Earlier this week, the following quote was brought to my attention:
“How would it look, do you think, if everyone, old and young, would sit down together to knit for a while? Laughter and merriment and riddles and questions and folktales and anecdotes from each person’s life would blend together in the stitches. Then later, when you recalled these events that have gone through your own fingers stitch by stitch, they would speak their own quiet language: Do you remember? Do you remember?” -Hermanna Stengard
It’s taken from the Introduction to Meg Swansen’s A Gathering of Lace, originally found in a 1925 book on mittens.
Yesterday I had a part-time job interview. While the job was pretty non-descript and involved the office triumvirate of cubicle, phone and computer, I enjoyed the interview immensely nonetheless.
The most recent job on my CV actually says “knitting instructor/organizer,” from when I was doing such last year. It’s inclusion on that otherwise ridiculous document not only makes me happy, but goes to prove how needlecraft has entered the cultural conscience.
After the formalities (introductions, job summary, schedule) were skimmed over, the topic turned to textiles. I was talking with two women, one from the southern United States, the other from Spain.
The woman from the U.S. was around my age (late 20s, early 30s) and talked of how knitting is no longer becoming something your ‘grandmother does’ and how surprised she has been recently to see her friends knitting. While I could have gone at length in response to this attitude, I kept quiet.
Then the woman from Spain, who was in her 40s, and had been completely reticent up until this point, sprang to life. Suddenly her entire face lit up and her hands danced as she spoke of all the women knitting everywhere in her native country, how it was just something ‘that everyone does’ and she grinned broadly describing the delicate lace shawls she used to watch women knitting in the park.
And the fluorescently-lit office grew new radiance as the topic changed from ‘insurance’ and ‘deductible’ to needlecraft. It this knowledge that needlecraft lies deep within our beings that inspires me and keeps me curious. Because stories such as these are everywhere, lying in wait from our childhoods, discarded in a pile at the local thrift, held in itchy ancient hands too arthritic now to grasp needles.
It is the way that these stories continually cross economic, political, cultural and language barriers that warm my heart to no end. The hardest part is starting the dialogue, but once you discover its perpetuity it’s just a matter of changing the conversation from the banal to the heartfelt.
Summer is the time for listening to The Reindeer Section.
