I never knew my grandmother. My mother’s mother died of tuberculosis after World War II when my mother was a little girl. In my mother's stories there was a knitted sweater – “made of lovely blue wool; I waited and waited and watched her make it for me and when she was done I was so happy”; of embroidered tablecloths – “so even and so intricate”; of the perfection of her technique – “her knitting was so even, almost like machine made”, and of her magnificent penmanship. My grandmother was not granted the time needed to teach her daughter to knit or crochet. My mother learnt to crochet and knit from her paternal great aunt who looked after the household after her mother died.
A treasured photo of my grandmother has possessed my thoughts; it clamors for attention. It was kept by a distant relative whom I found after a lengthy search. It is a photo of a group of teenage girls and young women with their teachers. On the back, in my grandmother neat handwriting, there is a date and: “A memento from the course.”
They sit straight backed and unsmiling under the stern eyes of the two teachers flanking their little group. Starched collars, crocheted and lace knitted sweaters, fanciful stitches hanging from their hooks, all visible under the magnifying glass’s scrutiny. There is some single crochet, some knitting, a lace collar – is it hairpin crochet? No, more like chain crochet.
The girls pose with knitting needles and crochet hooks in their hands, but they are not working with them. The yarn is wound around the girls’ left index fingers; the fingers held up straight to provide tension. They were taught the combined method, where the knits are turned around and the purls just fly off the needle. This way of knitting was a direct extension of their education to crochet which was often taught first. The yarn in wrapped on the left index finger and the right knitting needle is held the way a crochet hook is held. And – looking in the mirror I realize that their hands look exactly the way mine do when I knit.
The table in front is covered with fabrics, paper sewing patterns, a filet crochet lace table cloth, a knitted sweater; the black board on the wall behind their heads bears diagrams of a sewing pattern of a blouse. The word “measurements” and some numbers are written beside it. There is a thick legged wooden table laden with fabrics and yarn projects, and some sewing patterns; you could get quite the splinter in your leg, if you were not careful. A treadle sewing machine stands in front of the table: it has the metal legs, wheel and treadle of the ubiquitous Singer. A large piece of velvet is caught in the needle to protect it.
My grandmother sits front row center – just the way I would sit in all my university lectures! Our resemblance is uncanny – I gasped when I first saw the photo. My husband, when asked if he could identify my grandmother, answered: “I do not know which one is your grandmother, but what on earth are you doing in there?!” The same broad and high forehead, a midline step in the hairline, identical wide eyebrows and asymmetrical mouth.
A girl to my grandmother’s right wears a crochet sweater – single crochet neck band and a shell-stitch made from the bottom up; the next girl over is wearing a large crocheted lace collar covering her shoulders – she is holding a crochet hook. The girls are staring straight at the camera, except for three girls on the right who are looking off to the side – whatever caught their eye?
A lone ball of fingering weight yarn sits on top of a bolt of patterned fabric or a striped sweater. They did not use a winder; the hanks held between outstretched arms of one’s friend were wound into balls; if you constantly changed the direction you would get a perfectly round balls, the rounder the better. I look for the other balls – most of the girls have a yarn project in their hands, but only that one ball is visible. Oh! I just spotted my grandmother’s ball hiding behind the arm of the sewing machine! On the left end of the table lies a length of filet crochet lace – folded up it appears to have quite a weight and heft. Is it a bedspread? A window curtain? A tablecloth? Over the other end a thick woolen sweater is draped; it is made entirely in single crochet, the sleeves gathered into 1-1 ribbed cuffs. They knew how to make single crochet ribbing and then they would sew it onto the finished sweater.
Some of the details of the photo are only discernible with a magnifying glass: the lace pattern of the light-coloured sweater of the teacher standing in the back row, the ribbing of garment the first girl sitting on the right is knitting. I cannot make out the knitting pattern of the girl on the right, it actually looks like crocheted basketweave, but she is holding knitting needles! It looks a little like a sampler with 1-1 rib on the bottom, garter stitch in the middle and a two row seed stitch at the top. It has a long-cast on – there is quite a length of yarn hanging from the bottom corner. It was the only knit cast on used.
