Knitted thoughts and woven-in conclusions

I have started on another crochet project. I know I shouldn't have started it, since I'm still working on other weaving projects. But I couldn't resist looking for and finding the yarn store I'd heard about from our dentist, who by the way, has made some absolutely beautiful knitted hats. Once I'd touched and felt the softness of those lovely things, I knew I wanted to see the store she told me about. So, I promised myself I'd go there over the holidays.

It turns out we have extended holidays (am not going to talk about the financial crisis here) so yesterday, with CLo taking the car to get it washed and to pick up stuff for lunch, I found the opportunity to get myself dropped off in the center of town near the dentist's office and walk in the direction she'd nodded toward the day she told me about the yarn shop. Sure enough, I found it. Of course I had to go inside, and what a surprise met my eyes!

The shop was like something out of the past, at least 50 years ago. After stepping up the three stairs into the dark interior, there was a tiny waiting space, where three women sat in the three chairs against the wall with their knitting on their knees. The rest of the space was filled with other women who were waiting in a straggling line to be attended by the one young woman behind the counter. She was attending a customer as I got into the line, and I saw how she was explaining instructions, stitches, recommending yarns, quanitites, and I thought - I will never get my turn before I have to meet up with CLo, who was sending me text messages informing me of her progress with the other errands.

But that old obstinacy that sometimes sets in kept me in the line and I patiently (with effort) waited my turn. As I stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, I looked around the shop, where a prospective buyer cannot do more than that. None of the yarns are displayed where you can examine them. You can only gaze at them where they are stuffed in large transparant bags crammed into floor-to-ceiliing shelves running along the walls of the large space behind the counter. Your eyes rove over the different yarns, wondering what the ones in the corner feel like, trying to decide how much those huge spools in the display case weigh/cost, gazing at the advertising posters and wondering if the yarns they depict are available, and if so, in which colors.

As more women crowded into the store, the line began to turn into a mob - if you know what I mean. It was almost my turn but three other women were closer to the counter than I was! At last another woman came from the back to help out the main attendant, and she began to wait on the woman ahead of me. This meant I would be next, but the other women were closing in. Finally the main attendant - a young woman who I thought was really nice, in spite of the fact that she didn't seem to care that her shop was filling up with customers that she couldn't attend because she was so diligently attending the one she was waiting on - finished with her customer and looking over the heads of everyone, asked, "Who's next?" I actually raised my hand! Not your timid finger-up-next-to-my-ear kind of move but an arm-shooting-into-the-air-with-index-finger-pointed-to-the-sky movement. Everyone laughed. I stepped into place and the negotiations began.

I have to tell you that I think I might have gotten hooked on that store. I miss that kind of experience, being a working woman. I miss walking into that special kind of atmosphere where the world slows down to revolve around one main issue, and everyone speaks a unique language. When I first started having kids, I used to knit things for them. My friends and my sisters-in-law also knitted and crocheted and we'd talk about what we were working on. I learned all the lingo in Spanish, exchanged patterns and pored over them with my friends. Then my kids grew up and I stopped knitting and threw myself into work and other things.

Yesterday, I was so rusty in terms of the lingo, fumbling to recall in Spanish those certain terms and expressions so common in the knit/crochet world, that the woman almost immediately asked me where I was from. This brought home to me that my foreign-ness was showing. I'm uncomfortable when I feel that foreign. It's okay for people to ask me where I'm from in passing or in small-talk, but when it happens at the beginning of some kind of meaningful exchange it makes me feel at a disadvantage, as though I must prove myself, show that I am an equal, which is a strain. I'd much rather feel like an equal from the beginning, and then enjoy the fact that I'm different. But when you don't feel equal, feeling different is not enjoyable!

At any rate, I did end up having a very nice negotiation process. Once I could see that I'd proved myself, the whole thing became a lot of fun. I got the yarns I wanted and then, just because I respected her opinion so much, I bought another yarn that she suggested - but that I didn't really agree with - for my project. (Once I get started I'll see if she was right or not!)

So that was the situation that created the jumping-off point of this blog - now for the thinking and concluding part!!

It's all woven together with something my mother said in a chat we had a few nights ago. For some reason, that whole knit-shop experience got me thinking about how people look for links to make them feel part of where they are. About how knitting and crocheting used to be a real part of my life here in Mexico, keeping me connected with family and friends here. About how that life has changed over the years, and that nowadays, the people I'm trying to connect to in the knitting world are mainly my mother and sister, who also like to do those things. It made me see how the world goes around, how you can be living so many years in a certain reality, a life you've made for yourself, and then, BAM, you're back in the world you came from, and then BAM again, because those two worlds finally do connect!

I thought of my mother, and wondered how she got started with knitting, if it was part of her connection with her mother, and that made me remember that on the day of Anton's birthday, my mother mentioned that she loved that date because it was her own sweet mother's birthday. Just think - her mother's birthday, and now my son's birthday! Isn't it incredible how you can go along for months at a time inside your own little world, only to suddenly realize how deeply and inevitably you are connected to your family tree? It made me think about her, Grandmother B, and how my mom must have had such a special relationship with her that I, as her daughter, as my grandmother's granddaughter, never could have.

And that got me thinking about my own kids and how I'm so connected with them, but how they are not as connected to my parents and my sibs as I am, though they may try. Which made me realize how important it is to provide ways for them to keep the link intact.

So yesterday, I came home from the shop and suggested we watch the DVD that my Dad had made for each of his daughters. It's a conglomeration of home-movies - films beginning with my parents' wedding and going up to the time I was in high school. My kids were enthusiastic about the idea, but of course, as they were watching it, I had to explain who each person was, and of course it's not the same to hear, "Oh look at Grandmother B!" and know who she was, and to hear the same exclamation when you never really knew her.

And yet - maybe it has to do with the meaning of "blood-ties" - there was a sort of reverance flowing through the room as we watched the scenes. My kids could feel how my life was, how I came to be here, where they have descended from. They laughed at us as babies and teenagers, but they thought it was wonderful. They were in awe of their own grandparents being a young couple ("Poppy smoked???"). They were curious, wanted to hear the stories I could tell about all the aunts and uncles and cousins that they've never met or perhaps only been with a few times. They felt connected. I could feel that and it made me feel good.