Mrs Brown

Last week was the tenth anniversary of my Nana's death from cancer. Very few days go by when I don't think of her. She was dynamite - four foot nothing but you didn't mess with her. (There were some very stong women in my family). She also had an interesting take on life. When I was 16 and not sure about what I wanted to do with my life, she casually wondered if I had thought about being an undertaker. Why? "Well, it's a job that's never going to go out of fashion." Very true, but I sometimes think that I get my twisted little viewpoints from her. :-)

Across the road from her lived Mrs Brown. All of the kids in my Nana's street used to end up in Mrs Brown's garden - to play, to fight with eachother, and to chat with her. One afternoon, that's where I ended up too. I was four, maybe five, and Mrs Brown was knitting. I must have expressed an interest because she taught me to knit - just garter stitch, but that seems to have been enough. She cast on some stitches - green acrylic wool onto little orange plastic needles - knit a few rows and then I had a go.

The finished project was a scarf - full of holes, of varying widths as I picked up more stitches, and an assortment of colours. I had used as many oddments of wool as I could find - different textures and different colours. The finished item was inflicted upon my Great Granda...and he wore it, which I think is wonderful.

Over the next few years, I must have learned to purl, to cast on and off because by the time I was about nine I was making toys and dolls. These were all my own design too. Impressed? Don't be - it's amazing what you can make from squares and rectangles - dolls a la "Metal Mickey", chunky and blocky. I discovered Jean Greenhowe at 15, and actually followed a pattern featuring the concepts of 'shaping' instead of just churning out the squares.

Then I stopped knitting, and it wasn't until March 2006 that I picked it up again. I was revising for an exam and needed a way to relax. I couldn't do my "usual" of reading because I was more likely to remember the plot of the novel I was reading than the statistics and diseases I needed to know. It was Jean Greenhowe I went back to - jellybabies as a way of easing myself back into knitting. Since then, my knitting has vastly improved through baby patterns, grown-up patterns, Fairisle and of course...the socks!!! There is still a lot I want to learn to do, but it was Mrs Brown who started the whole thing off.

Sadly, she died a few years ago, but I remember reading a Native American (First Nation?) proverb a few years ago. It goes along the lines of: "No-one truly dies as long as someone remembers them." There must be many people who are 'kept alive' in such a way as people reminisce about the ladies (and men!) who taught them to knit.