I have been examining the photo ever since I received it. Every now and then I pull it out of the album, and either stare at it from a distance or scrutinize it with a 8x magnifying lens. When I first saw it I thought that my grandmother was knitting, and that she did not know how to crochet and that here was the proof that she did not know how to crochet. Two years later, when I started to crochet again, I clearly saw that she was holding a crochet hook, but that she held it as if she were knitting. Then I looked at myself in the mirror holding a crochet hook and saw that she held it the same way as I do. My sister commented that I held my hook in strange way – again, until she looked more closely at the her own hand and at the way she held it herself. Recently I looked at the photo again and – it is knitting needles that I see. I see what I want to see.
In this photo, dated March 13, 1935 my grandmother is fifteen. In two more years she will be married. She will give birth to one daughter in 1937 and another – my mother – in 1941. In the meantime, a war will start, her country will first be occupied by Soviets, then two years later by Nazi Germans. Her husband will be taken prisoner and presumed dead. Her frail, elderly father-in-law will die from hunger, then her five year old daughter from meningitis. In 1943 she will escape death in the hands of nationalist thugs by crossing the river border into German-occupied Poland with her daughter. Her husband will find her there at the end of the war, she will travel even farther West to restart her life. She will make at least one lovely blue wool sweater for her surviving daughter. She will have a stillborn son, she will give birth to another daughter that will be taken from her because tuberculosis will ravage her body and turn her into a walking skeleton. She will die three years after the war, alone, quarantined at an infectious ward in a hospital far from her home town.
I know all of that, but the serious girl in the photo does not. She holds her knitting needles stiffly for the photo: this is how you hold the right needle when you are resting between rows or pattern repeats. The girls and their teachers are posing, holding themselves motionless for the long exposure needed. After the click of the camera they relaxed into themselves, dropping their hands, wiggling their backs stiff from sitting motionless, giggling and chattering, exchanging glances, making faces, turning away from the photographer. The life held captive on the film begins to move again.
A treasured photo of my grandmother has possessed my thoughts; it clamors for attention. It was kept by a distant relative whom I found after a lengthy search. It is a photo of a group of teenage girls and young women with their teachers. On the back, in my grandmother neat handwriting, there is a date and: “A memento from the course.”
They sit straight backed and unsmiling under the stern eyes of the two teachers flanking their little group. Starched collars, crocheted and lace knitted sweaters, fanciful stitches hanging from their hooks, all visible under the magnifying glass’s scrutiny. There is some single crochet, some knitting, a lace collar – is it hairpin crochet? No, more like chain crochet.
The girls pose with knitting needles and crochet hooks in their hands, but they are not working with them. The yarn is wound around the girls’ left index fingers; the fingers held up straight to provide tension. They were taught the combined method, where the knits are turned around and the purls just fly off the needle. This way of knitting was a direct extension of their education to crochet which was often taught first. The yarn in wrapped on the left index finger and the right knitting needle is held the way a crochet hook is held. And – looking in the mirror I realize that their hands look exactly the way mine do when I knit.
The table in front is covered with fabrics, paper sewing patterns, a filet crochet lace table cloth, a knitted sweater; the black board on the wall behind their heads bears diagrams of a sewing pattern of a blouse. The word “measurements” and some numbers are written beside it. There is a thick legged wooden table laden with fabrics and yarn projects, and some sewing patterns; you could get quite the splinter in your leg, if you were not careful. A treadle sewing machine stands in front of the table: it has the metal legs, wheel and treadle of the ubiquitous Singer. A large piece of velvet is caught in the needle to protect it.
