Not my grandmothers thing.

As I sit and listen to my many podcasts I hear interviews with many knitters, designers, and book authors. A good part of the time, they are a combination of all three. A very common question is "how did you learn to knit?". There are various answers, anything from "so and so taught me" it could have been a favorite aunt, my mother, but of that category it seems to be a lot of times a grandmother. I personally come from the group of "I learned from a book.". My mother did teach me to crochet when I was probably 12, but she didn't learn to knit herself until my oldest son was just a baby ( he is 34, now), and she is gone now. She learned from a shop, I have to assume it was the 70's version of a LYS. I wasn't to aware of that kind of thing at that time, cause I didn't know yarn was made of anything besides acrylic, scratchy "Redheart" at that. For me Caron Simply Soft was the greatest thing since ice cream. I wouldn't have been able to afford nice wool yarns anyway. Wow, I just did the math, and she was 55 when she learned. That is a year older than I am, now. Not that that is a bad thing. She didn't knit much, after she initially learned. She always fell back on crochet, I'm sure that was just cause it was easier for her. She crocheted a blanket for each of her grand kids, but I don't think she ever made a garment in crochet or knit and there was the thousands of Doilies she made before I was born. I still enjoy a nice doily every once in a while, myself. She did start a vest for me, in crochet filet, when I was in high school. But never finished it. I think she would have enjoyed the great phrases we have today, UFO, frog, tink. She would have been offended by "HO", though. That would have offended her sensibilities (she was a little Victorian). As far as I know, the only thing she knit was the blanket she made for my oldest son, and it was probably what she did for the class. It was a feather and fan design, in white acrylic (I wouldn't have known how to care for it, had it not been acrylic, anyway). Her foray into knitting was the first time I saw anyone "pick". You know that would seem to be such a natural way for a crocheter to learn, but since I learned only using books, I didn't even learn to hold the yarn through the fingers as a lot of "throwers" do. I just let the yarn hang until I need to make a stitch, make the stitch and drop it again. I know it is really slow that way, and some day I'm going to make a bunch of swatches or choose a project that it won't matter much on and learn some different habits. Some day I'm going to attempt color work. I didn't even learn what my Mom thought was a proper way to hold a hook. I didn't crochet much around her, because it bothered her to watch. That I probably won't change cause it doesn't slow me down or change the shape of the stitch. Mom was a seamstress, and also had a knitting machine in the late 60's. I think my dad may still have it. She was what we now refer to "bi-crafty" or she would actually have been "multi-crafty". She embroidered and Macrame, we ventured into quilling, I liked that better than she did though.

She learned how to work the VCR, only so she could record "Sewing with Nancy" every week. I'm not too sure the miles and miles of video tape that she had aren't still under the TV in my Dad's house. He was shocked when she passed, as to how much material she had "stashed" out of sight that he didn't know about. He gave it all away. She would have liked that phrase, too. "Stash". I have those same qualities. Oh! That yarn...or peice of fabric is so pretty. I don't know what I'm gonna make out of it, but I gotta buy it, cause I'll never see anything as pretty again... Oh wait that piece of fabric...yarn is so pretty, I've got to have it... Oops I digress.

Crafts and craft "behavior" was one of the things I did share with Mom. I learned to sew from her as well, and still miss being able to call her and ask "Mom, how do you do this or do that". She hated lining things, so I never thought it would be something I'd want to learn... Now I'm going to have to employ Jean Frost's books to learn that particular skill, cause someday I want to make a particular coat for a winter coat, and it would be that much more warmer and look like a nice taylored garment when finished if I line it. It's the red coat at the end of the pattern section of --------(link this)

Well, Back to the original subject, I wish I had some poignant story about the time I spent with a dear grandmother while she taught me a beautiful craft like knitting, but I'm afraid that I probably would not have had the appreciation for it that it deserved (the time or the craft). The other side of it is, that my paternal grandmother passed away when I was 5, and I'm sure she did some type of needle work, because she raised her family during a time when you didn't just go to the store and buy new clothes. They were farmers, in the 20's and 30's, she milked the cows, and made bread twice a week (and from what I understand it wasn't just a loaf or two at a time, they were a family of 6 kids and gramma and grandpa). She read "Zane Grey" books to the family in the evenings, while the kids ate popcorn. I don't think they even had a radio at the time. They didn't have much spare cash for things that could be made. So I'm sure she made clothes at the least, but I never heard about her knitting, and I don't remember seeing the tell tale doilies around to indicate that she crocheted either. I was so young when she left us that I only know her from my dad's stories. I only have maybe two real memories of Gramma Lee, and one of them, I'm so embarrasses of my behavior that I'm not even going to go there. The other was in her kitchen with my cousins and her, and I'm not even sure whether she was giving us a cookie or what was going on.

