Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Does not compute

I'm reading another (very yummy) book about Gansey knitting - Cables, Diamonds, Herringbone - and engaged as always by the backstory of the fishermen's wives and mothers who made them. So you can imagine how perplexing it is to me to read about a tradition in which women valued their family patterns and taught them to the next generation, who simply assumed that they would be using these patterns to help clothe the men in their family and that knitting would form a special part of courtship when the time came to marry - until suddenly one set of Next Generation just isn't interested.

Not interested
?

Okay, I can see how a girl might come up with other ways to convince a likely lad she's marriage material, beside wielding needles to produce a sweater, even if it's unlike any other in a good way. And I can see how a teenage girl with her head turned, or a young mother, might say No to knitting if she hasn't learned it yet - who has time at that point? But for that apathy to one's cultural past to continue into later stages of life, and not just in one person but in an entire generation, men and women... Wow. Yet true in Filey (in Yorkshire), apparently.

Kinda reminds me of an article I read about twined knitting, which fell out of use when well-meaning folk came into communities and taught all the children to knit the Continental way, an approach that makes twining more than a tad of a challenge. And conveniently forgot to add twined knitting to the school curriculum to boot.

In other news before I get back to the book - folks, I need help with the stashing of the stash.

I counted and I only have about 15 skeins/balls of yarn I care about collecting in some visible yet dust-free assemblage. How, where, in what receptacle, arg. The suggestion box is open.

2 comments:

Karen said...

Oh, I hear you! And yet...I know that in my family, my dad never wanted handknit socks, as to him they screamed "poverty!" in a way that store-bought did not. I think there was a period in which anything handknit was eschewed in favour of the new, the factory-made, the glitzy. I'm so glad the pendulum is starting to swing back!

Kathleen Taylor said...

I like those clear plastic tubs- they have airtight lids (I live in fear of moths, even though they're not generally a problem here), and you can see what is inside them. And they stack. And they're not too expensive.