Slip knots

Photo/Image credits:  Slip knot: http://www.smart-knit-crocheting.com/images/Chain.jpg

I started crocheting just over 20 years ago, when I was a pre-teen or early teenager.  My maternal grandmother was always fiddling with yarn and a little metal hook, making afghans or dish clothes or doilies.  One winter, she had made each family member a little crocheted angel, starched into form, to hang on the Christmas tree.  I'm not sure how those first lessons went, but I have been 'hooking' along, more or less, ever since.

She started my lessons with dish clothes, since they were rather simple and could be finished quickly.  I remember using soft cotton yarn with fruity, variegated colors. I liked watching how the colors would meld and blend and make their own patterns with in cloth.  My early pieces, I'm sure, were no where near perfect, but they were passable.  My mother faithfully used the dish clothes at the kitchen sink and I continued to make more, working on tension (I held the threads far too tight) and gauging (still an issue), until I had enough that were better to gift my aunts and grandmothers with their own sets of dish clothes the following holiday season.  After tiring of the dish clothes, I jumped to thread crochet - doilies, my own set of starched angels, and dresses for 11.5 inch dolls.  One of the doll dresses even won a grand champion ribbon at the county fair.

My favorite pattern of the dish cloths produced a cloth that was thick and knubby - great for really scrubbing pots and pans.  It was also thick enough to set hot plates on at dinner time.  It was full of front and back post double crochets (US).  I made that particular pattern so often that it was soon memorized.

Fast forward a number of years, during which I had to set down the hooks for a long time while dealing with Carpal Tunnel in both hands, college, grad school, teaching and starting a family, I have recently rediscovered my love of crochet.  I finished my graduate studies at the end of 2012.  I picked up my unfinished projects at New Years.  In three months, I have made an afghan, a shawl, a cowl-hood-scarf thing, and two toddler sweaters and hats.  I will likely start the third sweater/hat set soon (my family and friends are currently undergoing a bit of a baby boom! Four children under the age of 2, and three of them girls!).

One thing that makes me smile each time I start a new project is making the slip knot.  Why?  Is it because the knot is the start of a new project, a new adventure?  Possibly.  The feeling of being able to create something? Maybe.  Is it the little song that plays in my head that my grandmother taught me to remember how to make a slip knot?  Most definitely.

Up and around and down the other side, the ribbon circles the thumb.
The hook comes in, under the mark, and brings the ribbon back through.

Does it rhyme?  No, not really.  But it was easy to remember.  She always taught me to hold the tail of my thread with my fingers against my palm, take the thread around my thumb, and lay it down the back of my hand.  This made an "X" in the thread between my thumb and my first finger.  The hook went under the X, caught the thread on the back of my hand, and I would pull the hook back through.  I looked at different methods of how people start their slip knots and tried several of them when I started the recent round of projects.  Although they all produce the same result, Grandma's way just seemed more fun.  And whimsical.

Blessings!