Cultureshock

You need Adobe Flash installed to watch this movie.
Get Adobe Flash

Video transcript

My Mum taught me to knit as a young girl and I’ve loved the sound of knitting needles ever since. There’s something so reassuringly satisfying about the clickety click and the way the knitting grows as the ball of wool gets smaller and smaller. In the last few weeks of pregnancy I took on the challenge of knitting a fine 2 ply Fair Isle baby jumper, with a Snow flake design in powder blue and white babysoft wool and a button opening along the neckline. The pattern was intricate and demanding but, with my hands busy and my mind free I thought about my mum teaching me to knit all those years ago and daydreamed about the changes about to happen in my life as I looked forward to motherhood and whether I might in time, also teach my child to knit.  I also thought about Madge a wonderful treasure of a woman, spirited and lively still, at 99 years old. I met Madge whilst working on a reminiscence project about Listers Mill, the largest mill in Bradford, and visible from all over the Aire Valley. Madge had worked at the Mill from the age of 12 until she retired. Her sharp memory and an avid collectors’ habit she was a gift to work with. On my third interview she told me to look in the box on the sideboard. In the box I found neat bundles of the Lister Magazine...quarterlys from the 1920’s right through to the 1960’s...each of the decades tied with blue ribbon, all, pretty much, in pristine condition. They contained the inner community life of the Mill, company news, births deaths who’s getting married to who, the latest technological breakthroughs, the results of the tennis matches and football teams, the dramatic society’s latest production and lots of wonderful knitting patterns. I had imagined that life in the mill for a young woman like Madge would have been a life of misery and drudgery...but the magazines brought to life a different story. Madge gave the magazines to me to use as I wanted. I’ve since run several projects using the articles, photographs and drawings as prompts and starting points for workshops...and I think of Madge whenever I take them out of the box... I finished the jumper just before I had my baby. I dressed him in it the first time I took him out ...I was so proud of him and proud of my wonderful knitting.  Sadly, this was the only time he got to wear it. In a well meaning attempt at domesticity, his dad scooped up a bundle of clothes straight into the washing machine and the precious jumper whizzed and whirred in the over hot water until it shrunk to a stiff matted miniature of its former self. I felt I had to put it in the dustbin to achieve some sort of closure from the angry emotions raging through my system. It wasn’t as easy with Madge. She fell ill and died just three weeks short of her one hundredth birthday. Everyone felt so cheated on her behalf. Some years later Listers Mill, and the textile industry with it, also died , a victim of foreign competition and post industrial decline...and Bradford’s woollen past and prosperity went with it. I sometimes wonder what Madge would think about that.