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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

Had I arrived as a knitter? Maybe, but the journey continued. The signposts along the way may be those items that stand out in my mind. The biggest sign at this time was a green and white Fair Isle sweater. I can’t imagine why I was using green yet again. I’m beginning to suspect my mother’s influence in all this green. We are now into the early sixties. I was about thirteen. Jumpers had become sweaters which were longer and looser than before – requiring more knitting. This was definitely a winter sweater. It was an all-over design of snowflakes (another subconscious influence?) and the stranded double knitting wool made it much thicker than anything I had made before. Chunky, or bulky, yarns were around by now but they didn’t have the same density this sweater had. This large Fair Isle was hard going and undoing any mistake was a big challenge but eventually it was finished. I loved the sweater but hated wearing it. I couldn’t breathe in this thick, heavy thing. I have never knitted myself a Fair Isle sweater since. For myself I only use Fair Isle for jackets that can be worn as an outer layer and easily removed.

I knitted through school – sometimes literally. When I was in Sixth Form all students were timetabled for something called Form Scripture. This was to fulfil the requirements of the 1944 Education Act which decreed, amongst many other things, that all pupils should receive religious education. Until very recently the only compulsory subjects in British education were Religious Education and Physical Education. My Form Scripture was taught by a teacher I had come to know particularly well. He had been my Form Teacher and English Language teacher in the previous year and, by coincidence, after classes had been completely rearranged, became my Form Teacher again for two years in the Sixth Form. He also taught some aspects of my A-Level English course. The teaching of English was a serious affair. His responsibility as a Form Teacher was far more light-hearted. Form Scripture was something he would rather not have done at all. This is rather strange as, outside school, he was a Methodist Lay Preacher so might have been thought to be the ideal teacher for this lesson. He hated it almost as much as we did.

I always had my knitting with me for the odd moments or wet lunch-times when I had nothing else to do. Form Scripture was discussion-style. We didn’t have desks as there was never any writing to be done. We had armchairs with removable tables, which were quite an innovation in a school then. A few lessons into the term I pulled out my knitting. I could listen, talk and knit simultaneously and knitting was certainly more creative than doodling. The teacher did not turn a hair and every Form Scripture lesson became knitting time. Many of my friends were knitters, though none was as avid as I. Week by week more knitting appeared. For all that this was a very academic school the climate of education has changed dramatically since then. I dread to think what would happen these days if a school inspector walked in and found half the class knitting. As a school teacher myself now I am frequently reminded of how I ‘listened’ when I say to a pupil, “Stop doing that and pay attention!” when they happen to be doodling or fiddling with pens, pencil cases or toys.

Strangely, that teacher and I crossed paths again some years later when he happened to be one of the lecturers at a University Summer School I attended. How I would love to meet him again now to tell him how his relaxed attitude affected my future. Little did he know that the combined skills of English, thinking and knitting would eventually lead me to be a designer and writer.

It isn’t quite true to say that half that class had been knitting. No boy knitted but neither did they pass comment on the girls knitting. This was the Swinging Sixties, the era of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all those other famous groups but more importantly it was the time of Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Lulu and all those crochet dresses. For a few short years crochet took over from knitting and presented us all with the problems of what one should wear under the holey dresses. We had as many crocheters as knitters in that class.

After school came Teacher Training College, where I trained to become a Maths teacher, and the knitting continued. It was the normal range of garments for anybody and everybody. The more complicated it was the more I liked it. When I left college and started teaching the journey continued along the same path. At the time other people were very impressed by my creations but there is little that stands out in my memory now. I don’t remember the actual knitting but I can remember frequent visits to a new yarn shop in my town. I would go there on a Saturday and decide what I wanted. I would take home a couple of balls and the rest of the yarn would be ‘put away’. When I ran out of yarn, some of the girls I taught would go, at lunchtime, to collect more for me. How times have changed. It would be frowned upon in educational circles these days.

I can remember the looks of amazement on those girls’ faces when they fetched sparkling silver wound on cardboard tubes. I don’t know whether those cardboard tubes had just come into existence but they did not do a good job of holding the yarn. It was slippery and slithered off as soon as you touched it. I still have the bolero-style waistcoat I knitted with it. It was a nightmare. Not only did it slide about but it also had fibres that came off and irritated my eyes and working with it in electric light dazzled me. I persevered so that it was completed in time for Christmas and it looked stunning. It’s one of those garments that re-emerges every few years but you can’t wear very often because it is so distinctive. It was worth the effort though because it has been worn by many people in its thirty-plus years’ life (It has been most recently worn at Christmas 2005, when bolero-style tops have come right back into fashion again.)

This was the age of tank tops. I had loads of them. They had no sleeves, were short in the body and had no button bands so they were quick and easy to make, as were the summertime tops. Some were plain, many were striped. Yarns were getting very exciting. There were lots of variegated and multi-coloured yarns and I loved them. I knitted and knitted, mainly from patterns but with improvisations now and then. I could knit anything from a pattern. Had I arrived?

4b. THE MONKEY HOUSE continued