My maternal grandmother was with us a bit longer, I think I was about 11, but don't really have many more memories with her either. She lived in Oklahoma, and we lived in Colorado. Mom and I made trips to Oklahoma every summer to visit Gramma and Grandpa Vowell, and Mom's sister Auynt Marie. I only have one memory of Granma while she was hale and healthy. She was standing in the dining room of the house they lived in. We were sitting down for dinner and she was bringing in the food to put on the table. All my memories of her after that were when she was in a wheel chair and in a nursing home. I don't even know if she really knew who I was, at that point, part of that lack of memory of that, was there were always several other residents that wanted attention and I was a little intimidated by their attention (they were hungry for it, I understand now, but didn't then). Anyway, Gramma Vowell was a quilter, I think she probably crocheted, too. If I remember correctly she had the crocheted lace covers that people put on the top of chairs (where your head hit) and the arms of the chairs. The style of the day decorating. I'm sure that is where Mom learned to crochet as well.

Incase it isn't appearent by my time lines, my mother was 36 when I was born, I was about a half a generation out of sink. That is why I was so young when my grandmothers passed, even though Granma Lee was only in her sixties when she died. I'm sure my brothers that are 12 and 14 years older than myself have many more memories of them than I do. I sometimes feel like I missed a valuable part of my life by not knowing these courageous women and I missed out on a lot of valuable Granma training for my grand kids.

I don't know how to be a ""Good"" Granma. I've already been asked why I'm not a kissy huggy Granma, by one daughter in law, and have a 4 year old granddaughter and an almost 2 year old grandson that I haven't even met yet. How do you explain to your sons that you don't know how to Granma and are a bit afraid of how it all works. Appearently being a good mommmy and a good Granma doesn't come as naturally for some of us. I recently found out that I evidently wasn't the kind of mommy my boys wanted or needed, although they all turned out to be very wonderful men, and very good parents themselves. I'm very proud of each and every one of them, dispite my lack of mommy skills. I have 5 grandchildren, and just this summer met my 2 year old granddaughter by my oldest son. Have been around my youngest son's two boys the most. But it is my middle son's kids I haven't met yet. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet my two year old, except my oldest and his family traveled to Georgia this past July when we thought that my youngest was re-deploying back to Afghanistan. We've since found out that he won't have to go. His transfer to Ft. Carson was granted early enough that he is staying in Georgia until next spring when he'll go "home" to Colorado. Well, at least with them all in Colorado, it will make it easier to visit them all. I'm afraid that my youngest, being in the military, and having served 2 tours in Afghanistan and 1 tour in Iraq, has had a little priority in visits. As professional drivers we can only make about 1 trip a year. That is about all the time we can take off from work, so my relationships with my other two sons has suffered for it. Maybe I'll be able to heal some of the rift, and find a way to be a better Granma than I was a mommy. Time will tell...

Second try

This is to see if I can blog while not connected and it seems to allow me to type into blogger. So far do good

Friday, September 28, 2011 for blog

In Salinas, Ca again for second day. Loaded three stops yesterday but when we got to a scale, we were over weight on trailer axles. It was 37,000 and some change we're only allowed to have 34,000 on those axles. We can carry 80,000 overall, but can only have 34,000 on the very back axles or the trailer axles. Only 34,000 on the middle axles, or the drive axles. And finally we can only have 12,000 on the front axles or the steering axles. If you add them up they come to the 80,000 lbs. Our gross weigh ( over all weight) was under 80,000, I think it was something around 74,000 or 78,000, I didn't look at the scale ticket, and can't remember what hubby said it was, the important part to me was that it wasn't over gross. So, we had to come back from King City to Salinas, to have someone pull some or all the stuff out of the trailer and restack it to redistribute the weight.

