Wool Gathering

There are times, such as the times I live in now, that I’m utterly grateful for knitting. Knitting passes the minutes/hours spent in waiting rooms. It gives me something to think about (other than the obvious), while freeing me up to engage in conversation with my friends and/or relatives who shares my same fate. And in the end I have a garment—something woolly to keep me warm when the winter winds howl.



The bad and the good about knitting is it also encourages strangers to strike up a conversation, sharing their own memories about their knitting present, or knitting in the distant past. (And no, there is no way I’m old enough to remember “Bundles for Britain” that you learned to knit for when you were 9. Thank you.)

I think for these strangers that our knitting, my mother’s and mine, is a way to momentarily forget about why they are there, and their own fears about the precipice that they are standing on. The gift of that forgetting is a wonderful thing.

Traveling with an iPod and ear buds can be a wonderful thing, too.