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The World of Illusion Knitting

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PICKING UP THREADS

This was written in
2007
so is now very dated

A less successful workshop was a much smaller affair, again in a village hall. At this one we had males and females and the approximate age range was from 12 years old to over 90. The lady who organised it was a keen knitter and had been at the Lancashire WI workshop. She had been fascinated and thought her craft group would be interested in something different. Unfortunately, for her and for us, they were used to a very set routine and she could not persuade them to do otherwise. They always started by making a display of all the work they had done since the previous meeting and the fact that they had visiting speakers was not going to change this. We sat and waited patiently. We knew we could adapt to whatever time we were left with.

Ben was with us at this event and was very amused by the goings-on. It was a very strange atmosphere that we had never experienced before, or since. It felt almost like having walked into a family feud that could have been started years before. They were trying to outdo each other with the quantity or quality of their work but nobody was really listening to anyone else. It didn’t bode well.

Most of the morning passed, with half of it being taken up for a coffee break, and then it was lunch-time. These events are always a bit tricky at lunchtime. Occasionally organisers do say in advance whether lunch will, or will not, be provided. If they have not mentioned it we don’t like to ask for fear of embarrassing the organiser. No mention had been made this time but Ben can sense food at a hundred yards so he was sent on a mission and duly returned with a stash of sandwiches and cakes.

Once the remains were cleared away we thought we were ready to begin but the most important part of the ritual was about to take place. The raffle was about to begin. As we waited, the organiser, who was getting more and more frustrated, came over to us and said, “I’ve got some raffle tickets for you – but don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure you don’t win”. It was a good indication of the calibre of the prizes.

Eventually we got started, with most people seated at long tables along the sides of the hall and the two oldest ladies sitting right at the back. We had already noticed a certain amount of rivalry between these two. They were both in their nineties and delighted in telling us so but one was older than the other so had a distinct advantage in any competition. What we hadn’t realised before was that they were both deaf. They did not have the vaguest idea what we were saying. Each time any of us spoke we had to wait until it was relayed to these two. Several others tried to persuade them to move nearer the front where they might hear better but they were sitting in their usual seats and would not budge for anyone. The problems were compounded, about an hour into the afternoon, when drivers arrived to collect these ladies and others left to pick up children, catch buses and for other sundry reasons. A few stayed with us to the end and it was worthwhile for the sake of those people but on the whole it was a disaster!

The third workshop, a year or two later, was memorable for different reasons. We were off to a very dedicated knitting and spinning group in a very rural part of the far north of England. One of the members of the group was a Maths teacher, named Julie Gibbon and it was she who had persuaded the group to invite us (More of Julie later). It was a long drive but we set off in good time. This was when the Foot and Mouth epidemic was at its height and, in this rural area, farmers, with the help of the army, had just started building huge fires to destroy the bodies of the infected animals. The lanes were filling with clouds of black smoke. We were able to get through but shortly afterwards some of the roads were closed and long diversions put in place. Consequently, some of the members were very late arriving. Once they were assembled, the atmosphere could not have been more different. Going into the Community Centre in this tiny village was like going into someone’s house and the knitters sat in armchairs and sofas to knit. They whizzed through the first tasks – with exactly the same reactions as the WI ladies - and were soon ready to move on to the next stages.

For experienced knitters, we have another set of cards, each with different directions for adding a shape onto the initial square. A few are able to predict what shape they will finish with but most simply follow the instructions and wait to see what emerges. There are about eight different cards and the proportions of the shapes are such that the completed shapes fit together in many different ways. The knitters enjoyed playing and soon started to see ways  they could use what they had learned.

We had a wonderful lunch. There would have been enough to feed three times as many people. By the time we went home the roads were reopened. A success!

Julie was to be instrumental in the next stage of our journey, after another dramatic turn of events.

17b. SPREADING THE WORD continued