June 2010

The Anti-A/C Shawl: It will look better on Grandma!

Dearest Knitting Diary, I’m not sure if you are aware of this but my Grandma is 95!

My cousins and I went to visit her last month in her maximum-security resort fortress.  It’s tucked away in Inverrary (the jewel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla) in an ancient forest.  Her fortress is manned by the most wonderful and plentiful staff, and it’s all cheerful prints and big wicker couches in the lobby.  The dining staff is cordial and respectful to the myriad elders, and the food is excellent (the best blintz casserole in the universe)!  All the captives have hot wheels, a 3-wheeled folding ‘bike’ that assists with walking.  (Diary, we suggested races around the lobby’s Gazebo.  The desk clerk did not laugh.) The grounds are very manicured, although the residents rarely venture outside due to the oppressive heat (humidity).  And since the majority of Floridian seniors are originally from NY, the social halls are named after famed  New York landmarks, such as  Grossingers (Diary, it’s so depressing that I’m even so old that I know of Grossingers, and in fact went there on a field trip from camp a million years ago…)

When you step out of the Fort Lauderdale airport to catch a cab, you are immediately blasted by a cement-like layer of humidity.  It’s unbearable.  It’s disorienting.  You wonder how people can bare it (and frankly, Diary, I wonder why they bother.  Even Arizona heat is better than 89 degrees with 89% humidity!).

But when the cab dropped me at Grandma’s palatial resort apartment compound, I was blasted by cold, clinical air-conditioning as I entered the lobby.  And that’s when I realized: the seniors that live here are not only limited because of age and/or age-induced disabilities, but they are trapped between climate zones, slaves to stifling heat or a frigid draft.

There are only two climate zones in Florida: Amazon outside or Siberia inside, nothing in between. So I was not surprised when Grandma asked me to knit her a shawl.

“Dana, something airy, Dana.  Something in corals, Dana, and not too big.  Something to protect me from the air-condition, Dana, when I’m at cards” she implored.  (She has more friends and activities than anyone I know.) My Grandma, matriarch to seven grandchildren and 12 ¾ great-grandchildren, has stood witness to two World Wars, countless other wars, the first Great Depression, Civil Rights, the invention of radio, Disneyland, and yes air-conditioning, not to mention everything else including the iPad.   95 or not, when she makes a request, you deliver.

So I set to work immediately…a nubbly yarn, variegated in color (corals, of course!), on size 17s, 20” wide, but only 55” long, so it just drapes over her shoulders and arms, not a full wrap.  Nothing that she could get tangled in on her way to Mah-Jong, and it fits in the basket of her hot wheels.

I love that she knows she’s not too old for a new knitted treasure, and how fortunate am I to be able to grant this simple wish?  It’s like an insurance policy that she’ll require another, when she’s 105.

Diary, I hope that when I’m 95, I am still knitting treasures, and people will still request them of me! I love you Gram!!!

**Get the Anti-A/C Shawl pattern for FREE from the “Must Knit Free Patterns” drop-down menu!

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