I think that it’s useful sometimes
to take a look back at how things came to be, to examine one’s own history. It’s
easy not to. Maybe it’s just my nature. I like to look at the germ of things. Maybe it’s just to enjoy the contemplation.
I have thought frequently of early esthetic experiences, or what looked pretty to my child’s eye. One of the first that I can remember was the ruched, or gathered, red cellophane Christmas rope for the tree that I could see lights through. Beauty, to my mind! Red was my color from the beginning.
Now, way back in American history, beginning in 1870, there was a children’s encyclopedia published by the Grolier company called The Book of Knowledge. It was an adaptation of a British encyclopedia meant for children. My parents bought a set sometime in the late 1950s from a salesman who came to the door completely cold. It was immediately consumed by me and to some degree by the younger sibs.
That’s all very well, but what I am getting to is that the germ of my determined and dedicated push to knit started with an illustrated article about knitting in a volume. Typically, it was the drawing that caught me. The simple, but well drawn, illustration made me want to go and do that too. It was the drawing.
I didn’t have knitting needles of course. No problem. I whittled some out of some kind of wood stock around the place, got some yarn somehow. Probably it was purchased for me. And I began to practice the stiches. I still have those little sticks in my chest of historical stuff.
I also became a relentless nuisance to a couple of neighborhood women that I knew and who knew how to knit. I hope they got a little bit of a giggle out of the obsessed kid! I would not be denied, they had knowledge, and I wanted some of that.
I have always intended, now that it would be no problem, to reproduce the sweater in the illustration. I haven’t done it quite, but I did make a pullover version much like the cardigan in the drawing.
Why does one kid go nuts for cars, another horses, another skating, or whatever? Well, that’s just it. I think it’s something built in, part of the child’s makeup responding to a fertilizing image or experience.
No one exactly introduced me to knitting or drawing or painting or sewing, but somehow we found each other!
I have thought frequently of early esthetic experiences, or what looked pretty to my child’s eye. One of the first that I can remember was the ruched, or gathered, red cellophane Christmas rope for the tree that I could see lights through. Beauty, to my mind! Red was my color from the beginning.
Now, way back in American history, beginning in 1870, there was a children’s encyclopedia published by the Grolier company called The Book of Knowledge. It was an adaptation of a British encyclopedia meant for children. My parents bought a set sometime in the late 1950s from a salesman who came to the door completely cold. It was immediately consumed by me and to some degree by the younger sibs.
That’s all very well, but what I am getting to is that the germ of my determined and dedicated push to knit started with an illustrated article about knitting in a volume. Typically, it was the drawing that caught me. The simple, but well drawn, illustration made me want to go and do that too. It was the drawing.
I didn’t have knitting needles of course. No problem. I whittled some out of some kind of wood stock around the place, got some yarn somehow. Probably it was purchased for me. And I began to practice the stiches. I still have those little sticks in my chest of historical stuff.
I also became a relentless nuisance to a couple of neighborhood women that I knew and who knew how to knit. I hope they got a little bit of a giggle out of the obsessed kid! I would not be denied, they had knowledge, and I wanted some of that.
I have always intended, now that it would be no problem, to reproduce the sweater in the illustration. I haven’t done it quite, but I did make a pullover version much like the cardigan in the drawing.
Why does one kid go nuts for cars, another horses, another skating, or whatever? Well, that’s just it. I think it’s something built in, part of the child’s makeup responding to a fertilizing image or experience.
No one exactly introduced me to knitting or drawing or painting or sewing, but somehow we found each other!
📕
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