I again, had to stop working on the echo flowers shawl. Last week I had to stop because I had left it on the bed while hubby came back to fix something to eat, and didn't realize that my needles were there. He leaned on them or something and he felt really bad when he heard them snap. I told him that I shouldn't have left them where they were... My fault. Yesterday morning Katie (my year old female Dachshund) evidently wanted me to wake up. She had jumped on me a couple times. When she decided that I wasn't going to wake up, she resorted to more stringent tactics. Needless to say the sound of my needles cracking brought me out of bed really fast. She only broke one of the tips, but needless to say, we're broke down in the road, till I can get home and get the ones I ordered to replace last weeks debacle. Knit picks is gonna wonder what in the world I'm doing with all these size 5's. I guess I'd have to tell them I'm using them for "chewy sticks" if they ever asked... This is one reason I don't use terribly expensive needles. I've been known to drop my dpn's down in the seat mechanism (the hinges and stuff underneath the seat that helps keep the truck suspension from beating you to death). When you drop things in there, you either can't retrieve them or they get bent when you take your weight off the seat. Pinched in between the hinges and bent beyond use. (learned that one from personal experience). Who ever bought the last truck we were in, also has a size 1 DPN that the don't know about. That is a good reason to use circular needles on all projects in the truck. At least if you drop one it is "tethered" to the other needle and less likely to be lost or damaged by seat.



Anyway, I've decided that my poor echo flowers shawl has bad Mojo. Or if you've ever seen "Medicine Man" bad Juju. We had a bit of a family issue several weeks ago, and that seemed to be the shawl I worked on when sorting out that mess in my head, I guess it absorbed all the bad thoughts and feelings. Now it won't let me finish it to move on to other projects.



I'm also working on the Wingspan. Thank goodness I had it with me when my Echo went down. I would have gone nuts without something to knit. I'm knitting it out of some Knit Pick's Chroma, I think the color way was Prism. It is really pretty. I may have to make another later and see what some other yarns do with that pattern. I'm not sure I'm going to get all 8 triangles with what I've got, but I think this shawl is a bit like the hitchhiker, you can do as many or few as you like and it will still look good. The Chroma was already in my stash, thought I would have enough to do it, but we'll see.



Please excuse the quality of my pictures. The are taken with my iPod and the light in the truck isn't always optimal.

A check in...

Put blogger on my iPod, so maybe I'll be able to publish more often. Just wanted to do a quick publish to see how it works.

Introduction to me

Well, this is probably the way most blogs start...  It's an experiement.  I'll introduce myself, and explain what the name means.  My husband and I are Professional Driver's.  We travel the hiways and byways of the United States.  In our spare time (haha), we live the rest of our lives.  We are in the truck and away from home more than we are home.  Our imediate family travels with us.  Our little girl, Jesse, is almost 12 years old, and she is a Schnauser/Irish setter mix.  She looks like a 30 lb. red Schnauser.  Our little boy, Rusty,  is almost 3, and he is a very small Dachsund (he's less than 10 lbs, so he still looks like a puppy).  He is the most active boy we've ever seen.  His Daddy's registered name was "All Wired Up", and he is a chip off the ole block.  He knows his name, but refuses to answer when you call him.  We can't take him out of the truck or out of the house without the leash.  I learned than when he pulled his collar off along the highway, and started out towards the traffic. Does "headstrong" come to mind? 

