My First

Nine years ago this month I started knitting my first project.  On a winter vacation to the beach with my mom, her friend and my one-year-old daughter, I picked up a knitting magazine at the grocery store for something to thumb through during downtime.  Before the week was out, I had scouted out the local yarn shop and bought a pattern, needles and enough yarn to knit my daughter a simple cardigan.

That's right, I don't start at the beginning with scarfs or dishcloths, I jump right in to sweaters. 

Yarn was not entirely foreign to me.  I had been crocheting since I was 6 years old, but hadn't held knitting needles in my hands since about that same age.  With the help of the stitch guide in the magazine and whatever lingering muscle memory I still had from my grandmother's knitting lesson, I figured it out.

I intentionally made the sweater too big.  I had no idea how long it would take me to finish this project, or if I ever would.  I think it only ended up taking a few months, during which time I found a local knitters group and made new knitter friends in the community.

We dragged this sweater everywhere.  When my daughter couldn't find her security blanket, she snuggled her sweater.  She wore it with the sleeves rolled up and the hem to her knees when she was 2 years old.  She wore it with the sleeves too short and the buttons pulling when she was 5 years old. 

We almost left it behind at the hospital when I waddled my 8 month pregnant belly all the way to the maternity ward, with 2 year old daughter in tow, to register for the delivery of my second child.  Of course I didn't notice it was missing until waddling all the way back out to the car in the rain.   

Amazingly, it seems we only captured this sweater in action on my daughter once.  Such is life.  You don't think to capture the everyday things in pictures until they stop being everyday things, and those things become the most precious.