My grandmother sits front row center – just the way I would sit in all my university lectures! Our resemblance is uncanny – I gasped when I first saw the photo. My husband, when asked if he could identify my grandmother, answered: “I do not know which one is your grandmother, but what on earth are you doing in there?!” The same broad and high forehead, a midline step in the hairline, identical wide eyebrows and asymmetrical mouth.
A girl to my grandmother’s right wears a crochet sweater – single crochet neck band and a shell-stitch made from the bottom up; the next girl over is wearing a large crocheted lace collar covering her shoulders – she is holding a crochet hook. The girls are staring straight at the camera, except for three girls on the right who are looking off to the side – whatever caught their eye?
A lone ball of fingering weight yarn sits on top of a bolt of patterned fabric or a striped sweater. They did not use a winder; the hanks held between outstretched arms of one’s friend were wound into balls; if you constantly changed the direction you would get a perfectly round balls, the rounder the better. I look for the other balls – most of the girls have a yarn project in their hands, but only that one ball is visible. Oh! I just spotted my grandmother’s ball hiding behind the arm of the sewing machine! On the left end of the table lies a length of filet crochet lace – folded up it appears to have quite a weight and heft. Is it a bedspread? A window curtain? A tablecloth? Over the other end a thick woolen sweater is draped; it is made entirely in single crochet, the sleeves gathered into 1-1 ribbed cuffs. They knew how to make single crochet ribbing and then they would sew it onto the finished sweater.
Some of the details of the photo are only discernible with a magnifying glass: the lace pattern of the light-coloured sweater of the teacher standing in the back row, the ribbing of garment the first girl sitting on the right is knitting. I cannot make out the knitting pattern of the girl on the right, it actually looks like crocheted basketweave, but she is holding knitting needles! It looks a little like a sampler with 1-1 rib on the bottom, garter stitch in the middle and a two row seed stitch at the top. It has a long-cast on – there is quite a length of yarn hanging from the bottom corner. It was the only knit cast on used.
I have been examining the photo ever since I received it. Every now and then I pull it out of the album, and either stare at it from a distance or scrutinize it with a 8x magnifying lens. When I first saw it I thought that my grandmother was knitting, and that she did not know how to crochet and that here was the proof that she did not know how to crochet. Two years later, when I started to crochet again, I clearly saw that she was holding a crochet hook, but that she held it as if she were knitting. Then I looked at myself in the mirror holding a crochet hook and saw that she held it the same way as I do. My sister commented that I held my hook in strange way – again, until she looked more closely at the her own hand and at the way she held it herself. Recently I looked at the photo again and – it is knitting needles that I see. I see what I want to see.
In this photo, dated March 13, 1935 my grandmother is fifteen. In two more years she will be married. She will give birth to one daughter in 1937 and another – my mother – in 1941. In the meantime, a war will start, her country will first be occupied by Soviets, then two years later by Nazi Germans. Her husband will be taken prisoner and presumed dead. Her frail, elderly father-in-law will die from hunger, then her five year old daughter from meningitis. In 1943 she will escape death in the hands of nationalist thugs by crossing the river border into German-occupied Poland with her daughter. Her husband will find her there at the end of the war, she will travel even farther West to restart her life. She will make at least one lovely blue wool sweater for her surviving daughter. She will have a stillborn son, she will give birth to another daughter that will be taken from her because tuberculosis will ravage her body and turn her into a walking skeleton. She will die three years after the war, alone, quarantined at an infectious ward in a hospital far from her home town.
I know all of that, but the serious girl in the photo does not. She holds her knitting needles stiffly for the photo: this is how you hold the right needle when you are resting between rows or pattern repeats. The girls and their teachers are posing, holding themselves motionless for the long exposure needed. After the click of the camera they relaxed into themselves, dropping their hands, wiggling their backs stiff from sitting motionless, giggling and chattering, exchanging glances, making faces, turning away from the photographer. The life held captive on the film begins to move again.
