COVID hit and stress knitters just kept on knitting.
In fact, proselytizing knitters have been positively giddy -- I can't tell you how many yarn web videoconferences I have conducted -- yes -- Zoom Yarn Interventions are a thing but I am more into the compassionate enabling indoctrination of newbie knitters in their new found yarn addiction, thank you very much.
Not surprisingly, I managed to bust my stash down to nothing by around May of last year.
At first, it was shawls (lockdown began in March, after all). Then socks. Lots and lots of socks.
Then, when Spring rolled around, I pulled out my 20 year old beater-bike and said... a ha!
Readers, I present to you boredom in April:
To be honest... it got a lot more elaborate. Indeed, ridiculously so. I had naively believed that a yarn-bombed bicyclette would make me more visible to horribly distracted drivers. But no. Despite the obvious chaloshesness of my colour choices... a near miss at an intersection garnered a surprising 'Sorry, I didn't see you' ... And so... I crocheted a few more hideous flowers, and bombed 2 bike-baskets, to boot. Don't you dare tell me you cannot see me. I have purposely made my ride a victim of its own personal yarn plague. Also, I should add, no one would want to steal this fibre-besieged vehicle... so... ha .. yarn is now a security system as well, my friends.
Oh... and because I had little iddy biddy bits of odds and sods I knit this sweater. 100% mercerized cotton. If you've read Debbie Stoller's Bitch n Stitch Nation, you'll recognize the pattern.... though clearly I didn't follow the 'recipe' verbatim. If you've knit wih me, you'll know, it's not that I have the knitting IQ of a turnip, I am driven to deviate from the mandated pattern. Hence my fibre name. Yeah. That's where it came from (thanks to my knit comrades Guerrilla Knitter and Woolly Mammoth).
Then it was May... more socks. Birthday socks.... Sorry-you-had-to-postpone-you-wedding socks.... Yes, there are two special people, close to my heart, south of the border who had to postpone their Brit Ahuvim until next year. May they walk through 5781 in comfort and health... These are their Social Justice Knitted Sox:
Featuring Feisty Fibres Yarn: 'Rockin Sox' in 'Foolish Games' & 'So Jelly'; Pattern by Mercè Janer Olives: Chasing Snakes on Knitty.com SHOMRIM REGEL! CHAZAK V'AMATZ!
Then sweet 16 socks.. I honestly cannot remember which pattern I used for A's sweet sixteen socks, but am certain it can be found in either knitty.com's pattern library or was in a recent edition of Interweave Knitting. The yarn is from Riverside Yarn Studio, a small independent company based in rural Quebec.
And then more birthday socks.... milestone socks.... a few more birthday socks....
...................
But in November, things changed.
Dramatically.
Mum's health declined.
The pandemic raged... and things felt different.
Dark.
Surreal.
A couple of months after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, a number of RBG-inspired pullovers started popping up in my social media feed. Something resonated, and I knew I needed to make one for my brilliant and amazing legal-eagle cousin south of the 49th parallel, whom I adore. My cuzzie is an aficionado of all things RBG: how could I not? Her daughter provided the proper sizing (and received a pair of ... wait for it ... handknit socks in thanks). And slowly but surely the I DISSENT pullover emerged (Pattern designed by Andrea Rangel, and knit in fingering weight superwash wool - Heritage Sock Yarn, Cascade).
Cuzzie-dearest received the sweater in time to wear it on January 20 (pictured below):
This pullover means so much to me.
First, obviously, because I cherish the person for whom it was knit.
But, moreover it is because it was commenced when I first began taking care of mum... how pleased she was when I shared with her for whom it was being knit... and, because it was the last project my mother ever saw me working on. I finished the sweater while sitting shiva for mum.
RBG z"l once said: My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. To say this remark has resonated with me, is an understatement. Mum was fiercely independent. She had a distinct strength of character, was kind, but more than anything Mum was unwavering clear in her goals; my mother knew her mind, and she made sure you knew it too! Hers was a gift of extreme aptitude and reason, gilded with unpretentious, determined intellect. The woman had moxie! As did RBG. As does my wonderfully, spectacularly brilliant cousin for whom this labour of love was created.
So? Nu? What now?
Well, it's January and the mercury has dropped into a locked-down, quarantined wintery abyss.
So, naturally, I knit my daughter some eco summer accessories, of course. A woman can dream, can't she?
But they're already off the needles and blocked. And now?
SOCKS, of course.
As if there was any doubt.
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