Elizabeth Taylor, 1932 - 2011

I started knitting class last night and I fully intended this post to be about how much fun I had. Clearly, I am going to love this knitting thing. I learned that even I can be taught how to do purl stitch, rib stitch, seed stitch and one other stitch whose name escapes me (but I can show you how to do it). I was glad that I had reminded myself how to cast on by watching YouTube all weekend, because we really did launch right into knitting.

I wanted to write a little bit about how disappointed I was to find that there were no little old ladies in my knitting class. Well, except for me. Our instructor was in her early twenties, and none of the other three students looked like they had cracked thirty, yet. They were all lovely, don't get me wrong. It's just that I had this vision of sitting around with older, grandmotherly women. Which is kind of silly, since most older women already know how to knit. I had a hot flash while we were learning about measuring "gauge" in our knitting. I didn't quite understand, and I don't think that it was just the heightened body temperature that stood in my way.

So those were some of the things that I was going to write about, but honestly, my heart just isn't into penning about knitting.

I woke up to the news that Elizabeth Taylor has passed away. First Born just called me to make sure that I had heard. As she said "I knew you would care, Mom." I think it's very sweet that she knows that about me. I know that my daughters don't know much about Elizabeth Taylor, but they know that my mother and I (and maybe my Baby Sister?) thought a lot of her. It was less than a month ago that I blogged about missing seeing Elizabeth Taylor at the Oscars.

I grew up knowing that Elizabeth and my Mom were born in the same year. I think they were both beautiful, dark-haired women with piecingly bright eyes  - Mom's blue and Elizabeth's violet. Mom used to talk about watching the young Elizabeth in her early films (National Velvet was her favourite as a young girl) and absolutely loving her. Being of the same age, she once joked, she felt they had some things in common, give or take six or seven husbands and a billion dollars. Her adoration turned to admiration when Elizabeth Taylor started fundraising for AIDS in support of one of my Mom's other favourite movie stars, Rock Hudson.

Elizabeth Taylor was one of the last remaining Hollywood Movie Stars. I guess I'm getting to that age where I will start to see the "passing of an era" on a regular basis. I suppose I'm part of an era where young women are picking up knitting needles more and more, and even teaching a few of us older ones how to use them. Guess I'm grateful that I'm here, knitting and watching eras pass. As a cancer survivor, I have no right to bitch about getting older.

Speaking of eras ending, I'm going to miss Larry King tonight, he would have done a great show talking to people who knew and loved Elizabeth Taylor. Larry is on CNN right now, being interviewed about the star's passing. Larry's with me on this one, Elizabeth was special. As he just said, "we'll never replace her."

I don't mean to be so dependent upon YouTube these days, but the late Paul Newman's tribute to Elizabeth Taylor really says a lot. Rest in Peace, Elizabeth.

To Knit or Knot to Knit

I decided today that I should take up knitting. Not sure why. I learned to knit many years ago, so I know the fundamentals. It must be like riding a bike, right? I get the sense (largely from reading blogs, actually) that knitting can be very relaxing. Which could be of great benefit to somebody in my current state.

I may have a romanticized vision of knitting. There is a wonderful wool shop in our little city. It is 105 years old, and sells the most beautifully-coloured yarn I've ever seen. I wander through it because I love colour, I haven't in the past thought about buying needles and creating something. The shop does offer lessons, a Friday night social/knitting group, and a charity knitting circle. It sounds like something out of a novel about knitting, of which there certainly are plenty, these days. Maybe I think I want to be a knitter, but really, all I want is to be a character in a knitting novel? I'm not sure.

My grandmother taught me how to knit and crochet when I was about ten. (This was the same grandmother who, two years earlier, declared in front of a room full of people that I got homelier every year.) I don't have a very clear memory of the knitting lessons, but I think that I enjoyed the learning, and suspect that it was nice for me to spend that type of quiet time with my "Nannie." I didn't knit anything to completion at the time, I just learned the mechanics, and then put the needles down and went back to Nancy Drew.

I didn't pick up knitting needles again until I was twenty, and pregnant. My claim to knitting fame to this day is a tiny, multi-coloured (pale pastels) baby sweater. With freakishly long arms. The sweater itself is tucked into First Born's memory box. Thinking about it now, I would love to dig it out and just gaze at it again. I still marvel that I made it. As I recall, my Mom had to help me sew the pieces together, and I am pretty sure I let her put the buttons on too. But I knit each and every piece of it, lovingly, and with great care.

The irony only occurs to me now, going on thirty years later, that I completed the one knitting project of my life at the same time that the woman who taught me how to knit, was completing her time on earth. Nannie was 87 when she died, just six weeks after First Born appeared. Nannie met First Born only once. As my Mom liked to tell the story, we brought First Born to the nursing home on one of Nannie's seemingly better days. Nannie had dementia, but could be lucid at times. We thought she was having a particularly good day, that day. As she cradled First Born in her arms Nannie certainly seemed happy as she stroked First Born's cheek, and cooed baby noises to her in her beautiful, lilting Dublin brogue. After a few moments, a look of concern came over her face, and she looked straight up into my mother's eyes, and without missing a beat said, "Oh my, Dorothy, she's lovely. But I think this one ought to be your last." We laughed for days, well - for years, about Nannie thinking my baby was Mom's.

My mother also knit, and I would imagine that Nannie taught her how, just as she taught me. Funny, I've never thought that thought until now, it is pleasant to think it. In addition to knitting baby booties and sweaters (what ever happened to baby booties, anyway), every winter Mom knit mittens for the homeless, and in the last few years of her life, like so many other women it seemed, she took up knitting cotton dishcloths. They were all the rage in 90s. When Mom died, I inherited a handful of her newly knitted, never used, cloths. They too are tucked away, in yet another box. I haven't ever had the heart to use them. I'll pass them along to my girls, at some point, along with the beautiful baby sweaters that Mom knit for them. Sweaters, I should say, with arms knitted in perfect proportion.

So here's what I know. I think I want to knit. I don't know why that desire has come to me at this point in my life, this moment in my recovery. But I'm going to go for it, and I'll just take things...one stitch at a time.