Knitting

I have a Longaberger cake basket sitting on the floor next to the loveseat where I always sit. It's full of Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn in various colors. Whenever I feel the urge, I reach into the basket and pull out my needles and knit a row or two on my newest dish cloth. I love the pattern and have knit dozens of them since I discovered it on the Homespun Living blog (link to main blog on sidebar). Here's a picture of my latest one in progress.


I learned to knit when I was about nine years old. And once again, it was my dad who taught me! I remember sitting in the doorway of the back door between dad's legs, our legs dangling down to the ground because we had no steps yet, as he showed me how.

A few words about my dad. When I was growing up, I had two heroes--my dad and John Wayne, and they were both bigger than life. :-) My dad had been a paratrooper in WWII in the 101st Airborne, the division featured in the Band of Brothers book and mini series. He jumped at D-Day and the invasion of Holland, and was wounded in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. He was one of the original smokejumpers out of Missoula, Montana after the war. He was gruff and tough although he has mellowed through the years. He learned to knit from the grandmother who raised him after his father was killed in a car accident when dad was fifteen months old. (His twenty-three-year-old mother had two older children, and held down two, sometimes three jobs to survive, so relied on both sets of grandparents to help her with the children.)

I guess I was and still am, the proverbial "daddy's girl." As a matter of fact, the father's day card I sent him last year said just that on the front and on the inside it said, "and proud of it!" Mom said dad loved it.

Here's a picture of me, my Bruder Bear, and Dad taken last May just after Dad's eighty-sixth birthday.
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