14 Hand-Knit and Crocheted Gifts That Carry a Story in Every Stitch

Fourteen handmade things and the people who made them. There are socks meant to last a lifetime, a wedding dress finished two days before the ceremony, a vest knit flat out of pure stubbornness, and a six-month blanket that ended up on a dog bed. Some of these were posted on Reddit, and others were shared with us directly. Every one of them came with a story.

I have worn her hand knit socks exclusively for 14 years. The oldest pair I still wear are more than 16 years old. She passed away a little over two years ago. Since then I have ceremonially retired two pairs of her socks, and inherited two other pairs from friends she had gifted socks to.
Every morning I embrace a piece, a memory, of the skill and love she lavished on me in the 37 years we were together. She has provided a legacy which will drive me to continue, I will endeavour to last as long as her craft.

• My grandmother passed away about a year and a half ago and she knitted to pass the time. I am the only knitter in the family, and so I inherited all of her needles, yarn, and unfinished work. I have many planned projects based on the squares and other things that were in her box. There is something truly special about things that our loved ones made with their own hands, and I feel she is with me whenever I knit now.

• I’ve run an online stitching group for two years. Every Thursday evening a dozen or so of us turn our cameras on and work on whatever we’ve got going. It’s mostly embroidery, with some knitting and one devoted cross-stitcher.
  A new member joined with a seven-inch hoop and a botanical pattern: three ferns on natural linen, in stem stitch and satin stitch, using three shades of green floss. She was quiet and careful, and within a month her stem stitch was better than mine. Six weeks in, she stopped logging on. She didn’t send a message.
  Three months later she was back, camera on, with the hoop in her lap and every frond filled in. At the end of the session she said she’d been through the hardest months of her life, mostly on her own. She’d kept working on the ferns in the evenings and thinking about Thursdays. Nobody said much. Then someone said, “You’re here now.”
  She held the framed ferns up to the camera the next week. They hang in her hallway. She runs the group now when I’m away.

• I’m 78 and I’ve been knitting for sixty years, so I didn’t join a stitch night to learn anything. I joined because my doctor said I needed to leave the house, and I wanted something to argue with her about that wasn’t my actual health.
  The community center stitch night was her suggestion. I went to prove a point. The point I proved was not the one I intended.
  There were twelve people. Three of them knew more than I do, which I found personally offensive and then deeply enjoyable. At the time I was starting a Fair Isle vest in Shetland wool, five colors, with a peerie pattern in rust, moss and navy on an oatmeal ground.
  One of the three told me to knit it in the round and cut steeks for the armholes. I told her I had not spent sixty years keeping scissors away from my knitting to start now. We argued for two hours, and I came back the following week to continue.
  I knit that vest flat, back and forth, purling the colorwork rows out of spite. It took seven months. The steek woman admitted the seams were very neat.
  I’ve worn it to every doctor’s appointment since. That was four years ago. We still argue. We also know more about each other’s lives than our families do.
  My doctor asked how the stitch night was going. I said fine, don’t make too much of it. She said, “I know.” Very smug. Also completely right. I haven’t told her that and don’t intend to.

• I NEED ITTTTTTTTTTTT 😍😍😍😍😍😍 That gondor armour is AMAZING! © tienna / Reddit

• I spent six months knitting a blanket for my mother-in-law. It was cream merino with an allover cable pattern, and I worked on it most evenings until midnight. I gave it to her at Christmas. She said thank you in a tone that means she’s being polite.
  A week later I visited and stopped in the doorway. The blanket was on the dog bed. Her dog Jack was asleep on it, looking extremely comfortable. She saw my face and said, “Don’t take it the wrong way. It’s so soft Jack won’t get off it.”
  The blanket is still on the dog bed. Jack is still on the blanket. My mother-in-law considers this a success, and I’ve decided to agree with her. Next year I’m knitting the dog a sweater directly. Cut out the middleman.

Let me start by saying, I’m by no means an experienced crocheter, this was HARD work for me, and I am honestly not psychologically well after this amount of stress; literally hanging on by a thread. I worked on this for 3-4 months. I made the underdress as well (but that’s the easy part for me!). I finished it like 48 hours before the wedding.
5000+ metres of 100% cotton 4ply/fingering weight yarn. Hooks: 3mm for bodice to waistline & sleeves to elbow. 3.5mm for the rest. 4mm for the scallop hem (sadly not shown in photos)

• My grandma tried teaching me when I was 8 and it never stuck. It was too challenging. Many years later my grandma’s health started deteriorating. She had a tradition of gifting a baby blanket to new babies in the family.
  Once her health started deteriorating I realized this tradition would sadly pass with her. She was living in another state and I couldn’t get lessons from her. I bought a Wobbles kit and started with that. Then I experimented with other stitches and blankets.
  I showed my grandmother every finished project thru FaceTime and she was always so proud. She passed away exactly a year ago today so her tradition does live on thru me.

• My mother had been going to a craft circle at her hospice for six months before she told me about it. It met on Wednesday afternoons, with six people around a table. Two were knitting, one was crocheting granny squares, one was working an embroidery hoop, and one mostly supervised.
  I found out because one of the volunteers called me. I assumed something was wrong. “Your mother asked me to call,” she said. “She wants you to come next Wednesday. She has something to show you.”
  I went. They were sitting in the easy quiet of people who know each other well. My mother held up a blanket in garter stitch, with wide stripes of navy and soft grey in a wool blend. It had taken four months of Wednesdays. She said the circle had become the best part of her week without her noticing, and that she hadn’t told me because she wanted it to be hers for a while.
  Then she folded the blanket and put it in my lap. It had been for me all along. I sat next to her that Wednesday and the Wednesday after. She’s still there every week. So am I, sometimes.

• I knit on the subway, which turns a forty-minute commute into about two inches of sleeve. At the time it was a cabled pullover in charcoal wool, with a chart complicated enough to need actual concentration.
  Last Tuesday the man next to me kept leaning closer, eyes locked on my hands. I was about to change seats. Then I noticed what he was holding: a knitting book, dog-eared and full of sticky notes. He’d taught himself to knit at home two years earlier and had never seen anyone work cables without a cable needle. That’s what he’d been staring at.
  We talked for the rest of the ride and swapped numbers before his stop. We still text about patterns and yarn.

Socks, dresses, blankets and one shirt of Gondorian armor. Most of these will outlast the evenings spent making them, and at least two are currently being slept on by dogs.

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