Knitting and other things

 

Knitting and other things

We had a busy day on Saturday, when our youngest daughter and her family came to see us. They were supposed to have come before Christmas, but other things got in the way, and we had to postpone their visit. It seemed strange to see the children eating chocolate Santas and reindeer in February, but why not?

Jack wanted to learn how to knit and picked it up quickly. Apparently, he was sitting up in bed knitting on Sunday morning!

I also wanted to introduce him to French knitting, but the wool/yarn I had was quite thin and difficult to loop over the pegs, and I couldn’t get it started, so I left that for another day.

 A French knitting spool is a simple loom with three or four pegs, and produces a thin tube of knitting, which can be used in a variety of ways, to make small mats, for example.

The one I had as a child was a cotton reel with four nails hammered into it!

Often, looms with more than four pegs are used to create socks, or hats, called tuques, or fingerless gloves. Some looms may have as many as a hundred pegs. Knitting produced from the larger looms is known as spool knitting. Bizarrely, to me, anyway, spool knitting was historically used to produce reins for horses.

This form of knitting originated over four hundred years ago. During the First World War, French or spool knitting was used as occupational therapy for wounded soldiers in hospital, to practise and maintain fine motor control.

As usual, I over-catered, so we had much food left over. Bethan always arrives bearing gifts, and had brought a challah loaf and rolls and some delicacies, so there was no chance of us starving. She also gave me a beautiful bouquet.

Herschel is quite a florist and always tries his paw at flower arranging, pulling out some stems and laying them on the worktop. He did that for a couple of days, then, satisfied with his work, followed other pursuits.

We had a lovely day. I did very little, not finding movement very easy at present, and felt rather guilty that Barry, Bethan and Robert were doing all the fetching and carrying. They were happy to help, or so they assured me!

The cats excelled themselves, loving the attention Charlie and Jack – and Robert! - gave them. They seem to appreciate company as much as the dogs do.

Jellicoe, as ever, was as interested in the food as the dogs were and swiped a Madeleine before we could stop him and galloped off with it, with Gilbert in hot pursuit. Gilbert got the lion’s or, rather, the cat’s share, his poorly paw not hampering him one iota.

Sunday was a very quiet day, all the animals, four and two-legged ‘relaxing.’

We are still eating our way through the supplies, and I haven’t had to think about meal preparation since Saturday. 

Labour-saving devices

 

Labour-saving devices

                            Old treadle-operated Singer sewing machine

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

My dear husband is a technophile and thereby am I granted wondrous machines that do a thousand different things in twice the time it would take me to do the one thing required.

For example, I enjoy embroidery and a little sewing. I voiced the thought that a sewing machine would be useful for certain tasks. Immediately, research was undertaken, and very thoroughly, and before I knew it I was the owner of a super-duper machine with bells and whistles, embroidery hoops, a dongle, three massive tomes of instruction and umpteen ‘feet’ for the production of complicated stitches a dress designer would sigh for. I was afraid to touch it for fear it would take off and become my master.

 Eventually, I overcame my apprehension and have managed to complete some occasional very neat hemming. Together, my husband and I embroidered some dog portraits, and they are the sum of our efforts at artistic creativity through the medium of a sewing machine.

When the subject of ironing arose, back in the days when I actually ever attempted to iron anything, back in the days when non-iron fabrics were an impossible dream, back in the days when creases and holes were not de rigeur and definitely not a fashion statement, my husband suggested that an ironing machine would be a good investment. His argument was that it would free me to do other things. The ‘other things’ were unspecified, but it was the thought that counted.

Anyway, research duly commenced and it was discovered that an ironing machine could iron a shirt in two minutes. I don’t think that included setting it on the ironing stand or whatever it was. I timed myself ironing a shirt – it took two minutes, and so no ironing machine came to darken my doors.

A knitting machine was another suggestion. I had seen my mother and sister setting up their knitting machine. It took a very long time and seemed an awful kerfuffle. More importantly, it took away the pleasure of feeling the wool through the fingers and the comforting clickety-clack of the needles. Dropping a stitch in hand knitting is fairly easily resolved, but on a knitting machine it could take aeons, or so it seemed to me. 

I’m sure there are plenty of people who love their knitting machines. Kaffe Fassett uses one now, I think, though he started hand knitting during a train journey, being taught by a fellow passenger. The Knitting Bishop, Richard Rutt (who died in 2011) might never have discovered the joy of creation if his first experiences had been with a table-top machine.

Labour-saving machines are useful but one should always retain the knowledge and ability to do things by hand. Using a balloon whisk for scrambled eggs is satisfying, or, failing that, a fork will do. Plugging in an electrical device to do the same task is not so pleasing, at least, not to me. My efforts at bread-making, however, are dire, and so the bread-maker is most welcome.

Do you like machines that save you time and effort? Which is your favourite? Which ones now gather dust in your cupboards?