Someone asked me a while back to teach her to knit, so after opening her new instruction book and reading a little, I started to put the yarn on the needles, a procedure called “casting on.” If I had just started without reading how to start, I would have been fine, but then I couldn’t remember just how to do it.
I laughingly told the girl, “Let me teach you to crochet instead,” so I found my crochet hooks and got her started.
After she left, of course, the mystery of what I was doing wrong was too strong to resist so I found my giant needlecraft book, which teaches all forms of needle work. And there I found out that there are two methods of “casting on” and either one works.
To prove I could still knit, I started casting on stitches until I had enough for a simple scarf and started knitting the stockinette, which is one row of knit, then reverse it and one row of purl. I then bought new yarn and finished a scarf.
You see, I learned to knit in Home Ec class in high school, back in the “old days.” After I was married, I taught myself to crochet, and never did knit another thing.
Isn’t it funny that 50 years after learning to knit, I still remember how? Like the multiplication tables or memory verses or hymns. Can you still remember 8 X 8 = 64? Or “a noun is a person, place, or thing”? What about “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see”?
If I were to say, “For God so loved. . .” how would you complete that line? Does that bring back the verse John 3:16? Does it bring back the memory of Vacation Bible school with Kool-aid and cookies?
I have memorized many verses, just by reading them, meditating on them, mulling them over in my mind, phrase by phrase. As Psalms 119:11 says, “Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.”