Knit Two Together

It has been much too long since I last visited with my mom and knitted with her so on Saturday, the kids and I headed down to the city and popped in for some dim sum (in our opinion, the perfect meal) and an afternoon of knitting together.

As you may recall, my sister showed our mother Project: Stash and she's been a regular reader ever since.  One of the posts that she found especially intriguing was the one about the fringe with bobbles that is a part of the Astrid shawl.  My mother doesn't read patterns but can typically work out a stitch/design just by looking at the FO or even a photograph but this one stumped her and she asked me to teach her how to do it. Me ... teach her? How could I refuse?

Language can be a bit of a barrier between us -- she still mainly speaks Cantonese and I have lost a lot of my ability at the dialect but as any of you know who have knitted with someone who speaks a different language, the vocabulary for knitting is universal. Counting is easy (I still can count in Cantonese) so that wasn't a problem. And even translating knit, purl, ssk, and bind off eventually got easier as the afternoon progressed.

Like me, mom was delighted when she made her first bobble and watched how the fringe developed.  And like me, she agreed that knitting can sometimes feel like magic.

She has so much still to teach me and we talked about the various designs she's made that she can't write down but can only show me. So, I may not have another opportunity to teach her something about knitting but it sure was nice to have done so at least once!