Practicing in the Dark

In my kitchen, I have a great deal of hand-knitted washrags. They are square and half a foot wide. It’s actually probably safe to say that everyone in my family owns at least two of the same washrags. They were each handcrafted by my great-grandmother Dorothea.

Dorothea handcrafted many family heirlooms still proudly displayed in many of our homes. She was a brilliant quilter, knitter and seamstress. As her vision deteriorated in the latter years of her life, her love of creating never faded.

I remember when I was young going to Hobby Lobby with my grandma and Dorothea. We would go up and down the aisles of endless varieties of yarn and my grandma would describe each of the colors to Dorothea.

Back at Dorothea’s house, one of the rooms was filled with all of these yarns. My grandma would group them together according to dye lot and Dorothea would mark them with a giant sign, written in Sharpie, big enough for her failing eyes to read. Dorothea would sit in her chair and knit away at these endless washrags.

The story I’ve always been told was that during one of the World Wars, Dorothea would sit in the dark in preparation for blackouts, and knit in the dark. When she eventually did lose her sight, the practice she had in the dark ensured she still remembered how to knit a simple square.

It has always been a reminder to me that as you grow older, some things fade – but the things you truly love are already ingrained so deeply into the pattern of your own existence that it’s impossible to forget.

***In the event your vision begins to fade at near and your tasks are not so deeply ingrained reading glasses are a great assist.