The wellness of knitting

The photos I proudly sent to Mom showing off the jersey I knitted for Shawni. Isn't she a beauty as Fred would say.

My sketch and details of the jersey

The window of the knitting shop in St.Germain-en-Laye caught my attention.

Beautiful mohair wools in bright fresh colours. Even though it was the middle of the summer of 1986, I walked in, browsed for a pattern and walked out with an armful of this fabulous, expensive wool.

And I knitted.

I can still feel the joy from the purchases, the hard work to understand a french knitting pattern and being so proud of my handiwork.

I knitted a second jersey, but do not seem to have a photo.

It was so much more than knitting.

I felt a wellness and a vitality resurface.

My pregnancies had followed each other so quickly I had not really gotten over the first one and I was in the cycle again. An irony given that I took some 5 years to fall pregnant with Shawni.

Even though I made the move happen, encouraged Fred, the lack of language challenged me, I am verbal and take pleasure in words and I was quite at sea. 'I cannot say that my French has improved too much over the last month but my ear is improving e.g. I'm starting to pick up numbers but they speak so fast.'

I did not take Telemecanique up on their offer of full day lessons in Paris, too tricky with not being settled and the kids so young. Instead I joined the Alliance Francaise in St. Germain for school going french lessons for foreigners, which was about 10 minutes from our home. These memories are harsh, I snuck into level 2, the deuxieme classe and floundered. During dictation I could not discern 'virgule' from the word it followed, virgule is comma and I would write it out countless times.

One quality I have though is stamina and I persevered.

Being a mother did not come easy to me. I know this and can feel it in the letters.

I write; I have put both kids down for their morning naps, so I am hoping for some peace, Shawni and I had a run in this morning, I reckon my hand is the worse for the wear at this stage. She has been difficult again the last few days. I'm not cut out for this lark.' 'I have started to get organised, our ville has a 'Halte Garderie' where one can leave kids, from 3 months to 3 years, for the day i.e. 8.30 - 5.30. We phoned and for both littley's it will cost 103FF which includes two meals for Shawni at 12 and 4pm, this is most reasonable' 'So Tuesday's will be my day off - need it!'

Starting to knit again.

Through my corporate years knitting took a back seat and fleece took over.

I have started again and want to focus on creative children's knitting.

One of my projects is this funky brick and mortar jersey, a Horst Schulz design.

My summer of 2014 project