My mother knew how to knit, but she didn't really knit for pleasure. She knit to make things. In fact, the only things I remember her ever knitting for our family, when I was s child, were four thick Mary Maxim sweater-jackets, when I was about 10 years old. We wore them with pride. I still have all the patterns somewhere - but only one sweater remains... the one she knit for herself. My daughter sometimes wears it.
Eventually my mother began to teach knitting and crochet in her home economics classes. Then spinning, weaving and lace-making as well. Those were skills her mother (my grandmother) had learned growing up.
I remember my grandmother telling me that, when she was young, every young girl needed a chest full of sheets and towels before getting married, because in those days large items like bedding and towels weren't washed in winter. In spring, the women of the community would gather up their winter laundry and take it to the river to wash there, hanging it on bushes to dry.
Our one vestige of that era is this linen towel my grandmother wove and decorated as a young woman with her initials, O.G., in cross stitch. It's over 100 years old.
I'd like to press it and hang it up on display, but I don't know whether to mend it first...
Would that ruin its authenticity?! But I don't want to just put it away in a drawer and forget about it, either.
I remember my mother once commenting that it was a pity that spinning, weaving and knitting were becoming lost arts. Then, a few years later, she started to teach those skills in high school. But they were - and still are - practiced as hobbies - not necessities.
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