Knitting Stories – Sycamore Cove Knitting

Learning to Knit – What’s Your Story?

February 17, 2023Cynthia Coe

I learned to knit from my mother in the late 1970’s, as a teenager. My mother did not knit on a regular basis. She made one big project that I know of – a garter stitch blanket for my dad. She made this one project back in the 1950’s, when my dad had lung surgery to remove a piece of debris stuck in his lung since childhood, and my mother had many anxious hours spent at the hospital, knitting to pass the time. My mother only knew how to cast on, make the knit stitch, and cast off. She never learned to purl. But she passed on what little she knew to me, and knitting soon became a beloved craft for me.

There’s a story behind each and every person who learns to knit. Maybe you learned to knit from a favorite aunt or a grandmother. Maybe you learned at summer camp, or at church, or from videos online, stuck at home during the pandemic. Many of the stories in my books, The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, feature someone going through a difficult time and learns to knit, finding healing along the way. A washed-up ballerina goes back to her hometown, learns to knit from a female lawyer, and starts a new career as a paralegal. A young girl coming out of the foster care system sits on the curb of a food pantry, trying to figure out what to do with two sticks and a ball of string. A woman walking her dog in a church garden gets caught in the rain, ducks into a church service for shelter, and stumbles on a Blessing of the Prayer Shawls service.

This weekend, I’m hosting a Knitting Social at my local church. I’ve invited anyone who knits or wants to learn to knit. I’ve got a plan for teaching knitting from scratch, balls of yarn lined up, and several pairs of size 9 needles ready to offer. Who will show up? What will their story be? Will they stick with knitting for the rest of their lives, or will they find it a passing thing they may pick up again years from now? Will they, like my mother, pass on these knitting lessons to young girls or boys born far into the future? It’s exciting to think of the possibilities!

What’s your story of learning to knit? Who taught you? Where were you, both in time and in your emotional state? Did knitting help you heal in some way, or was it something fun or creative to do? I bet there’s a story there!

Blessings on your knitting journey,

Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, interrelated stories about knitters and those for whom they knit and love. The sequel to this book, The Knitting Guild of All Saints, has just been released! Available in paperback and on Kindle, included in Kindle Unlimited.

Yarn – It’s Fundamental to Human Culture

February 8, 2023Cynthia Coe

We’ve all seen the memes. “My other hobby is buying yarn.” “My yarn stash exceeds my expected lifespan.” “Yarn is like chocolate; you can never have too much.”

We treat yarn as if there’s an abundant worldwide stash ready for us to buy, in any amount. Craft stores literally stock enough yarn to reach the ceiling. You can obtain yarn for any project you have in mind with a couple of clicks on your phone.

This wasn’t always the case. In researching for my next book in The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, I’ve been shocked to learn how much time women have spent over the centuries making yarn and thread. Before industrialization, if you were a human being and a woman, you would spend a good part of your waking hours making yarn or thread. If you were a Neanderthal woman, you would have used fibers from the inner bark of conifer trees to make string for fishing lines and nets, to hang food to dry, to set traps for small animals, and to sew together animal hides for clothes and shelter. If you lived in Europe up until the industrial revolution, you would carry around a spindle and a fist full of wool, and you would make yarn while you watched the kids, walked, talked, and generally while you kept an eye on whatever else went on in your life. You would know how to work a spinning wheel as well as you knew how to cook. It’s what your family needed to survive.

Why don’t we study this in history class? Why don’t we see remnants of these time-consuming tasks featured in museums? Think about it – yarns, threads, and cloths eventually deteriorate and rot. These cushy, soft products don’t survive as long as items made of metal, stone, or even wood. So our foremothers’ efforts put into anything woven, knitted, or sewn have largely faded (or rotted) away from the saved artifacts of human culture.

The next time you pick up a skein of yarn to knit your next project, consider yourself blessed. Thanks to human ingenuity, all you had to do to get that yarn was click buttons on your phone or make a craft store run, which you probably enjoyed. Appreciate that you, as a 21^st century woman, have the leisure to simply sit and knit for the sheer pleasure of it.

