The Olden Days

Over the last few days there's been a lot of buzz on social media about the "olden days." Romanticized in extremis I should add. Christmases past particularly but more often than not about lovely smells in kitchens and 4 clotheslines and the lovely old wood stove used for everything from baking and boiling to hot water and heat.

Romantic for some, perhaps, but a drill down into those blissful times will reveal an overworked mother, often with multiple children - my sister-in-law is the youngest of 17 - you read that right - who baked all the family bread and did all the laundry by hand, mended her children's clothes - having made them - if lucky - on a treadle sewing machine with her tired legs after a labour-intensive day and if she had enough oil for the lamp to sew by.

She tended the kitchen garden and collected the eggs and made the butter and milked the one cow or many if it was a farm. She collected the wool from the sheep to spin it and knit her family's sweaters and socks and cut down the father's shabby clothes to fit her sons and used flour sacks - often dying them in different colours from dye harvested from flowers and vegetables to dress her daughters. She bottled and preserved all the fruit and vegetables, down to the excessive eggs for the winter season.

She never, ever stopped. Her husband had it comparatively easy. Escaping from the house to do his work in a factory. an office or a farm or as a general labourer. He came home at night and put his feet up and was served his supper and fresh clothes for the morning and read his newspaper if he was lucky enough to borrow or buy one. And the children were told not to bother Daddy after his hard day.

The woman's incredibly hard day was demeaned and dismissed, despite what she had sacrificed to be this unpaid slave breeder. By her husband, by his buddies, by her church - who also expected she would supply free labour to clean the church and wash and starch the altar linens and her sons' surplices if they were altar boys.

She had 3 choices - service to the church (nun or teacher or nurse - the church owned the convents, the schools and the hospitals and profited greatly), marriage, or a single life, mocked and condemned because she couldn't "get" a man.

She never could use her brain or get educated to a higher level beyond grade school. With rare exceptions from more enlightened parents.

I was born in 1943 and lived with my grandparents for a while and witnessed this lifestyle first hand even though all their children had gone, some to emigration. Granda still worked as a labourer and granny had no electricity and no running water and even with just me in the house, she worked non-stop from dawn to dusk. Financially and religiously trapped forever.

She passed on many words of wisdom to me, the top one being: "Get an education, colleen* and you'll avoid this."

Words I followed, never wanting the lifestyle of either her or of my mother. 

So yes, I am enraged by all this memory washing. A lot of it by men. Who to this day don't ever understand (and don't want to) the workload and sacrifice of their mothers or sisters. Apparently they all "enjoyed it."

*Irish for little girl

Knitting Art

 Knitting has long been a skill that has been way undervalued and diminished by dismissive comments such as "women's work." I was very much taken aback recently by a friend who asked me to knit her an aran sweater and offered to pay me. I laughed a little, as I am wont to do when presented with such an "offer."

So I did a mental calculation of what hours were involved even if I agreed to do it. With design, drafting and gauging, followed by swatching and then knitting it up, it would be 150 hours + material. I told her this and as she was a friend and not a stranger I didn't add "So how much would you pay me an hour?" She merely looked at me aghast and said ruefully,"I guess no, huh?" and I nodded.

As I begin a project, I am struck always by how mathematical a skill it is with all the calculations involved. Like architecture. I reflect on my foremothers who were ill-educated if at all, and marvel at how they managed to do endless arithmetic on sizing and yarn thickness and measuring the multiple many sized bodies in their households as all winter wear was knitted then from socks to sweaters to mittens to underwear and hats. And sanitary napkins. I believe I was one of the last people on the earth to see these knitted feminine hygiene items on a clothesline when I was quite young.

I am working on a sofa throw - afghan, sofa blanket - for a nephew at the moment, and I thought to do a series of photos showing the process as I go along.

My "drawing board" i.e. dining table, where I develop the pattern. Note I use many abbreviations that only I can understand. D is for diamond, C for cables of different sizes, T is for twist, G is for Garter, etc.

A one stitch mistake can be a disaster so I double and triple check my numbers.

I evaluate my yarn colours, I am extremely fortunate in that I can visualize the whole completed colourful project in my head before I start in on the drawing board. I lay the materials on the couch in formation of how they will integrate. At times like these I miss my craft rooms which were always an integral part of previous dwellings. There I could lay everything out and walk away and close the door and get on with other things.

Then I do a swatch for measurements which involves knitting a small piece to make sure the design works.

Now I'm ready to rock and roll and start the piece with bated breath that it all works out mathematically and gauge-wise. This becomes super important in aran work as with plain borders moving into a design there is a massive increase in stitches across the work to accommodate the cabling and twisting and diamonds.

And now, yes, yay, brava, the pattern has worked out beautifully and I am on my way with the project. Just a little showing here of the honeycomb pattern which is in the middle and is tricky.

I will post a little more as I go along so you get an idea of what happens as it blossoms. And particularly, for me, the creator as it encourages me onward.

So there you have it, readers. If you have read this far, I know you will never think of the simple complex art of knitting quite in the same way again.

Do you do any work that you believe is undervalued?