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Snow Day today, and so I'm sitting on the sofa next to the woodstove, my favourite place in winter, when all the birds at the feeder take sudden startled wing after one of them yells "HAWK", and there is a thump at the window.  I get up to investigate and my heart sinks to see a little dark-eyed junco flattened in the snow just outside the door.  It is -14C outside plus wind-chill, so I reckon if it can't move it will probably die quite quickly.  I put on my winter coat and boots and go outside where it looks up at me in a sort of stunned but interested sort of way.  I pick it up and wrap it in a towel, take it quickly inside to the warmth and wait a while.  Gradually she starts to move around and then suddenly escapes, flying straight for the greenery in the jungle corner, where she perches, terrified.  I manage to catch her again and hold her carefully, like my Uncle Maynard, who kept racing pigeons, taught me long ago, index finger and middle finger making a sturdy necklaced embrace, the rest of my hand cupping the little trembling body.  She seems to have come to her eager senses, so I take her outside, but she flies only a little way and then flops down again into the snow.  I repeat the procedure of warming her up, except that she doesn't escape this time, and then, when she is avidly struggling, her little wild heart beating furiously, desperate for her own element, I take her out into the cold, walk her down to the wood-pile, scattering her friends and relations who hide out there, and she hops delicately off my hand into a hiding-place out of the wind, to recover herself fully.

 Later I go out to check on her and she has gone, and there is no body in the snow, so I am hopeful.  I could have put her in a box and kept her warm, fed her even, but if I was a bird, I would want to be free to live or die in my own world, not inside a house, with a horrifying giant gazing down at me.

On cold days like this one I feel like reneging on all my duties, and sitting in front of the fire and knitting, although I am not all that good at it, well, nothing like my mum.   My mother taught me to knit and sew when I was little.  She was a master (mistress?) of knitting and crocheting and lace-making and sewing.  We used to make all our Christmas and birthday presents by hand, funny little felt cases for hair-combs, which people used to carry around in their bags, apparently, and embroidered handkerchiefs, crocheted doilies and knitted belts.  It was companionable, sitting quietly together, my mother and grandmother working on something far more complicated, while we listened to a play on the radio, perhaps, or a record.  They would be there to help unpick bad sewing, or to maybe go back down to the dropped stitch in the knitting in some miraculous way, and somehow pick it up!  I have a distinct glowing memory of  the great sense of achievement I felt when I completed an article, and the beaming faces of my elders were the reward. 

We were part of a tradition going back to Egypt at the end of the first millenium A.D., although I was pretty shocked to learn that only men knitted, until the 17th century or so!  So we weren't part of the very old tradition.

sock from Egypt knitted from cotton

When Emma was small she had to learn to knit at school, but because she was left-handed it was a struggle to teach her.  So I taught Tim, who is also left-handed, and can do anything he sets his mind to, who then managed, with his usual infinite patience, to teach Emma.  An unwilling pupil, she finally completed the required knitted article with a great deal of cajoling and pushing and reminding and help, (a bit like going down the slide) and never knitted again, as far as I know.  No companionable quiet knitting for us.

Jess is more patient and learned to knit and sew and sit companionably, although she is an eager starter of knitting projects but does not always complete them.  I am a bit like that too, I started a jersey for Tim in Grahamstown in 1990, and finally unravelled the wool a few years ago, and now the resulting balls of crimson sit in my cupboard awaiting a new beginning.

Matthew decided to learn to knit, just because he could, and knitted himself the funniest bumpy uneven scarf.   There must be so many of these in the world, as scarves are the easiest things to complete.  Just straight to and fro and to and fro and voila, you have a scarf!  

I learned that I am better able to complete small things, because knitting a large article of clothing takes too long for my soul to manage, so woolen hats are perfect for me, and I can even do fair-isle designs like my mother used to, although she made us all exquisite jerseys and cardigans, which I have never managed.   A few Christmases ago, the last Christmas we were all together, I made us all warm hats, and thought how proud my mother and grandmother would have been of me.

This is one of those awkward family photographs, but the only one I have of all the hats.  For some inexplicable reason we are all crouching down behind the couch!  And Tim has no beard!

When I heard I was going to be a grandmother I began knitting, because that was what my mother always did.  I planned to make a blue elephant toy and a beautiful blanket of squares knitted in strips.  I eventually finished the little blanket for Luna when she was about six months old, and the blue elephant is still sitting in my knitting bag, a flat body and legs, with ears but no head.  And poor Ella, the second granddaughter, is still waiting.

Luna's blanket, with such poor ungrandmotherly stitching that I had to cover the seams with ribbons to hide it.