I define myself as a knitter, a honed skill which I loosely claim as my craft. Occasionally, I also crochet, and I must confess it pleases me to honestly say I taught myself how to do it.
Last week, I happened upon a crochet dishcloth pattern that looked sort of easy and kind of fun, so over the holiday weekend, I tried it. It amazes me how quickly crocheting works up a dishcloth compared to knitting one. I can't quite say which technique creates the superior cloth, but it was gratifying to whip up a few. Ironically, Ted Kooser's Sunday column featured a poem about crocheting. I can knit without looking, even stitching in the dark; however, my hands cannot integrate the feel of yarn and hook to crochet with the same blind intuition the poet so beautifully describes...
Crochet
Even after darkness closed her eyes
my mother could crochet.
Her hands would walk the rows of wool
turning, bending, to a woolen music.
The dye lots were registered in memory:
appleskin, chocolate, porcelain pan,
the stitches remembered like faded rhymes:
pineapple, sunflower, window pane, shell.
Tied to our lives those past years
by merely a soft colored yarn,
she’d sit for hours, her dark lips
moving as if reciting prayers,
coaching the sighted hands.
by Jan Mordenski
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