How I learned to knit- the wholesome version

This is a Panda Bear that my Great Grandmother Mimi crocheted for me when I was born. My children have it now - which means it represents 5 generations of women in my family.

When I was about 5, Mimi and my grandparents came out from the East Coast to visit us in California. I remember sitting out on the deck, and Mimi trying to teach me to crochet a great long chain. I'm not sure anymore how much of this is real memory, and how much is just memory of photographs of us sitting out there. Anyway, she taught me to chain. She made us afghans, and some crocheted slippers for my mother. Like my ex-grandmother-in-law, she was incredibly talented and yet just about everything she made was Red Heart acrylic in 70's colorways. To be fair, Mimi didn't live past the 70's, while my ex came to college in 1990 with a new orange and brown afghan from Betty (but I'm getting ahead of myself now, and somehow terms like ex-grandmother-in-law are undermining the Wholesomeness thing).

I don't think I ever actually crocheted anything again until I started knitting, but throughout my childhood, I was enamored of fiber-art projects. I did those nylon loop potholders. I did a latch-hook unicorn rug, and a latch-hook dog. I walked around Montera Junior High School with embroidery floss safety-pinned to my jeans, making those woven friendship bracelets that turned into muddy brown cables in soccer season, and probably drove my mother nuts. At some point in high school, I decided to learn how to knit, and bought a skein of teal acrylic yarn and some aluminum needles. I had found a copy of Good Housekeepings New Complete Book of Needlecraft (1971) on our shelves, and tried to follow the diagrams for knitting. I did manage to knit a few rows, but my gauge was so tight it was hard to get the needles into the stiches. I know this, because I stopped working on it, and put the yarn and needles (with knitting still on) in my mother's sewing basket, where it stayed, in an increasing state of knottiness, for the next 10 years.