Sticking with Mom’s hobby

T he youngest of four boys, Daniel Woods was desperate for some attention from his mom when he was growing up.

But she was more interested in knitting and crocheting than in hanging out at the ball field, Woods says.

“I just finally threw up my hands and pulled up a chair and asked her to show me what she was doing,” says Woods, 47, of Spokane.

He was about 9 when his mom, Arlene, showed him how to knit. But he says he quickly tired of the repetition.

Crocheting was a different story, though.

Soon, they were swapping patterns. The shared hobby allowed them to spend plenty of time together, immersed in their own projects.

“She liked it,” Woods says. “She always wanted a daughter. She never got a daughter.”

Life got busier as Woods got older. He had less time to crochet.

But not long after his mother died of a stroke in 1996, he picked up the craft again.

Now, says Woods, who works at the Cyrus O’Leary’s pie factory, “There’s doilies all over the place.”

He spent a year crocheting his wife a tablecloth for the dining room — an ecru block pattern with a light brown border.

He has made a bedspread.

He crocheted a doll for the foot of the bed, just like the ones his mom used to make.

He works the swing shift but finds time to crochet late at night when he gets home or in the morning before he heads out the door.

“It allows me to calm down,” he says. “It’s relaxing.”

And while he’s looping thread around the crochet hook, it gives him time to reminisce about his mom.

“She pops into my memory quite a bit when I’m doing it,” he says.