Spinners Like It Twisted

If you’ve read my tips on holding yarn, you’ll know that my early forays into knitting were often fractious affairs, spent stropping over yarn wrapping.

It was my grandma who introduced me to the art – I was keen to learn after watching my mum’s flashing needles. Like her flying fingers on a piano keyboard, which made it all look so easy, when my own just-out-of-toddlerhood hands tried to copy, horrible discord followed – both musically and the yarn equivalent.

On one of her frequent stays with us, Grandma taught me to knit and thank goodness her patience was deeper than her grand-daughter’s ever will be. I never remember her temper rising to match mine, only a rest and another go. Now I know that at the time she was fairly recently widowed, her childhood sweetheart having passed away to leave her living without him. Maybe the rhythmic perfection of her own knitted stitches helped her work through her grief. Perhaps her teaching me gave her the comfort of knowing skills were being handed down the generations?

So as my Grandma had taught my mum to knit, and then both taught me, the traditional skill has been passed along. I sometimes reflect, as I click away, on the line of women who went before me, mother to daughter, for years uncounted.

Or not! I was astounded to learn that until relatively recently, it was traditional for MEN to knit, rather than women. So maybe my daydream isn’t as true (or at least as long-standing) as I’d like to imagine!