Heritage Yarn.

My keen eyed child spotted this behind a bookend on the very top of one of the bedroom bookshelves yesterday.

This is yarn from the first knit garment I can recall my mother making for me (to my knowledge the only knit garment she ever made for me). I was 14 or 15, and my mother was full swing in her ‘hand knits as homebusiness’ era. She knits these lovely intricately patterned tiny sweaters for kids. They feature rows of little skirted girls and dancing stick boys. Crisp clean patterns, every one.

I do not remember how or why she came to be knitting for me – did I , in some twisted adolescent sadism ask my mother (lover of the geometric, the sharp) to knit in this pale purple fuzz? Did she, in some vague idea of snaring me into her knitterly ways offer up this yarn as a bribe to hold my interest long enough to get me to agree to wear something handknit? My memory is utterly blank on these details.

I do remember the garment though – it was a vest, rather simple, and had some odd purple buttons that I found for it. And it was fluffy and fuzzy and warm. I won’t go so far as to say I loved it, but I certainly wore it, which is more then can be said for a lot of the clothes my mother got for me over the years. I recall it took longer to knit then she had thought – I would imagine now, looking at the yarn, that it probably didn’t seam easily when she finished it.

There were two balls of this stuff left over when she was done, and I ended up with them. I seem to think I made a hat out of one of them, though honestly I don’t really recall.

And somehow, against all probability, here this yarn is again. Since I have owned this ball of yarn, I have – moved out of my parents home, moved repeatedly as a college student, had my apartment building burn down around my ears, spent four months living in a flophouse in Chicago, spent another four months homeless and hitch-hiking around the country with truckers, gotten resettled and moved another three times, gotten married, had a baby, moved twice more, and finally learned to knit.

And through all of this, this lone ball of purple fuzziness has been lurking in my belongings, waiting until this exact moment to be spied by my keen eyed child. How it survived intact and unmarred is beyond my ability to imagine.

I suppose I’ll have to make another hat of it. There certainly isn’t enough for a vest.

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