I wish I could knit!

Technically, I can knit; if you gave me a pair of needles and a ball of wool, I could knit something  If you gave me a simple pattern I could follow it. What I can’t do is put the different bits together when I’ve made them, and if I go wrong, I can’t unpick it and find my way back to the mistake and knit it up again properly.

I have friends and a dear cousin who are brilliant knitters; their needles flash and the ball spins round and the garment grows, evenly and beautifully. They use fabulous colours and amazing wools, they have clever and intricate patterns and find sweet little buttons, ribbons, beads and pearls to decorate the lovely thing they have made.

My mum Monica was a knitter, and so was my dad, Donald. They would by wool in skeins, and a very strong childhood memory is of sitting with the skein of wool stretched between my two hands while someone else wound it into a ball, or mush more fun was when someone else held and I wound! It seemed a winter evening activity  by the coal fire in the sitting room, and I guess it was only in winter that woollies would be knitted! he was one of those people who only needed a few hours sleep so he would be up in the morning, digging the garden or doing odd jobs before work; in the winter when it was too cold and dark to go out he would knit.

There is a great tradition of men knitting, particularly fishermen who needed something profitable to do when they couldn’t fish., and particularly in island communities. The wonderful and intricate patterns of Fair Isle sweaters for example, often had meanings and significance which most people wearing them wouldn’t even guess at.  Now knitting is fashionable again and justifiably recognized as a skilled craft, and one where imagination and creativity can be expressed.

Admiring the detail on this little beret, while Sveta tells us about knitting a stripy jumper

Read all about it: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/regional-knitting-in-the-british-isles-and-ireland/