Purls of wisdom
Threads of kinship and kindness are interwoven across generations,
writes Karen Sparnon.
"This," my daughter announces, "will keep me and the little banana warm when I’m the size of a house."
She is six months pregnant and holds up a jumper I knitted in her last year at secondary school. It is purple, with a roll neck, and is the tent shape favoured at the time of its creation. For ten years it has been neatly folded in a cupboard, along with its siblings. But I have decided it’s time to recycle my knitted stash and I pull them out one by one. She considers another gorgeously striped tent. "Too Brunswick Street for me," she says. "A bit hippie.’" I put it in the pile for the charity shop.
When told of the coming baby, my first thoughts were not of ultrasounds and hospitals, but of knitting patterns. Within days I had two balls of three-ply ivory wool and some 2.25-millimetre needles as fragile as a baby’s bones. I cast on stitches and beneath my fingers grew a tiny moss-stitch hug-me-tight, its truncated arms perfect for enfolding newborns. As I knit, I wonder about this elemental need to warm another. To create, quite literally, the fabric for a life.
"They’re the ties that bind," my mother says. My musings surprise her. She is in her 90s and perfectly placed to look both ways along the generations. On the floor beside her is a pile of knitted garments for the new great-grandchild. Her eyes gleam like a girl's as she holds up a lacy doll's dress worked in the finest cotton. She tells of a family history of white workers; women whose pintucks graced bridal trousseaus and who smocked the sleeves of flannel baby nightdresses.
My daughter picks three other jumpers and carries them away. I sit surrounded by my pile of garments and see my woolly life unravel until it stops suddenly at Nana Morrison’s feet. My grandmother sits in a chair with a crocheted rug over her knees. She picks at the colours, annoyed at the clash of shades. She is frail but has the strength of a bird against the wind. Her glance is sharp and knowing and tells you there is too much to do to waste time.
"The devil finds work for idle hands," she says. And her fingers pluck at a jumper waiting to be unpicked.
For both her and my mother thrift came as naturally as shopping does nowadays. Winter mornings were icy and crunched under our feet. The cold speared through leather shoes and numbed our toes. And each year, as an antidote, we surveyed the jumper cupboards and chose what could be unpicked, rolled into loose skeins, and hung high above the stove to steam out the wrinkles. For days the kitchen smelled of damp wool and set your teeth on edge. My mother hauled pattern books from a camphor wood chest and in consultation with the current fashion magazines, we knitted up the old wool into the latest styles.
I was 14 when I knitted my first person-size jumper. It was camel-coloured with a V-neck and an intricate all-over lace pattern. It was ambitious stuff for a beginner. But I had cut my teeth on hand knitted Barbie doll boleros and tiny skirts with elastic threaded through the eyelets in the waist. I knitted garter-stitch shawls in the cast offs from mum's projects and crocheted minuscule handbags from Women's Weekly pattern lift-outs.
And I have knitted almost every day since. Now I hardly glance at my stitches, only pausing to execute a slow dance through a central pattern and then knit on. My house, you might say, is always in stitches.
In the late '70s I had a small child and little spare money. I travelled by train to Melbourne University three times a week and measured out my time in sleeves. A striped sleeve could be finished if I knitted steadily both ways. That was two sleeves a week, as well as all the other knitting in between. I sat at the back of the lecture theatre and knitted my way through English Literature and Indian Studies, pausing only to jot down a note here and there.
While knitting I have planned essays and mined the imagination for short stories and the plots of novels. Perhaps there is magic in the weaving of wool that links to the weaving of story. To weave is to connect elements, to make patterns.
I am not the only family member to have apportioned time this way. I hear one sister say that the car trip from Adelaide to Melbourne was just right for creating garments for their art and craft shop. Now she makes delectable quilts and a framed piece of her red-work embroidery sits on the bookshelf next to my computer. Another sister embroiders exquisite haystacks in autumnal shades in between twin jobs as nurse and dairy farmer. A third produces intricate cross-stitched samplers for each grandchild. Needles and love. Love and needles. My sisters are a-tangle with thread as they quilt, cross-stitch and ply needles through fabric and wool. In my fancy we are linked by stitches, and despite differences we are held together as firmly as a row of knitting.
While the rest of the world embraced jump-suits, I knitted a baby's outfit of ice green with bells worked into the hems of the dress and matinee jacket. Of course, with matching bonnet and bootees. Later, in a pre-Raphaelite moment I embroidered huge roses on a grey jumper in knitting stitch and rolled out a purple coat with a Peter Pan collar. There are eons between these items but the memories entwine and form my brightly-coloured, kaleidoscopic knitting past.
Knitting has recently had a revival. I know of at least two current books with knitting in their titles, one of which is being made into film. And I hear that knitting is the new yoga. There is some truth in this if you see the art as tying something other than yourself in knots. As I slip through rows, the world recedes and I meditate from behind my needles. But despite this nod by the world of fashion, there is - and has always been - a resistance movement that in gentle defiance weaves history with thread. Where you can follow the trail in search of jacquard ribbon to sew rosettes for a hug-me-tight. Where, when you find it, the sales woman on the end of the phone will say: "So pleased we have it for you. I'll post it and you just send a cheque or drop in the money when you're near." The world of thread is a kind world. And its history is silent, rarely written about but stored nevertheless in cupboards and suitcases and the chambers of hearts.
In the basket beside my chair, I always have the next project waiting so that I can cast off and cast on in the same day. I don’t unpick now or weave together small pieces to make a striped scarf or a beanie. These days I use full balls of wool and give what remains to local groups who knit blankets for the elderly or tiny hats for premature babies. When I grow older, I know I'll join one of these groups.
I have knitted my way from Paris to Rome and surveyed Tuscany through a three-toned lace pattern in shades of turquoise, and a couple of years later through soft brown angora. I have worked in plain fabric, through intricate patterns, in stripes and in Aran and Fair Isle. This year I have decided to master Intarsia, that glorious asymmetric meandering of colour and pattern though the garment.
But for now, I am in knitting heaven and my fingers itch at the prospect of bears and balloons on small soft garments; woolly things to warm our little banana.
Published in The Age, A2, Saturday, July 5, 2008