Who doesn’t love sleepovers at Nana’s house?

So many good memories at Nana’s house. Baking cookies, gardening, birdwatching, sleeping in, sledding down the hill into the field, hanging with the cousins, telling Nana to turn down the radio; oh, wait was that one just me? Nana loves her radio but blasts it like a rocking teenager.

When Nana wasn’t out in her garden or bird watching, she would be crocheting. On one of the many sleepovers at Nana’s, she taught me to crochet. It took lots of patience on Nana’s parts. We sat with our tea, mine practically sugary milk, as Nana introduced the world of crochet to me. I remember sitting in her sitting room (Dad’s old bedroom), learning how to hold a hook and thinking “How the heck am I going to make a straight piece of yarn look like a braid? Never mind turn it into a square?” I didn’t believe it was possible, but I trusted Nana. And I really wanted to make stuff in the way Nana could. It took hours to get there, but Nana persevered in teaching me how to chain the yarn. The most basic of stitches. At that point my fingers felt like jelly I no longer had control over, and I didn’t want to learn how to go back into the stitches to make a square. I proceeded to make a really, really long chain of yarn. I had estimated it was 20 feet long, granted this was many years ago and my estimation skills at 10 years old weren’t homed in yet.

Nana looked a little sad that I didn’t want to proceed to the next stage of crochet, but she kept encouraging it. She taught me the next stitches during the next visits and sleepovers. I remember sitting with the hook and yarn at my house and her house, mostly adding to the 20-foot chain, trying to 100-foot chain, practicing crochet. Eventually my confidence improved and I tried out the other stitches, yes even inserting the hook into the previous stitches to make a squ. I continued to dabble in the world of crochet. I unfortunately cannot say that I made anything. I never grabbed a pattern, watched a video or sat with Nana and made a project all the way through while I was kid.

So how am I now the person who always has yarn and a hook on me now? Well, that will be another story.