The Story Behind The Photo: Fireweeds
If you are, like me, someone who enjoys creating handmade gifts for special occasions, perhaps you have shared the experience I had last weekend.
This experience includes finishing the gift while traveling to the location where the gift will be given, maybe even finishing moments before arriving? Wrapping the gift minutes before passing it off to the recipient? Feeling like a champ for squeezing in a quick photo session of the finished object before wrapping?
For me, it was a sweater for a family toddler, and I’m so glad I was able to get it done, even if it was in the nick of time. (Elizabeth Zimmerman’s February Sweater Pattern from her wonderful little book The Knitter’s Almanac, available as an ebook at the affiliate link on the title and on backorder here.)
It feels so important to get that picture of the finished project, doesn’t it? In addition to being a helpful memory aid (what yarn did I use when I made that before?), I enjoy looking back and thinking about the context and stories behind the projects.
Some of them are special because of the yarn I used, some because of why I made them, some because of who they were made for.
The project pictured below is special for all of those reasons.
The pattern is called Fireweeds, and the designer, Yvette Noel, has provided it at no cost on Ravelry.
I admired it as soon as I saw it. I know I immediately put it in a list of patterns I wanted to knit. It was gorgeous, it was free, and it looked like a challenge. All of those things appealed to me!
I was still gaining confidence in my sock knitting and colorwork techniques, and this pattern looked like a great opportunity to focus on perfecting my tension and making sure the “floats” between colors were not too short (creating puckering) or too long (creating gaps and loose stitches). It would be an intense personal workshop and I hoped I’d come out the other side of the project with improved skills.
Either that or I’d end up seriously hating colorwork.
That was the general “why” I wanted to make these socks, but the specific why had to do with the person and occasion they were made for.
I was part of an online group of women who were mostly home schooling their children. Even though most of us had never met in person, we got to know one another well. We celebrated a great many happy occasions together and shared a lot of griefs. Each year we’d do secret sister gift exchanges at Christmas time, and one year I was assigned a friend who had had a truly horrendous year. If anyone needed some pampering, she did. She also happened to love all things Dutch.
At the same time, I was doing a lot of commission knitting for fellow knitters. It might be more accurate to say that I was doing this commission knitting for people who had the dual hobbies of knitting and yarn collecting, as so many of us do. Sometimes my commission would be paid in yarn that was difficult, impossible, or impractical for me to acquire. At the time, anything from Rohrspatz & Wollmeise fell into that category.
People in the U.S. would set alarms to get up in the middle of the night to be online for the times this German company would release a batch of yarn to be sold. Skeins of this stuff were like gold. I was always thrilled to be asked to knit with some for a commission, and especially to be offered some as compensation. I love the stuff for certain types of knitting.
I had just finished a commission and my payment for it just happened to be a gorgeous blue of this special yarn that, paired with a barely off-white, evoked the Delft Blue look that says “Dutch” to me. I thought it would be perfect with this pattern, and for my friend.
It turned out to be one of the best yarn/pattern/person combinations I’ve had in the whole of my knitting journey.
I did, in fact, learn a great deal about colorwork in general, and in socks in particular, where allowances must be made for a bit of additional stretching to get a foot through the potentially troublingly tight ankle area. I learned there is real benefit in intentionally choosing a project with something hard in it for the purposes of conquering that challenge.
I loved using my knitting skills and my yarn stash to show kindness to someone who needed it.
As I’ve seen time and time again, there is something wonderful both in the making and the owning of something created. The gift is more than a sock, or a hat, or a bookmark. It is a tangible reminder of the connection between people, and the value the maker gives the receiver. It says, “You are worth this time and care I’m investing to make this for you. You’re in my heart and mind while I use my hands and my skill. You are important.”
And isn’t that a precious gift to give someone?
What are you working on today?
Happy knitting!
Kiersten J
