Hobbies and Ambition

Her needlework both plain and ornamental was excellent, and she might have put a sewing machine to shame. ~James Edward Austen-Leigh, about Jane Austen


If Jane Austen could do it…maybe I can’t. Still, it means it’s worth a try!


Hobbies are something of a necessity for my mother and I. Growing up with a mother who sewed, quilted, smocked and embroidered innumerable things when I was young, I naturally picked up a few things here and there. Eventually—when I was about eleven or twelve—a quilting buddy of my mother’s gave me her outdated (but exquisite) Husqvarna machine. For those of you who don’t know (and that would probably be most of you, since most weren’t raised by sewing fanatics), Husqvarna machines are some of the best on the market and have been. In its day, my machine was the top of line for automatic embroidery machines (which I believe have a more technical name than that in reality). It has a few quirks that took me some time to learn about, like how you have to hold the tails of the thread when you first start, and then watch the speed because it’s jumpy for the first thirty seconds, but I love quirks—in machines and people alike. A good machine deserves a name; mine is Margaret. We’ve made clothes, pillows, quilts and numerous unnecessary little items together that filled many an afternoon during drafty winter weather. I’m ashamed to say that Margaret is collecting a rather thick coating of dust at present.

Besides learning to use a sewing machine, my mother made sure to teach me handwork like needlepoint and embroidery. I was a bit of a dunce when it came to smocking during my first attempts (which, to be fair to myself, where when I was probably about ten), and lacking patience and focus, I gave it up. As for needlepoint, I finally decided that it was boring, and it drove me crazy that all of my yarn was constantly getting tangled up. I haven’t picked up needlepoint in years. Embroidery is something that I use from time to time, but I’m not terribly talented, though this could be because I—once again—lacked enough patience to learn any terrifically complex and beautiful stitches. As for plain hand sewing, I took to that like wildfire. I love Margaret dearly, but there’s something that I find incredibly relaxing about a simple stitch bringing two pieces of fabric into one. (It’s also much better for sewing very tiny sleeves—something I encountered when I started working a wardrobe for my cloth doll that I bought in Williamsburg around seven years ago. As to those dresses, most of them are unfinished because I hated hemming things.)

I tried a few hobbies of my own, such as felting. This came about after I received the Felt Wee Folk book, by Salley Mavor. Honestly, there are dozens of these fairies all about the house. Because I was making these miniature dolls (constructed out of pipe cleaners, embroidery floss, a wooden bead, felt and wool) at such a vivacious pace, my mother decided to encourage it and bought me large quantities of the delicious wool it takes to form the body and hair. This brought about my attempts at felting, which was a new passion for a while. After pricking my hands about five hundred times with those long, barbed needles, I put them aside and went searching for a new hobby.

As long as I can remember, my grandmother has always had a bit of knitting on her person somewhere. She would carry a half-finished sock or scarf in her purse with needles sticking out of it at odd angles, or she would have on a sweater that she had finished the month before. It just always been a part of her in my eyes. I loved the gentle clicking of her aluminum needles as she speedily created yards of fabric, the creations that miraculously appear at the tips of these magical sticks that she could control. I wanted to learn. I wanted to knit. She taught me the basics when I was six or seven, but wasn’t a patient teacher, so knitting was passed over in my repertoire of old-fashioned accomplishments (along with most useful ones like baking or cooking). I returned to it when I was about eleven—with a new teacher—and discovered that I have a natural knack for tension. Yes! For once I didn’t have to struggle with every aspect of a new hobby! (Honestly, my mother’s friend who tried to teach a few of us girls to embroider on a more serious level basically gave up on two of us. Out of three. I was one of the ones she gave up on, by the way. These things do not come naturally to some of us!)

Anyway, this all came up because I’ve started working on a scarf that I started last fall again. It’s my first bit of Fair Isle knitting, so it’s exciting, easy and gratifying. The only problem is that it has me feeling ambitious—I found a pattern for an Aran sweater and started to pick out what color to knit it. WHAT?! I don’t even know how to do a cable, let alone sleeves (which is a problem, since I actually have all of a sweater knit but stopped two years ago because the sleeves scared me)! If I ever start in on it, I’ll be sure to not let you know so that you won’t be wondering why it took so long five years from now.

The innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care...
~William Shakespeare