Tales of the Crochet Widower

I learned to crochet in 2001, relatively late in life, after 40 years of sewing. My husband, then a New York City sanitation worker, brought home a box of hooks that he rescued from life in a landfill. He gave me the box and said, “Can you do something with these?”

- Tales of the Crochet Widower

“Something” turned into an obsession and a career. Once I learned the basics, I had to crochet at every opportune moment. Like all crochet fanatics, I’ve spent countless hours with a hook in my hand, engrossed with my yarn and project. I crochet while watching TV with one eye, on road trips and flights, in waiting rooms, even in movie theaters before the film starts. I’m no different than other crochet-crazed stitchers!

My husband is a golfer. I tease him as he drives away with his clubs that I’m a golf widow. He once retorted, as I went off to a crochet guild meeting, that he’s a crochet widower! Well! He only has himself to blame!

But what, pray tell, is a crochet widower?

It’s my husband who sits immobile as I frog a project (that is, wildly rip out stitches) and cover him with yards and yards of yarn.

It’s the guy who sleeps alone at 3:00 a.m. because his designer spouse is typing a pattern before it goes out of her head.

The person who can say, “My wife still lives here? I thought she ran off with a flock of sheep, you know … yarn on feet, ages ago!” is a crochet widower.

It’s your significant other who has one-sided conversations because you’re too busy counting stitches to answer such a complex question as “What’s for dinner?”

It’s the life partner who opens a closet door and gets hit with an avalanche of yarn.

It’s the love of your life standing at the door who tells the tearful children to wave while you gleefully drive away to another fabulous CGOA show.

My husband, Tony, affectionately known as HWC (Husband Who Cooks) in my