Tuesday, September 4, 2007
J is for Judith
My father's sister was born in 1904. She would be 103 years old which is what I kind of thought she was, when I was little. She was very short, probably less than 4 feet tall, and petite although not slender. She was a professional textile designer, creating knitted and crocheted garments and accessories for the then-major yarn companies and 57th Street boutiques in New York City. She kept a scrapbook for two years in the early fifties, so I do have a record of some of the extraordinary things she made, but unfortunately most of what she did is lost to posterity and memory. She made angora sweaters and shawls, hats of all kinds, dresses with striped patterns that looked elegant and sophisticated, capes, gloves, shrugs, etc. Her work was definitely a harbinger of today's textile fervor. She would have been thrilled to see the burgeoning popularity of all of it.
Judith taught me how to knit when I was 4 or 5. She taught me the "throw" method for some reason even though she used continental and went at two hundred miles an hour. I remember that there were times you truly could not see the needles moving. Plus, she far preferred smaller needles to larger, so she made entire dresses and sweater sets on size 1 or 2 needles. She always had a project with her and always sat on one side or the other of our sofa, of an evening, knitting or crocheting while chatting and being part of whatever was going on. It sometimes seemed odd, to a young girl (me) but the end results were amazing. Nowadays, after a ten year hiatus somewhere along the way, I seem to be channeling her. I inherited her needles and some dreadful Coats & Clark yarn when she died fifteen or twenty years ago (how she would have loved the new yarns!) and that kicked me back into gear so that now I'm the one who always has a project I can concentrate on. Soon I'll get to teach t2cgitw. What fun!!
Judith taught me how to knit when I was 4 or 5. She taught me the "throw" method for some reason even though she used continental and went at two hundred miles an hour. I remember that there were times you truly could not see the needles moving. Plus, she far preferred smaller needles to larger, so she made entire dresses and sweater sets on size 1 or 2 needles. She always had a project with her and always sat on one side or the other of our sofa, of an evening, knitting or crocheting while chatting and being part of whatever was going on. It sometimes seemed odd, to a young girl (me) but the end results were amazing. Nowadays, after a ten year hiatus somewhere along the way, I seem to be channeling her. I inherited her needles and some dreadful Coats & Clark yarn when she died fifteen or twenty years ago (how she would have loved the new yarns!) and that kicked me back into gear so that now I'm the one who always has a project I can concentrate on. Soon I'll get to teach t2cgitw. What fun!!
Labels: about me, family, knitting, reflections
Post a Comment