Blessings, Cindy

Knitting Hasn’t Always Been “Just a Hobby”

January 18, 2023January 18, 2023Cynthia Coe

Knitting is just a hobby, right? A way to pass the time. Maybe a reason to get together with other crafty friends. Perhaps just a harmless and inexpensive thing you do while watching television.

Knitting hasn’t always held such a frivolous place in human lives. At many points in human history, knitting was serious business. If you were poor and needed money to feed yourself, you knitted. And you knitted socks, lots of them. You might knit every night until you couldn’t see the wool in front of you. You might knit every spare moment you found in your difficult and dreary life. Because you had to. Knitting was how you got by.

This past month, I’ve done a deep dive into the history of knitting. In preparing to write a new novel in the Prayer Shawl Chronicles series, I’m looking at why people – mostly women – knitted over the last decades and centuries. What exactly did they knit? How did they learn to knit? What did they use for needles? How did they get access to patterns? And my big question has been, what place did knitting have in the average woman’s life?

Several of the answers surprised me. Knitting used to be all about socks. The oldest found knitted garment was an ancient Egyptian sock. Up until the 1920’s, knitting continued to be a way to provide high quality socks to the aristocracy and others who could afford them. In more recent years, soldiers fighting one war or another (with wet, dirty, sore, and blistered feet) went through socks like there was no tomorrow. They needed the womenfolk back home to keep them supplied.

When you think of “handknitted garments,” the first items to come to the 21^st century mind might be “scarves” or “sweaters.” Socks are difficult and advanced projects for most of us. We’re just knitting to pass the time, remember. Up until Coco Chanel introduced us all to “sportswear” in the early part of the 20^th century, people generally did not wear sweaters – with the noted exceptions of British fishermen. Hard to imagine, right?

Enjoy your knitting. You’re very blessed to live in a time when you probably don’t have to knit. You don’t have to crank out a zillion pairs of socks just to put food in your children’s tummy. You probably aren’t knitting essential items for the military. You can afford to just knit because you want to. Sure, you may knit to economize and make an all-wool sweater that would cost a lot at your local department store. But you have that option. (And I bet you thoroughly enjoy making that sweater, too.)

But give a thought to those women who don’t have the option of “free time.” Give a thought to women who are working very hard, doing something with their hands, for the same reasons our foremothers knitted long into the night by candlelight to keep the soup bowl filled. Because, but for the grace of God, we all could have lived in a place and time when we knitted not for fun, but for survival.

Here’s my recommended books on the history of knitting in Britain and the United States. Both are beautifully researched and a pleasure to read.

This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain’s Knitted History by Esther Rutter (2021)

No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne L. Macdonald (1990)

Happy Knitting, Cindy

A Year in Knitting – Back to a New and Exciting “Normal”

December 28, 2022Cynthia Coe

Greetings, Knitters and Knit-Fiction Followers! Today, I’m taking a look back at my own year in knitting, and I imagine you might, too. Maybe you’re just starting out or even just thinking about taking up knitting, and this might be a year of new beginnings. Maybe you’ve knit for years and years, and knitting has been the constant that has kept you sane during these turbulent times.

For me, this has been year of “Getting Back to Something Called Normal.” As some of you may or may not know, 2020 and 2021 were years of immense change for me. My beloved husband, Tom, was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in May of 2020 and passed away in December of 2020. Throughout 2021, I sold my farm, moved and downscaled into a house in the suburbs, and bought a rental condo in Florida. My knitting (and writing) reflected all that change. I knitted just to have a few moments of Calm and get through the day. I scribbled a few lines in my journal and got back to packing, moving, and settling in.

This year, I’m fully settled into a new life. My new house is exactly the way I want it. My Florida Airbnb home is re-decorated and exactly how I want it, too. I’m writing again on a daily basis and recently published a new novel, “The Knitting Guild of All Saints.” I started a Prayer Shawl Ministry at my church and now share my love of knitting with all kinds of new people in my life. It’s a marvelous place to be – and a hard-won place to be as well. I’m glad to finally say, “this is my new normal.”

