SELF-TAUGHT

 
My mother said that she tried to learn to knit when she was a young mother. The  baby toddled up, lost her balance, grabbed for the needles -- and that was that. The knitting came off and Mother wasn't experienced enough to pick up all those stitches. She gave up knitting in favor of crochet and never practiced knitting again.


Knowing that Mother didn't knit but that my half-sister Harriet does, I asked Harriet who  taught her. Here's what she wrote: 


"I taught myself.  I bought a beginning book, some yarn and needles, and read what to do.  I think my first item was mittens.  I started knitting when I went to meetings in my sorority in college and everyone else smoked.  I needed something for my hands to do so I bought some yarn and a book.  I think someone in the house told me how to tie the first knot, and got me started casting on.  When mother was expecting you, I went to a shop in Moscow, bought some baby yarn and a pattern and knitted a sweater for you.  If I got stuck, there was always someone in the sorority who was a knitter and could help."

I used to think that being self-taught was somehow a lesser method of learning than taking instruction from an expert, but I now wonder if perhaps any craft we would learn doesn't carry with it the element of self instruction. Once you know the basics, you can carry on. Maybe you can single crochet and double crochet but you don't know how to treble crochet. There's plenty of self-help info out there. You don't necessarily need an expert to show you, unless of course, you know where to find one. You really have to develop the confidence just to wade in and work through the issues.
 
To this day I admire knitters, but I've never taken it up. But when I was in high school, I  flirted around with it some. Again, motivation is key. I wanted to make this little doll sweater for one of my diminutive baby dolls -- so I did. 

[The first photo is of Harriet and me sitting on the steps at the house in Orofino -- maybe 1952. Look -- we're holding hands. I was so pleased to be able to scan this picture from my baby book because I've never seen it anywhere else. The second photo is one that L.J., Harriet's son, forwarded to me. The background looks like a campus to me -- maybe the University of Oregon where she completed  her  journalism degree.] KW