I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving this past Thursday. We gathered with family to enjoy the traditional fare that goes with the holiday. And when I’m done typing up this newsletter, I’m going to head to the kitchen for a slice of pumpkin pie and another cup of coffee. 

 

 

Other than a quick trip to a local yarn shop, I avoided the madness that is Black Friday. I’ve never understood the appeal of getting up before the sun to stand in lines for deals on stuff that will be outgrown or out of date within a year or two. 

 

I had a friend convince me to go with her once. Her family loved Black Friday; it was almost like a bonus holiday to them. I admit I had fun, but that had more to do with the company and our peppermint hot cocoa and silly matching hats, not necessarily the amazing bargains. 

 

But getting back to the quick trip to the local yarn shop, my sweetie’s mother and I went with handmade Christmas gifts in mind. I was looking specifically for yarn to knit my sweetheart some socks and a pair of flip-top mittens for Christmas. 

 

As I stood there choosing the perfect color and weight for each, I got thinking about my grandmothers and the mittens they made for my cousins and me when we were kids. 

As we pass the next few weeks of the holiday season, I thought it might be fun to share some wintertime memories with all of you.

 

 

My Gigi is the crocheter, and she had a crocheted mitten pattern that she used every year. She could start a pair of mittens after super and have them finished by the time my mom packed us up to head home. She was that fast. I would watch her rocking in her rocking chair with her crochet hook flashing in the glow of the gas lamps. 

 

 

Now, like most young children, I had a penchant for losing mittens. I’d drop one on the walk home from school or lose one on the playground. 

 

 

Gigi got wise to my absent-minded ways and deployed the ol’ mittens on a string trick. Many of you are nodding your head right now because you know what I’m talking about.

 

She would crochet a long chain of yarn connecting one mitten to the other; then, she would slip one mitten into one sleeve of my jacket and the other into the other sleeve of my jacket. 

 

 

But like most kids, I rarely put my mittens on. Why would I want to wear mittens when I could hold onto the strings and twirl them around in great circles. I would spin my mittens as if they were some fuzzy martial arts weapon.

 

 

Of course, it didn’t take long before all of my amazing karate moves had the yarn stretched out, and so, by the end of December, my mittens would be dragging in the snow and slush behind me a good foot or so.

 

With a sigh of exasperation (a sound I’m all too familiar now that I’m a mother myself), my mom would cut the strings off of my mittens, and I’d lose one within a week. 

 

It was never both of them; it was always one. 

 

 

Grandma B. was a knitter, and she taught me to knit when I was seven years old. Every Christmas, Grandma Besemer would make mittens for all of her grandkids and great-grandkids.

 

This was no small feat. We’re a big clan. Grandma had six kids, and between them, there were a dozen grandkids and even more great-grandkids. 

 

 

I got thinking about my Grandma B. the other day and how many mittens she made in her lifetime. She was always knitting. No matter what time of year it was, Grandma had her needles in her hands. 

I remember the stacks and stacks of handknit mittens she made to donate to the annual Christmas bizarre at her church. (This was along with all the baby and children’s sweaters too.)

 

 

I realized the other day how many hundreds of pairs of mittens my grandmother knit over the years, not just for her family but also for her community, and I’m utterly amazed.

 

She had to have knit mittens into the thousands. I wonder how many kids from my little hometown had a pair of her mittens growing up? 

 

 

Yet, as I sit in my own living room, knitting mittens for my children, which I know will get lost on the bus as well or dropped on the playground or in a parking lot, I keep knitting anyway as my grandmother did; the act of knitting as much a gift as the mittens themselves.