Hooked

I think I was born with a needle in my hand. Not literally of course. I didn’t even have fingernails at that moment. When my mother told me this, as a young child, I cried. At the time I did not question the validity of my hands. But could it have been an innate fear of a fatal flaw? Time has proven that my hands are quite competent, even a sacred tool. And it is upon this that I open the drawer to a legacy.

Handwork is literally in my blood. If I can't make it, I am compelled to gather. My hands are restless, like the rest of me. My hyper energy, a sign of the forces to explore and make things I was born with.

So too, this week when I discovered instructions for free-form crochet. Mirjam Textiles offers a series of what she calls 'Textile Stories' and because I follow her on IG, I came across Episode 11, where she demonstrates quite deftly, how to include crochet into the embroidery vernacular.

As I reacquainted my fingers with the traditional turns of the needle, I thought about my grandmother, who lived with our family for many years. She did not teach me to crochet. She was a stern elder with little patience for our interruptions. At the time I knew little of her 13 children or her life of hardship and loss.

Still, she filled our lives with beauty from the quiet of her soul.

Still, I attribute my love of hand making to her - an inheritance of skills embedded in my chromosomes and the deep passion that rests in the whisper of the needle.