Craft Heritage


With the news of the release of the 1940 Federal Census material, my interest in genealogy has been rekindled. Genealogy is one of many of my on again, off again enthusiasms. It fits together with a new found interest in history, a subject I will write about some other time. Now that I'm knitting, I have become interested in the history of knitting, and I have been enjoying, Knitting America: a glorious heritage from warm socks to high art, by Susan M. Strawn and Knitting Around the World: A multistranded history of a time-honored tradition, by Lela Nargi. Plying the three threads of history, genealogy and knitting leads me to thinking about the craft as it applies to the women in my family. Did my great grandmother, Rose, knit socks for her husband, Irish born, Union soldier, Tom? Was her sock pattern similar to the one reproduced in Strawn's history? 


I know very little about the craft history of my women ancestors. I do, fortunately, have one treasure handed down to me by my uncle. The velvet and silk log cabin quilt was made by my great great grandmother, Sarah. I love the scalloped edge with the bits of ribbon.

Sarah Ledden's log cabin quilt

I was close enough to my grandmothers to know that neither of them knit or engaged in other crafts. I did have a cousin, Dorothy, who knit. I remember sitting on her stoop, and watching her knit argyle socks for her husband. I was fascinated by the multiple swinging bobbins of color coordinated yarn. I was envious of her daughter, Barbara, whose doll sported a forest green hand knitted sweater set. I don't know where Dorothy developed her interest in knitting. I know her mother did not knit. 


My mother's passion was reading, but she began and completed a couple of projects that she made for me. One was stitched from a crewel kit, a mother rocking her baby. The other was an afghan from a Spinnerin pattern. I'm sure I still have it. If I took time now to look for it this post would not be published until, maybe, September. I did find her pattern book, so I can show you a picture. 

   Spinnerin, Fashions for Living, Volume 168, 1966.

The one my mother made was turquoise with roses cross-stitched in shades of pink. I wondered about the narrow shape of it until, years later, I saw the pattern. My mother had decided to leave out two of the narrow panels and the chain stitched joins. I have to give my mother a lot of credit for all the work she did do. She would have had to learn how to do the afghan stitch from the "How To" section of the pattern book. And I wonder if she adapted those instruction for he left-handedness. She may have used her right hand because she wrote with her right, a result of the insistence of the nuns who taught her. It is too late to ask her now. That's a genealogist's regret. Ask now, or never know. She might not have understood the chain stitch joins, never having had any prior experience with crochet. I know these two gifts were acts of love, one mother to another, and mother to daughter. Now, many of my projects are stitched with love for my children (5) and my grandchildren (10). And I use them as an excuse to knit every chance I get.


GOOD STITCHES!