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By
Kerrie Rycroft
Knitting
used to be my hobby. Any spare minute I had in the
day would be spent, needles in hand clicking away.
Knitting was the way I relaxed after a hard day at
the office. I would sit on the sofa, 2-year-old daughter
on the floor in front of me playing with her toys,
boyfriend on the sofa next to me watching TV, and
knit knit knit for as long as I could before something
(or someone) demanded my attention.
Don't
get me wrong, I still knit. But now it is a
hobby rather than my hobby. A small distinction,
but an important.
 A
few weeks ago, this changed. I looked up from the
Point 5 jumper that I was making to see a small pair
of eyes focused on me. "I me help mummy knitting"
she said. At first she was happy to hold the ball
of wool while
I
knitted. This lasted for about 5 minutes before she
discovered that dropping the wool made it bounce.
Suddenly I was knitting with the amazing, bouncing
ball of wool. Distracting? Annoying? No, not really.
It's amazing what you can ignore when you need to.
Still I knitted; still I felt it was my hobby.
After
a few nights of bouncing knitting she progressed to
wrapping the wool around her hands and feet and pretending
that she was being knitted. "Careful, mummy. Don't
knitting me." This was slightly more of a distraction
as I actually had to stop, unravel the wool, reassure
her that I wasn't going to "knitting" her and start
again. Still I was able to knit. To some degree, it
was still my hobby.
Then
she wanted to hold the needles while I knitted.
Fortunately
most of my recent projects have involved huge plastic
15mm chunky needles which are slightly safer for a
child to play with than tiny 3mm metal needles.
A
few evenings were spent with her sitting on my lap,
clutching the needles while I knitted. She shouted,
"look, daddy, look! I me knitting." Somehow, I was
still knitting, albeit at a vastly reduced speed and
with my arms at a very strange angle to allow for
the small person sitting on my knee. It was beginning
to become a shared hobby.
The
day that she took the needles out of my hands and
began sticking them randomly into the ball of wool
declaring, "I me knitting on my own now," I gave up
all pretence that I had a hobby that was simply mine
to enjoy.
Since
then I've accepted the fact that I can no longer knit
in her presence without providing her with a ball
of wool, a pair of large needles and simultaneously
working on my project and ensuring that she doesn't
cause too much damage. She is pretty good at not stabbing
herself (or anyone else) and only once has she unravelled
a whole ball of wool without me noticing. Usually
she will "knit" nicely for about 10-15 minutes, pushing
the needles into the wool and pulling them back out
again, wrapping them all up together until she finally
announces "I me finished knitting now. Look what I
me made." Well done, darling, it's a tangled-up work
of art!
Oh,
by the way, my boyfriend's reaction to having two
girls knitting in the house is to roll his eyes back
in his head and mumble about how he needs a son. Something
about football and leaving us to it? I personally
can't wait for the day that she is old enough to learn
how to actually knit. I love the idea of being able
to pass on my knowledge to her.
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Kerrie
lives in the UK and works full time so that she can
afford to keep herself in wool.