Knitting in the Blood

But first, this is how much sock there was pre-stupidbowl:

And this is how much knitting happens from 30-minutes of pre-game show on through to the end of the crazy upset last night:

Lest you think it’s not that much, consider that there are two socks on the one needle. This is the thank-Ravelry-for-pattern-searches Nutkin pattern from Knitzi. I am totally in love. This may become a Cara-like obsession, mit der picot edge, for socks for me.

(a slightly amusing aside: I had my pretty blogroll all set up over there for a while, but had added a few new reads since I moved on over to WordPress. So I went to update it? And my blogroll is now too big for WordPress. How ‘ya like THEM apples? So I’ll have to find a new way to link it so you can see how many of you I really do read! )

The yarn (I have since discovered since uploading the image to Flickr) is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the “Java” colorway. I knew I’d gotten it for husband socks, and now I remember why I knew he HAD to have it. He’s a bit of a coffee fanatic. But I love how the subtle colors are still so lovely:

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this before or not, but my great-grandmother had a yarn shop way back when called Celeste’s. (If anybody in PA has a photo of the place, I would be forever grateful, but I don’t even know for sure where in PA it was. I think Coatesville?) So my great-grandmother taught knitting, had a yarn shop, etcetera, and then my Nana learned from her, and SHE taught knitting. This card comes from among a box of my grandmother’s papers, which include a bunch of really fantastic things I’ll show you over the next little while — lots of Singer 1950′s sewing stuff, newspaper columns pasted onto my Granddad’s Defense Intelligence School agendas, that sort of thing — but I loved this so much because of the connection it helps me feel to the women in my family:

I believe this to be circa 1956-’58 or thereabouts.

And a closeup of the text:

The Wednesday Morning Knitting Class. I am relatively certain this was a class Nana taught while my Granddad was stationed in Athens, Georgia, but it may have been in Texas, also. This same box holds a number of sewing paraphenalia from a home making school (!!) in Georgia, so I feel fairly confident that this card comes from that time frame.

I have a couple of sweaters left over from my mother and Nana, and I think my dad still has a sweater that Nana knit him way back when. This is just another link that makes me feel connected to the women of my family in those wonderful ~click!~ moments that make you say, “So THAT’S where I get that from!”