A stitch in time.

My mother read with a torch under the bedclothes. Her sister, my Aunty Esther, knitted. The click clack of knitting needles accompanied the turning of pages.
No Internet or smart phones people back then made their own entertainment, including knitting.
And then my mother, laid down her books and swapped yarn for yarns.
She fashioned me an Arran coat, with a collar and a design that looked like Garofalo Conchiglioni. Knee length with that lovely smell of lanolin that comes from sheep. For the love of me I can’t find that coat anywhere.
Then 38 years ago, I got pregnant and my mother knitted me a light green cardigan, patterned, with pockets . I’m 5 foot, she made it for a 7 foot rugby player. Back then clothes were bought to grow into. I’ve never grown into this cardigan. The sleeves are too long and it’s heavy, but my mother worked her fingers to the bone knitting it. I won’t go as far as to say that it’s like she’s hugging me when I wear it, but it is a cardigan of weight.
My mother knitted to combat a lousy marriage. When my father shipped her out to Bedfordshire into a loveless bungalow, she took her knitting paraphernalia with her. He shouted at her to stop with the noise, so she knitted silently when he wasn’t around.
He abandoned her, after 45 years of marriage. On the side of a road with a white carrier bag and 11 quid in her pocket, he disappeared and she never saw him again. She refused to go to his funeral and carried her resentment around with her like a depressed yak.
And then she was put into temporary accommodation. A nasty little flat with dog shit on the green outside her window. She knitted for poor people in Africa. Squares of coloured wool to be made into blankets.
Sitting in her bedsitting room with the radio on behind her. Writing letters to the council she made shawls for the less fortunate.
She kept her sadness to herself and was reticent to reveal the coming of Jesus. She thought we would laugh.
She was knitting and Jesus appeared before her eyes – in technicolour.
She blinked to dismiss him but he remained. For ten days he sat with her as she cast on and cast off doilies for the Biafrans.
She thought we would laugh at her encounter with Mr.Christ. But we never did. Who were we to say it didn’t happen.
Of course I thought my mother knew everything, until I got older and realised she didnt know as much as I thought she did, but she was my go to for chicken soup and knitting.
I started knitting when I was 30.
I was in the West End giving a bewildered performance in Dario Fo’s ‘Accidental Death of an Anarchist’. I came on in the second half. I was bored shitless, I discovered Patricia Roberts knitting patterns. Wild and whacky. In book 5 a short sleeved fair isle tank top took my fancy. I was young and could carry off wild and whacky.
I spent the first half of the play knitting in my dressing room., After ten months I left the show and the sweater was finished. a gaudy creation of purples and greens, yellows and red.
I put it in the washing machine, on the wrong cycle, and my handiwork came out fit for a Barbie.
Then I made big knits, on big wooden needles, v necked sweaters for the step daughters. Easy to make and a way into their affections.
And then I bought circular needles and made the old git a Guernsey. In navy wool with his initials on the bottom. The sailors had their initials knitted into their sweaters so they could be identified should they drown. Not that I thought the ‘oosbind was ever going to sink down to Davy’s Locker, but it was a handsome creation. It’s in his drawer now smelling of mothballs.
I made a yellow cardigan with a vintage pattern and a host of chunky knits that made me look like I’d joined Dorkings’ Womens Institute.
This year I thought I would take up knitting again. To make a Christmas jumper for the dawters delightful beau.
Couldn’t find a wool shop. Onto the internet to find patterns, couldn’t find any I liked. researched Ida’s wool shop in Lewes. So down we drove. A wonderful emporium of coloured yarns from mohair to alpaca. Two women, who called us darling, and gave knitting lessons. Thirty quid an hour.
I found a pattern I liked, and bought seventy quids worth of wool and then I lost my bottle. I hadn’t been near a pattern since 1980 and didn’t understand the instructions. Apparently knitting has changed. Patterns are different. Everything is very expensive and you have to know the chest size of the said young man. I left Ida’s with the will to knit but no wool to knit with.
I’ve researched Chunky knits and found a perfect easy sweater. Then my printer broke. Today after a visit from the computer studio, the printer was restored, only to break down again this evening. So now I have a pattern, but no way of getting it until tomorrow when I will have to spend my leisure day buying a new printer.
I watched the new knitting programme ‘Game of Wool’ with Tom Daly and a variety of sophisticated knitters, taking twelve hours to knit a sofa. It was about as riveting as watching paint dry.
It did not inspire me to pick up the needle, in fact I wanted to throw something at the screen. and then I remembered in my wild knitting book there is a pattern for woollen bricks.
Is there anything better than making something for somebody? A labour of love. But I’m beginning to think that maybe buying him a bobble hat will be easier all round.