Sad news
I just received word that Rosemary Genest, the woman who taught me to knit, has passed away. She was one of those rare sorts of people who never said a bad word about anyone. In a stressful, deadline-driven law firm environment, she never hurried and never got impatient. I swore in front of her only once, out of frustration at something another firm had done, and she gently but firmly took me to task for it. She had standards and expected people to live up to them. Once I figured out how to purl, she never let me get away with garter-stitch again. I have ripped back countless lines of knitting because I wanted her to be proud of my work. It was she who organized the firm's lawyers, patent agents and paralegals into knitting blankets for anyone who was having a baby. Celery Surprise arrived just over two years after I'd left the firm and I figured that I'd missed my chance. But Rosemary had them make me a blanket anyway. I just tucked CS into bed with it and it is one of the softest and most beautiful things I've ever seen. You can tell which squares were knit by Rosemary herself. I remember her excitedly showing me some of the patterns when she first found them.
She died far too young and leaves behind a husband and a teenage daughter. My heart goes out to them. She was one of a kind, a woman of grace and wisdom who took quiet pleasure in the mastery of her craft. She is sorely missed.
She died far too young and leaves behind a husband and a teenage daughter. My heart goes out to them. She was one of a kind, a woman of grace and wisdom who took quiet pleasure in the mastery of her craft. She is sorely missed.