Okay, the trucking explains the 5th wheel.  In case you don't know the physical parts of a truck, a 5th Wheel is the part that the trailer hooks to so that you can pull it down the road (like a hitch, only bigger).  I take a lot of pictures of the landscape.  I have some wonderful Sunsets, and Sunrises, beautiful fall trees, and we sat through the really big snowstorm in Virginia, last winter, and I got some pictures of the snow depth on the trucks around us.  I have some small videos of a crazy thunderstorm in California, a few weeks ago.  The only bad part of taking my pictures...  Sometimes I have to take them through the windsheild, and the bugs mess up the focus of the pictures.  We have to travel too fast to be able to stop when I want to take pictures.  I guess the best ones will be taken when we retire, and travel for fun, and leasure.   If it gives you an idea of how fast we cross the country...  An example of a typical week is;  We leave Arkansas late on a Saturday night, and deliver our load in California on early Monday morning.  Sometimes we have to wait til the next day for our next load, and it might deliver in GA on early morning Friday, and if they have something for us, we can be back home in Arkansas by midnight Friday night or early morning Saturday morning, and ready to do it again.  We used to stay out on the truck for sometimes as long as 2 months at a time, but now we are usually home at least for a few hours every couple of weeks, and will usually take a few days off every 2 or 3 weeks.  We are capable of doing about 7000 miles a week when it is busy, but it's not been that busy since the economy took a "digger".  But if we can hang in there, and do what we can, things will get better, and we'll be really busy again.

Now... where do the knitting needles come in?  Well, I knit on the truck.  At either end of a trip, when we are unloading or loading, I don't have to drive very much, so I fill my time with knitting.  Our typical schedule is He starts us out, and does a 10 or 11 hour shift, and I sleep, and then he goes to bed, and I drive for a 10 or 11 hour shift.  We trade back and forth until we get to our unloading point, and He does all of the hard stuff (I'm only an assistant driver, haha).  After I finish my shift getting us close to the delivery, I go to bed and sleep my shift, and he does the delivery.  After I sleep, and the truck has set during unloading, and then we usually have to set while our company finds a load for us to move to another part of the country, and we're also setting during the loading.  Sometimes the whole unloading, and loading process may take as little as 6 hours, and as much as 36 hours, depending on how plentiful freight is, and sometimes we set at a shipper for many hours while they collect all the stuff that is suppose to go on the truck.  In order to preserve the system that has developed on the trip out (it really is helpful if I can stay on the same time schedule, rather than bouncing on sleep schedules and stuff).  My husband calls it a "rhythm" that we get into, and that's when we are really efficient.  So, when we are in "setting mode", I stay up through the night, and allow my husband to have the bed and get a good nights sleep, and I stay on the same schedule as when I'm driving.  It works out fairly naturally that I drive at night, deliveries and pickups are usually during the day, and my husband needs to be on duty during those hours, so I do the "fill in" driving...  point to point.  Well, I suppose it doesn't have to be said, I knit during my setting up through the night shift.  So if you ever go to a truck stop at night, if you see a single truck out there that is "glowing"...  it's just me with the light on so I can see to knit.  I'm afraid I'm new enough at knitting, that I can't knit without looking, and I enjoy lace, and I definitely can't do lace without looking.  Now, I have to explain my statement about being a "new" knitter.  I've actually knitted for about 30 years... but it was mostly just flat, square things.  I think I made some vests for my boys when they were small, but they were two square flat peices that were stitched together with arm holes, and a place for their head.  They were cute, but pretty simple.  Anyway, the knitting bug hit me last December, and since then I've made a few pair of socks, and a few pair of fingerless gloves.  A really pretty lace shawl for my mother in law's birthday.  I'm working on a pair of socks for my husband (my first pair on two circular's), have a pair of socks started for me (my first toe up pair, that I'll put on the circulars when I finish hubby's).  I decided that I needed to learn how to make more things that are useful.  Scarves are useful, but I am guilty of getting bored with them.  I used to think knitting was slower than crochet, but I find that I actually knit faster than I crochet.  My style of knitting is not very stylish.  I'm one of those that learned from a book years ago, and never developed any finess with it.  Oddly enough, as a crocheter, I can't "pick" with the yarn in my left hand, and I drop and pick up when I "throw" my yarn in my right hand.  I learned to crochet from my mom when I was about 10 or 12, and she used to hate to watch me do it, cause I didn't hold the hook the way she wanted me to, so I guess I'm just a rebel with my style. 

Well, I don't know how regularly I'll be able to post, but my intention is to write about the things that I see while we travel (sometimes there isn't much interesting, but we'll see what we find).  Also, to talk about things I'm working on, or some of the 1001 things I want to make.  There might be family stuff, too.  There are 3 boys (men, now), and wives and grandbabies that blame me for their existence.

Happy Trails.... to you....