Here it is, the tale I promised. [Ignore apparent product placement--that was just the first DVD I grabbed off the shelf for proportion.]
I was born in early 1961, two weeks late. My mother had arranged for her mother, my Grandma Monaghan, to come down for two weeks to help out when I was a newborn and my older brother not quite two. Grandma took the time off work and arrived around the first of the year.
Darned if I DIDN'T. So Mom sat around with her mom and Pete, waiting. [I have done this myself, with my third baby, while my mother-in-law and I entertained the troops and she asked me every few hours, "Do you feel anything yet?" To say that it was not fun is mincing words. And if I had told her what I was feeling, I think I would not have scored points with the MIL. ;^)]
Anyway, my grandmother's vacation time coming to an end, I finally arrove, and on the day I came home from the hospital, I had a little pink sweater and these mittens, Mom says, which Grandma had knitted for me. How she knew I would be a girl, I do not know! Why the mittens were toddler size, I also don't know, but I can tell you they really aren't big at all, just big for a newborn. I'm also guessing that they were on my little fists to keep me from trying to suck my thumb. :^)
I found this little lost mitten the other day in some mementos I'd stashed away, and really scrutinized the knitting this time. It's important to note that I have absolutely no faith in my skills to knit a mitten, let alone one that is only a few inches long! But the exquisiteness of the stitching, the perfect attachment of the thumb to the main body, and the woven in end in the cuff ribbing--well, I knew my grandma knitted kick-ass sweaters, but this is ART. I can't imagine the needles were anything bigger than size 1, and could even have been zeroes. It's wool of course (Grandma lived in Maine, and wool could be a matter of life and death I'd imagine.) I think my grandmother was a master knitter and then some. (So is Mom for that matter--maybe it will turn out to be genetic--hope,hope,hope!)
When I asked Mom what happened to the other mitten (I was praying I hadn't lost it myself--I've had these mementos for years), she said, True Knitter that she is, "I don't know where it is. Perhaps lost in the archival filing system I have." 8^)
Happy knitting!
~Stacie
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