How to Knit Correctly... and Other Things that Grandma Taught Me.

"What are you doing?" my Grandma asked.
"Knitting." I said. (I thought the wool and knitting needles made that rather apparent.)
"No you're not," she retorted, "that's not knitting. Stop that right now."

This conversation was the beginning of one of my favourite memories of my Grandma Klassen and, since I've taken up knitting again, I think of her often while I knit the "correct" way. You see, Grandma was born in Russia so of course she learned how to knit the European way or what is commonly known as the Continental Method. I first learned how to knit from some friends while I was away in Bible School (Canada) so I learned the English style - the wrong way, according to Grandma.

She was very patient with me as she demonstrated over and over & I tried to relearn the way I had been doing it for years. The continental method is not easy to learn, wrapping the yarn around your fingers with just the right tension, never letting the wool out of your hands and wrapping the stitches with your left hand and not your right. I was ready to give up so many times.

But she knew something that I didn't know.
When I mastered it I would be able to knit twice as fast as before.
And she was right.

To this day I am grateful for that knitting lesson.
But Grandma taught me so much more than that...she taught me by her example and how she lived. Grandma went through some pretty tough times in her life and yet her motto was always "it is what it is." I'm pretty sure that she had plenty of days when she doubted God but she trusted in Him until her last breath.

Today would have been Grandma's 98th birthday, she's been gone for quite a while now - I still miss her. Now I'm an 'Oma' and I just pray that when my grandson looks back on my life, what I said and what I did will have left the same impact on him as Grandma left upon me.