Yesterday I had the pleasure of going through a century and a half of family photographs, some of which had seen much better days. I was given the ones that had textile or otherwise crafty significance, including one of my Aunt Edith knitting in 1953 and my Aunt Corinne standing by a spinning wheel while on vacation in Holland in 1930.
Both of these photos are currently refusing to cooperate with my scanner, so I bring you the photo I like to call “cake, turkey or more cake?” It’s the fruits of my great grandmother’s home economics class labor sometime around the beginning of the 20th century. One assumes that they hopefully learned how to cook more things in the kitchen besides dessert and fowl, but I digress.
Yesterday afternoon was a true gem, sitting in my grandmother’s bedroom bathed in rays of sunlight from the window uncovering dusty history spanning generations. Reading inscriptions on the back of photographs, tearing up over old love letters, holding war artefacts, swooning over the elaborate wardrobes of time past.
It was one of those magical days that transports you back in time without your consent, taking you on a journey through eyes and ears that resemble yours. Along with the crafty photographs, I was especially drawn to the myriad pictures of my relatives houses, old handcrafted houses in the heart of Boston and the backwoods of Massachusetts. It reminded me again and again of why my work so frequently reaches into the past- because all of our current trends are little but recycling history with a little bit of foresight added in for good measure?
There is little denying the soothing quality aspect to craft that allows us to constantly straddle the past and the future. With one foot firmly planted in each dimension, we are properly armed for the trials of the present, whatever it may bring. Each time I pick up my knitting needles, I am comforted in the fact that these little sticks passed on through history have been held by strong, creative, working hands all tailoring the exact same movements to each person’s personality.
By using the same techniques to exert our personalities, we allow ourselves to honor all three- crafts past, present and future. The trick is becoming aware of all the history you are holding in your hands as you create something new from something very old.
And speaking of something new, two websites dear to my heart have been brought to my attention, Threads of Compassion (a site collecting scarves for victims of abuse) and Stitchlinks (a site about the therapeutic benefits of knitting). As both sites are dedicated to issues very personal to me, if you have a minute, they might be worth a look.