Looking ahead to 2023, I’ve got big plans. My stash of lovely yarns is bigger than ever, in a not-so-great way. Before the pandemic, I ordered kits from Kitterly, Bluprint, and Knitcrate. I learned lots with every kit and truly advanced my knitting skills by leaps and bounds. As of this month, all of those companies are out of business. Through their clearance sales, and I bought huge amounts of high-quality yarns and even complete kits for pennies on the dollar. That makes me sad. But I treasure the skills I learned and the introduction to “luxury” yarns I’d never even know about otherwise. Now, it’s time to take another big leap and design new sweaters, prayer shawls, and who-knows-what other garments and projects all by myself.

The new year looks a little scary, but exciting and full of possibilities. I’ve started a new novel in “The Prayer Shawl Chronicles,” and I hope to finish and publish it by this time next year. I’m also researching the history of knitting and trying my hand at designing knitwear for the first time. It will be exciting to see where my knitting journey takes me next, and I’m grateful for such a productive year in knitting and writing!

With hopes and dreams of wonderful knitting journeys for us all! Cindy

Introducing My New Novel: The Knitting Guild of All Saints

December 7, 2022Cynthia Coe

We are all in one big knitting guild. That is the message of my newest novel, The Knitting Guild of All Saints. Whether you knit well or not, knit a lot or only sporadically, you are part of a community of knitters that all share something in common and are woven together by the practice of knitting.

In my first book in this series, The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, we see community formed around the ministry of knitting and gifting prayer shawls. These prayer shawls are made with love, knitted or crocheted to show someone that a community of believers cares about them, prays about them, and surrounds them in love like a big warm blanket. In this novel, unlikely friendships form, and romances are sparked. People both within and on the margins of the fictional All Saints Church are enfolded in the love and prayers of this community of faith.

In The Knitting Guild of All Saints, the second novel in this series, the community expands far beyond the fictional Episcopal church at the heart of the action. The “Rogue Knitting Guild” formed in the first book takes off as a ministry all its own, with a surprising and highly unlikely new leader. New prayer shawl guilds are formed in churches far way and even poolside in Florida. Familiar characters from Book One find themselves in unlikely new situations. And, of course, an unlikely romance begins between two new characters.

I hope you enjoy my new novel. I try hard to keep the plot going and the characters interesting and even humorous at times. I hope you join my characters in their new journeys, walking in their shoes for just a bit and seeing the world from their perspectives. Isn’t that what reading is all about?

Many blessings! Cindy

The Story Behind Every Piece Of Knitting

September 18, 2019Cynthia Coe

As I cleaned out a closet today, I found the very first baby blanket I knitted for my son. It’s a small, lacey, baby blue blanket blessed by one of my favorite priests and taken all the way to the Arctic Circle when we adopted our youngest child. It was the first “prayer shawl” I ever made.

Pulling that blanket out of the closet, I noticed a couple of crooked seams and a section of the blanket that badly needed blocking. But that didn’t matter; it was the story behind that baby blue blanket that mattered more than anything.

As soon as I had that baby blanket in my hands, the whole story of becoming my youngest son’s mother came back to me: the waiting, the paperwork, the trips to the homeland security office in Nashville to get his citizenship lined up, the cold trip to the Arctic in the middle of winter. I could smell the diesel fuel during a long flight delay in Paris. I could see the faces of the doctors, drivers, and adoption agency staff who shepherded us along the way – all from taking one glance at that baby blanket I had knitted.

Don’t we all have stories woven within almost all of our knitting projects? We remember that Harry Potter scarf knitted for a son when he was in the second grade. That confetti-sparkled hat knitted for a daughter when she was a pre-teen. That hat your husband wanted for his camping trip last fall.

As I began my book, The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, I realized that we all have rich, often poignant stories behind our knitting projects. When we give our knitting projects as a gift to someone else, it becomes part of their story, too.

What’s on your needles now, and what’s the story you’ll remember months or years from now? I hope your stories will be tales of overcoming the stress and challenges of daily life, woven with the joy you get from knitting.

Blessings, Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, a collection of interrelated short stories about knitters and those they meet through knitting and sharing prayer shawls.