rescued yarn and other yarns

This is the house I grew up in, leaning even more to the right than it used to. The yard is grown over and the house is dying on the inside as well as the outside - kind of like all of us. It remains a part of me and I can't help but return to it often in my memories and in my dreams.

Every time I visit my mom, I walk across the street from where she currently lives and let myself in to the dark, musty and quiet house, filled with memories of my childhood, mostly good but some tainted by my father's alcoholism and my mother's silent suffering because of it. There's still a dent in the kitchen wall by the back door where my mom threw a coffee pot at him one night. The upper cabinets over the sink are still without doors and I remember my mom washing dishes there and my dad accidentally shooting her in the ear with a BB gun. I go over to the old place and I sift through the junk left behind hoping to find things I want to keep. I have already taken all the dolls from my childhood and they sit on the back of my mom's couch. I have found Christmas presents I sent over the years, unwrapped but never used, and pictures still in envelopes that I have sent of my kids throughout the years. It makes me a little sad but also helps me see that things really aren't important as relationships are. I think it is weird how people in small towns just up and move and leave all of their junk behind for others to sift through.

During the last two visits and siftings, I found a lot of old yarn that was at one time new and waiting to be knitted into slippers or socks or mittens or chooks ("chooks" are like stocking caps, which are notorious for "panking" your hair - both of these words were acceptable terms when I was growing up but I have not heard them since). Some of the yarn was chewed into a million little pieces by some sort of critter that I have never seen on my forages of the place - squirrels or mice maybe? Some still had the price tag on it and it was ridiculously cheap back then. I have collected three bags of various colors and amounts. I have also found some old knitting needles and patterns too. All of this reminded me of the cold winter nights when my mom would sit around during blizzards and knit socks, sweaters, and mittens, while watching the Twilight zone or the Beverly Hillbillies. I can hear the clanking of those aluminum knitting needles and I find it comforting to use them now.

Some of the yarn was already halfway knitted into something - like the Chook, which I am working on finishing and a blanket, which I did finish and is now on my bed. I knit my mom a prayer shawl with many different colors of her yarn. The one church meeting I attend is a group of women who sit around and knit these shawls and give them to people who have been struggling with a loss or an illness. I have knit three so far but only one went to someone at my church. The other one went to my father in law in a nursing home. The one knitted with rescued yarn went to my mom on her 80th birthday. She remembered knitting orange hunting socks for my dad and named off several other things with the various colors. My sister wants one too so maybe for her next birthday. I am knitting some things for my kids for Christmas now. It seems that this rescued yarn should stay in the family.

There is something gratifying about taking the yarn out of the house where it sat undisturbed for many years even when my mom and dad still lived there. I think my mom became depressed because of the booze she drank at that time and because all of her friends were dying. She just quit knitting and left so many project unfinished. It makes me feel good to create a purpose for it and give it new life. It's a weird sense of satisfaction. Not much in that old house is worth much else but there are so many memories. And I am giving purpose to something left behind.