Sisterhood, On the Needles

AS I’VE MENTIONED before, my mother is a major needleworker: sewing, knitting, quilting, embroidery. Some of her skills came my way, but most did not. When I stopped working full time a few years ago to stay home with the River, who was then almost 2, I started knitting like a lunatic, making baby sweaters and blankets galore. Desperate to feel a different kind of productive after leaving a successful and demanding career, I trolled eBay for vintage knitting needles and patterns, and even (in yet another triumph of hope over experience) bought myself a sewing machine (on which, five years later, I have yet to sew a stitch).

I did not, however, pick up a hoop and floss, the key tools of the needlework I knew and loved best as a girl. Maybe I was inspired  by history, by the finely worked samplers made by little 18th-century girls I saw in books. Maybe it was the closest I could come to my mother’s incredible skill and productivity. But I remember spending hours working in both cross stitch and crewel, perusing the racks of brightly colored embroidery floss at the dime store, begging my mother for new patterns before I’d managed to complete the old. (That tendency toward unfinished projects still, sadly, plagues.)

I grew up, and stopped embroidering; in high school, as I’ve already written here, I took up knitting and have pursued that hobby intermittently ever since. Pretty much any time I’ve got my needles in hand, the Rock will ask for a turn. She’s just turned 4, and though her fine motor skills are excellent, she definitely cannot knit. She twists the yarn here on there on the needles, gets frustrated (with me–clearly it’s MY fault the stitches won’t magically hang together) and usually pitches a fit so that NEITHER of us can knit.

Given this history, I’m not sure why last week I decided that a fun project for us would be to embroider our family members’ initials on some dinner napkins. This is a project I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, ever since I gave up paper napkins, for good, in the interest of saving planet Earth and honoring my longstanding crush on Al Gore. Now, we all use cloth napkins, at every meal. The result, though, is lots of napkins to wash, and napkins sent to the wash when their condition is, in fact, still pretty pristine. I thought if we could identify our OWN napkin, we might be encouraged to use it at more than one sitting, and wash it when it needed it, instead of every day.

I dug out the only embroidery supplies I still have, a kit I bought a couple of years ago (from the wonderful, uber-cool Jenny Hart, of Sublime Stitching) and explained the project to the Rock. “What color is mine going to be?” she asked, just as I pulled the floss out of the package. “Oh. Pink.” Problem solved. We printed out her first initial, in the font she chose (Courier, if you’re wondering–she is the child of two writers, after all) and I used carbon paper and a pencil to transfer it onto a clean-ish dinner napkin. I used a simple back stitch to make the letter’s outline, and then showed her how to do a satin stitch back and forth within the outline to fill in.

We started this little project at 11 a.m., and by 4 p.m. (with an interlude in the car to pick up her brother at school) we had five napkins done. But productivity isn’t really the point. The point is–she loved it. She sat in the armchair in my office, head bowed, looking up only to ask for better lighting so she could see her stitches. She took the hoop and needle with her in the car so that we could finish Daddy’s napkin before he got home from work.

Her intensity made me wonder about the needleworking little girls of the past. Granted, many girls weren’t educated formally in those days, and they had to do…something. And this work is both productive and beautiful. But I was struck by how quickly my daughter was able to focus on, and really enjoy, this simple task that connects her to generations of women. What is it about handwork that appeals to us, soothes us, allows us to shut out the distractions of the surrounding, chaotic world?

Whatever it is, my dinner table is grateful. And my mother, when she returned home in the afternoon, was amazed to see what we’d created. “I didn’t know you could do that,” she said to me. “I learned it from you,” was the only possible response. In our home, it seems, the sisterhood of needlework has made it to a third generation.

Are you a needleworker or crafter? If so, you should check out the TSP group over on Ravelry. We’re about to begin (some of us have already started!) our second knitalong project, a gorgeous lightweight shawl perfect as a summer wrap. Won’t you join us?

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