Cultureshock

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Video transcript

When we think of a pair of knitting needles, we think of someone’s dear old grandmother, engaged in the activities of knitting and weaving. I cannot remember either of my Grandmothers' doing any knitting, but according to my Mother, my Nana Anne, her Mother, certainly did knit sometimes along time ago.   She taught my mother how to do it, who then taught me how to do it too.  As for my Father's Mother, my Nana Eleanor, she used to knit. 

Anne Bell, my Mother's Mother, died when I was around 6 or 7 years old in the early 1990s.  My fondest memory of her is one is one that surrounds a cardigan that I think she might have knitted for my when I was still about 3 or 4 years old:  On a Saturday, we had gone for a day of building sandcastles at the beach during the summer. On our way in my Granda John's car, back to my Grandparents house in Scotswood, Newcastle upon Tyne, I suffered from an episode of car sickness and I threw-up over the back seat of my Grandfather's car and all down my front. 

Nana Anne took my stained cardigan and washed it while I was playing outside with my older sister, Corrinne, and my older brother, Lee, in my Grandparents back garden.  At the end of our day at our Grandparent's house, Nana Anne presented me with my cardigan, washed, dried and clean again.  My memories are somewhat fuzzy from this time, but this same cardigan, which may have been yellow or green, was a one that my Nana Anne may have knitted for me when I was still a toddler. 

Eleanor Child, my Father's Mother, died in July of 2005; at that time she was very old, around 91 or 92 years old.  According to my Mother, who was always very fond of her, Nana Eleanor also knitted, but that was a very long time ago.  I think we may have had some dolls clothes that she hand-knitted, although due to arthritis in her hands and fingers, she was a little limited.  My most prominent memory of Nana Eleanor, or "Nana Nellie" as I later learned she was also known as, is of one time when I was between the ages of 10 and 13 years old; she had visited us while we were still living in Berwick upon Tweed. 

Due to her advanced age, 'Naughty Nana' as she was also known, having had seven children (for whom she would have knitted for) and a small army of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to visit, or to visit her, could not make long journeys.  So in the nigh-five years that we were living Berwick, she could only visit us on this one occasion.  Naughty Nana use to love bubbles, so during her only visit to us in Berwick, I would make solutions from washing-up liquid and water, and very carefully, I would blow bubbles with her to entertain her after I got back from school. 

Like many trades, Knitting has survived through the ages by being passed down from parent to child, or master to apprentice, through the generations.  The techniques of weaving yards of coloured yarn or wool over and over on between two knitting needles is something timeless, and like other skills, once mastered never forgotten, just like riding a bicycle.  With the exotic new yarns, threads and balls of cashmere wool available in places like shops and post offices the future of knitting still looks as bright as knitting still remains a part of everyday daily life.