April's Affections and Intrigues: Love and Mystery Bloom
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"Making a sock by hand creates a connection to history;
we are offered a glimpse into the lives of knitters who made
socks using the same skills and techniques we continue to
use today."
—Nancy Bush, author of Folk Socks (1994),
Folk Knitting in Estonia (1999) and Knitting on
the Road, Socks for the Traveling Knitter (2001), all
published by Interweave Press.
LYDIA HOFFMAN
Knitting saved my life. It saw me through two lengthy bouts
of cancer, a particularly terrifying kind that formed tumors
inside my brain and tormented me with indescribable
headaches. I experienced pain I could never have imagined
before. Cancer destroyed my teen years and my twenties, but
I was determined to survive.
I'd just turned sixteen the first time I was diagnosed, and
I learned to knit while undergoing chemotherapy. A woman
with breast cancer, who had the chemo chair next to mine,
used to knit and she's the one who taught me. The chemo was
dreadful—not quite as bad as the headaches, but close.
Because of knitting, I was able to endure those endless
hours of weakness and severe nausea. With two needles and a
skein of yarn, I felt I could face whatever I had to. My
hair fell out in clumps, but I could weave yarn around a
needle and create a stitch; I could follow a pattern and
finish a project. I couldn't hold down more than a few bites
at a time, but I could knit. I clung to that small sense of
accomplishment, treasured it.
Knitting was my salvation—knitting and my father. He
lent me the emotional strength to make it through the last
bout. I survived but, sadly, Dad didn't. Ironic, isn't it? I
lived, but my cancer killed my father.
The death certificate states that he died of a massive heart
attack, but I believe otherwise. When the cancer returned,
it devastated him even more than me. Mom has never been able
to deal with sickness, so the brunt of my care fell to my
father. It was Dad who got me through chemotherapy, Dad who
argued with the doctors and fought for the very best medical
care—Dad who lent me the will to live. Consumed by my
own desperate struggle for life, I didn't realize how dear a
price my father paid for my recovery. By the time I was
officially in remission, Dad's heart simply gave out on him.
After he died, I knew I had to make a choice about what I
should do with the rest of my life. I wanted to honor my
father in whatever I chose, and that meant I was prepared to
take risks. I, Lydia Anne Hoffman, resolved to leave my mark
on the world. In retrospect, that sounds rather
melodramatic, but a year ago it was exactly how I felt.
What, you might ask, did I do that was so life-changing and
profound?
I opened a yarn store on Blossom Street in Seattle. That
probably won't seem earth-shattering to anyone else, but for
me, it was a leap of faith equal to Noah's building the ark
without a rain cloud in sight. I had an inheritance from my
grandparents and gambled every cent on starting my own
business. Me, who's never held down a job for more than a
few weeks. Me, who knew next to nothing about finances,
profit-and-loss statements or business plans. I sank every
dime I had into what I did know, and that was yarn
and knitters.
Naturally, I ran into a few problems. At the time, Blossom
Street was undergoing a major renovation—in fact, the
architect's wife, Jacqueline Donovan, was one of the women
in my first knitting class. Jacqueline, Carol and Alix, my
original students, remain three of my closest friends to
this day. Last summer, when I opened A Good Yarn, the street
was closed to traffic. Anyone who managed to find her way to
my store then had to put up with constant dust and noise. I
refused to let the mess and inconvenience hamper my
enthusiasm, and fortunately that was how my clientele felt,
too. I was convinced I could make this work.
Excerpt from A Good Yarn by Debbie Macomber
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