Most new brides wait for the day when they know for sure that they have been successfully integrated into their husband’s family. Whether a trusted relative lets them in on a family secret or they are included in all the latest gossip there comes the day – thatdefining moment – when they know they’ve made it.
My time came when I was presented with a set of Aunt Olga’s cotton crochet pot holders. These hand made gifts are so valuable that wegreedily hoard the ones we have. They never burn, are easily cleaned and are extremely handy. Over the 20 some odd years of my marriage, I have been gifted with several sets of these cottony creations. I treasure them as the best tools I have in my kitchen.
Aunt Olga even tried to teach me how to make them once when we visited her several years ago. But at the time, and in my silly youth, I was so sure that there would always be a steady stream of pot holders, that I let the knowledge go in one hand and out the other hook.
Lately, however, I’ve been contemplating that life is short and contrary to taxes, nothing really lasts forever.
So I have been on a quest to obtain the secret of the cotton pot holders. I went online, put in ‘Aunt Olga’s pot holders’ and of course nothing came up. The internet is a tricky maze of asking just the right question to get just the right answer, so I put in cotton pot holders into the search location -Magically, up came the instructions for thedouble diagonal crochet pot holder, AKA, Aunt Olga’s cotton treasures. There before me was the key to unlock the door to manufacturing these little kitchen jewels. The instructions were even easy to follow (they had pictures).
I immediately dug in the closet and fished out my handy bag of crochet and knitting materials, took out a size H hook, some yarn and crocheted my first pot holder.
I was hooked. So far I have managed to crochet about 20 pot holders, three scarves for my daughter and one-half of a knitted tube top, to match one of the scarves and several requests from Bri’s friends for a scarf of their very own.
So happy am I that I have traded in my nightly addiction of playing Zuma online and sit contentedly on the couch, yarning over, double crocheting and binding off to my Red Heart and Clark’s content.
All is in balance again – Aunt Olga’s traditional cotton pot holders will go on and I am now supporting a new addiction.
Not for nuthin, but maybe there’s a cabled, bobbled Aran sweater in my husband’s future. JDelBuono@cnglocal.com (For those interested- instructions are on line-each pot holder takes about a one ounce ball of cotton yarn and about one hour to construct – Happy knitting).
