I mentioned to my mother that I was attempting to learn how to knit. She is the first to try to teach me many years ago, but it just never clicked back then. I ended up making a bunch of triangles and just getting frustrated and giving up. Yes, you think maybe I dropped a stitch here and there?

After hearing that I was going at it again, she offered to give me all her knitting and yarn stash, a mixed menagerie of odds and ends, but of course I could not turn it down. She is kept pretty busy these days helping my sister with her kids, and the little free time she has she uses to either go to the gym, read, or sew.

Obviously I knew that she knitted at one time since she’s the first to try to teach me, but I was surprised when she handed me a large bag of knotted up funky yarn and various needles. There was some pretty weird stuff in there, such as some acrylic skeins marked .99 from TG&Y, but I persevered and was rewarded with lots of yarn bits (perfect for my craft club to practice with), 6 knitting needles, a knitting spool, and 4 crochet hooks. There were a few orphaned knitting needles and some yarn that was such a tangle of knots that there was no way to tame it, but for most of it I was able to rescue.