It is quite possible that you are not the only one in your immediate family, who knits or crochets. Perhaps a mother who likes to click the needles. Or maybe a grandmother who regularly made you a sweater when you were little. In this blog I want to share a bit of my personal knitting history with you.
My grandmother was a good knitter. Unfortunately I haven’t experienced this first hand, because she died very young, only a couple of weeks after I was born. All these years my mother had been saving a big pile of sweaters made by my grandmother. Then, about 35 years later my mom visited me and brought along all these sweaters with the question if I would like some. The rest she would finally let go.
One of the sweaters really does suit me, is very much my style and one I have since worn every winter. That’s the sweater you see pictured above. One of the other sweaters was not wearable for me, but so beautifully made that I could not find it in my heart to throw it out. A gorgeous fair isle sweater made ​in several shades of blue.
And suddenly I had the wonderful idea to use this sweater to make something for my mother, so she would still have a tangible reminder of her mother’s knitting. My mother did keep these sweaters for all these years for a reason after all. My thoughts went out to making cushions, with the front of each cushion consisting of a panel of this sweater.
In preparation I had undone all the seams and felted the sweater panels. However, once it came down to cutting the cushion pieces and sewing them I got cold feet… I have absolutely no experience with sewing and was terrified to ruin this irreplaceable piece of felt. After some thinking I put a note about it with a plea for help in the”DutchKarma Swap Group” on Ravelry. A very sweet lady came to my rescue and transformed my grandmother’s sweater into these lovely pillow covers:
And my mother? She did not expect this gift at all and was extremely happy with this piece of our shared knitting history!
