dorothy Parker was an American writer, who penned short stories, reviews, poems, and satires. Her razor-sharp wit and wisecracks are legendary:
“When I get up in the morning I brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Besides her talent for writing, Dorothy Parker was also an avid knitter who often traveled with her knitting bag in tow. In 1943, when the painter Luis Quintanilla asked her how she saw herself she said, “I could only tell him the desperate truth: as a pastel old party, sitting in a corner, knitting. That was how the portrait started out. But then the artist, a man of infinite compassion, brushed in the cap and the shawl, and thus, by a few strokes, made something of my face and of me—a flagless Betsy Ross, say, or a non-arithmetical Madame Defarge. Either one enchants me, and gives me the incentive of emulation. And so I am truly grateful to a truly great artist.”
Looking cool in cables: Elvis Presley on the set of Jailhouse Rock.
DEAR MRS. WICKS,
Recently, a coworker whose grandmother had died asked me if I would like a box of her grandmother’s knitting stuff: needles, books, and yarn. I said yes, but when I told a friend about it, she made a face and said, “Won’t you be creeped out by knitting on a dead woman’s needles?” I hadn’t thought about it like that, but now I’m feeling kind of queasy about the whole thing. What do you think?
Sincerely,
Queasy in CA
DEAR QUEASY,
As a long time knitter, I have had a number of such offers myself over the years. While I too experienced some hesitation at first, I soon learned that such a gift is much more than just needles and yarn. It is an opportunity to stop and contemplate just how swiftly the fabric of life unravels, to make good use of another’s tools, and to continue the tradition of a well-loved craft. My advice would be to not let death spook you, for as the great bard said:
All that lives must die, passing
through nature to eternity.
Hamlet William Shakespeare
(1564–1616) “To be or not to be,
that is the question . . .” Hamlet “To knit or not to knit on
another’s needles, that is the question . . .” Mrs. Wicks
Rose’s Gift
Soon after I first learned to knit, my neighbor came over with a knitting bag full of yarn and needles that she had bought for fifty cents at a garage sale. She was not a knitter, but she knew that I was, and she couldn’t pass up “such a good bargain.” The woman holding the garage sale told her that the bag had belonged to her mother-in-law, who had passed away. Since no one else in the family knew how to knit, the bag ended up in the sale.
I was in my early twenties at the time and had little money to spend on knitting. I thought this would be great way to build up my supplies. I didn’t think I would mind using the things, since I had never met the woman who had died. But when I saw the name, Rose, stitched on the outside pocket of the bag, I began to feel uneasy, as if I was trespassing. As I looked through her many needles and notions, I came across a tube of hand cream, which again made me stop in my tracks. Here was a woman who had a name, Rose, who had been putting cream on her hands, maybe just a few months ago, and now she was dead and I was riffling through her knitting bag!
I began to wonder how I would feel about someone inheriting my knitting bag someday. What would they make of the haphazard clump of needles thrown together with no thought to size or order, or the lollypop wrappers thrown in with the stitch markers, and the old tangerine buried so long in the skeins of yarn it had shriveled to the size of a nut? There was no denying it—my knitting bag would be an embarrassment. Even dead, my face would turn red.
But Rose had nothing to be embarrassed about, for her knitting bag was a model of order. Each piece of equipment, needles, scissors, ruler, and box of stitch markers was in its proper place in the bag. There was no doubt that Rose had been an organized knitter. I decided then and there that I would honor her gift by learning to be more organized myself. As heartfelt as this attempt was, it only lasted a few days. But what an organized knitting bag I had for those few days!
The care Rose took with her tools led me to believe that she was a careful knitter as well. I could easily imagine her uniform stitches and flawless results. But what kinds of things had she knit? And for whom? Did she knit a scarf for a lover? A shawl for her mother? A hat for a toddler? Whom did Rose love enough to knit for?
I continued to look through the bag for clues. Besides needles, I found three skeins of luxurious, soft, white-wool silk blend tucked into a plastic pocket. What had Rose planned to make with this beautiful yarn? I wondered. Finally, at the bottom of the bag, I found a small paper envelope holding six tiny pearl buttons. Were they meant to go with the yarn? Was it a baby sweater that she had in mind? Did she have grandchildren to knit for, or had she died before she could meet them?
I had no answers to these questions for there were no pictures or patterns in Rose’s knitting bag, but I suddenly knew what my next project would be. I bought a pattern for a little lace yoked sweater in a newborn size. The three skeins in the bag would be just enough. It was my first baby project. I had to rip out the yoke twice to get it right. I was determined not to settle for any mistakes. I wanted this sweater to be as perfect as I imagined Rose would have knit it.
As I slipped the stitches back and forth on the needles, watching the sweater grow, I couldn’t help thinking about Rose and her life. Had it been a good one? Had it been a long one? Not long enough to use up the yarn in her bag, but then maybe that’s the fate of most knitters, leaving with yarn still in their bags. Knitting on Rose’s needles made me grateful for the days I did have, grateful to be knitting at all.
When the sweater was finally finished, I sewed the six pearl buttons onto the front band. I dropped the sweater off at my local yarn shop, which sponsored knitting for different charities and women shelters. I never did find out where the sweater ended up.
All that I knew about Rose was in her knitting bag, but it was enough
to imagine that she would have been pleased to have a new life wearing something begun and finished on her needles. Somewhere in the world, a baby was buttoned-up from the cold with six little pearl buttons discovered at the bottom of her knitting bag.
When we are fortunate enough to inherit another knitter’s tools, it is an opportunity to be mindful of those who have gone before us, and grateful for the gift of yarn and needles in our hands, as well as the days we are given to fill with as many stitches as we choose.
“Knitting is a perfect little model of the universe. All different colors, lengths of string, patterns, all woven together with patience and love, a small act ‘out of time’ that says everything.”
Mark Jacobson, artist and old friend of Mrs. Wicks
PHOTO CREDITS
p. 1 Lord Byron, a coloured engraving; Source: www.noelcollection.org
p. 6 Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
p. 10 Photo by Alexander Bessano of Queen Victoria of England/Empress Victoria of India, London, 1887
p. 21 Original painting Delaroche’s “Napoléon abdiquant à Fontainebleau” (“Napoléon abdicated in Fontainebleau”), 1845 oil on canvas
p. 26 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890) Self-Portrait, 1889, oil on canvas. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
p. 31 Writer W. H. Auden. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
p. 39 (top) King Christian IV by Pieter Isaacs, 1612
p. 45 Photo by A. F. Bradley, New York, 1907
p. 47 Photo courtesy of Kristin Nicholas
p. 53 Somerset Maugham with Bust at Dorchester Hotel London, 1948. Reg. Burkette/Getty Images
p. 59 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
p. 64 Original portrait of Benjamin Franklin, minus the hat, c. 1785, Oil on canvas by Joseph Siffred Duplessis
p. 90 (top) 1873 University of Texas Libraries
p. 90 (bottom) “A Fisherman’s Daughter,” Jules-Adolphe Breton
p. 96 Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, c. 1585, by Nicholas Hilliard
p. 107 Photograph courtesy of Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Mansfield, Missouri
p. 110–111 Photos courtesy of Louise Fairburn
p. 122 oil painting by Joseph Eaton of Herman Melville, 1870
p. 128 George and Martha Washington, Library of Congress
p. 130 Frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY, 1855, steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison.
p. 140 The Chandos portrait, National Portrait Gallery, London
Elvira Woodruff, To Knit or Not to Knit: Helpful and Humorous Hints for the Passionate Knitter
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends