Inny's First Experience with Crafts

I think that most people will most readily associate me with being a knitter, but the thing is, I don't remember learning to knit.
Not at all.
I know that it was my maternal grandmother that taught me, but really that's just what my Mum has told me. My Nan, Myrtle Green, taught me to knit when I was perhaps four or five years old. She lived on the Isle of Wight and I would go across the water in the school holidays to stay with her and my grandfather. She was a prolific knitter and sewer all her life and could easily adapt patterns to fit anyone. She also crocheted and I think kept all this going to ease the pain in her hands from arthritis: the more she used her hands, the longer her joints would keep going.
She taught me garter stitch firstly and I knitted an awful lot of scarves for teddy bears out of the gaudiest wool I could find, on short green metal needles. Oh, how I loved those little needles. I soon progressed to making dolls' clothes and bigger things like bobble hats, but still have the orange scarf that I knitted for my teddy bear, Robert.
Nan seemed to be constantly knitting when I was young - she would make jumpers and cardigans for me with intarsia Mr Men, Smurfs or Care Bears on them, then later ones with Postman Pat for my sister. My Mum also knitted but with less enthusiasm (and probably with less time available). I remember her making a mohair cardigan for herself once and my Dad shrinking it almost immediately by trying to be helpful and putting it through the washing machine...
My Mum tells me that I was taught to knit to keep me occupied after I had read all the books available to me in the house, which really doesn't surprise me at all as I am still a total bookworm! Sometimes even now it is a struggle to know whether I'd rather read or knit. Huzzah for audiobooks, then!

You can get to know Ingrid better on her blog.

Dawn’s first experience with crafts

I know this is suppose to be about me, but when it comes to my crafting I have to talk about someone dear to me.  My grandmother, Mary “Nanny” Kenner was a great crafter.  Sewing was her first love and talent, I wish I had spent more time with her sewing and cooking.  She was a 4-H leader and loved to teach young girls to cook and sew.  (4-H is a youth organization that covered mostly rural pursuits such as home care and farming, though they have probably moved on a bit now.)  If she wasn't cooking or on a tractor, she was crafting while watching her beloved High School and College sports.  Whenever a new woman's magazine came out, especially Better Homes and Gardens, she was making what ever craft they showed.  Yes, she made the ubiquitous toilet roll and air freshener covers but she also crocheted afghans and toward the end of her life started quilting.  She was one of the generation of what I call "lost crafters".  They didn't have to craft to clothe their families or provide for the home anymore, but they still wanted to be doing something.  She never read a book and was very proud of it, even though later in life it would have helped her while away the time when she wasn't well.  She could read, just didn't believe that fiction was good use of time.  Her father came from Dutch decent and my grandfather comes from German decent, so there is a lot Protestant work ethic going on there... "Idle hands do the devils work" as the saying goes....

For the first 13 years of my life we only lived a few miles down the road from my grandparents and I got to spend a lot of time going through Nanny's collection of magazines and pulling out her crochet hooks and yarn.  I don't ever remember not crafting.  My mom can craft and is a very talented artist, but she is more selective and only does it when she has a project.  I just love to do it, like Nanny.  Her stash was never as big as mine, but she did have a stash of yarn and fabric that I could rummage through.  When I was probably 5 or so she taught me to crochet Granny squares, and today that is how I start teaching people to crochet.  It is such a fast and easy way to learn the stitches and still be making something!  Over the years I've made many afghans, doilies and took up cross stitch.  I then started dabbling in almost every craft you can think of, mosaic...beading...embroidery....needle lace....I've always said that I'm a collector of techniques.

The only craft I never saw Nanny do was knit.  She tried but her tension was always very tight.  I had the same problem, and for years I would try and fail to make anything that didn't cause my hands to cramp.  But, when I turned 30 I decided I was old enough and should have the patience to work on my tension.  One weekend close to my birthday I had the house to myself and I took a book from the library, yarn and a set of knitting needles and started.  I spent the whole weekend knitting until I felt that I had it...then off I went gloves, socks, blankets.....you name it.  So, here I am today, still collecting techniques, my stash growing so big I've had to move to the middle size bedroom in our house and I'm surrounding myself with friends that encourage (or enable) my crafting.  I feel more and more like Nanny who also had lots of friends around her to craft with.  Thank you Nanny for the crafting genes....I would be lost without them.

And as with the color of eyes or shape of the body the genes of crafting pass on....the picture is of me and my niece Paige.  She has the crafting gene and whenever I go over to the States to visit we have a crafting afternoon.  She is very talented with lots of ideas.  She is finger knitting in this shot which she took up with gusto.  It is so wonderful to be able to pass down what Nanny taught me.

The images in this post are copyright of Dawn. If you wish to use the images please request permission from Dawn.

Eddie's first experience with crafts

I must admit that I have always been exposed to crafts. My mother was a very all-around crafts woman back in the day. She knitted, sewed, weaved, worked metal and probably many other things that I don't even know about. To her credit she is currently getting back into it. My grandmothers spun wool, knitted and embroidered. Growing up me and my sister would do sewing projects with my mother, and my grandmothers both tried fruitlessly to teach me to knit. I just never took to it. Therefore, I think that instead of my first experience with craft (which I can't remember anyway) I will write about my first successful experience which came around the age of 20.

In my late teens and early twenties I spend time at my grandmother Agnes' house every week. She was getting increasingly frail and had a hard time seeing to do her cross-stitching so one day I had a go at fixing some of it for her. This was how I found out that if I wanted to I could do almost any craft I put my mind to. Every time I visited she let me sit and work on the piece she was currently working on and I soon became really fast and very neat at cross-stitch. My grandmother always complimented me for my neat back piece and it created a great bond between us.

It was this successful experience which lead to me trying out and finally succeeding in many other crafts such as crochet, knitting, bobbin lace, sewing, and many more.

Helene's first experience with crafts

I know my mother knitted woolen diaper pants when I was a child, but my earliest memory of anyone knitting was my Grandfather Gunnar. He was a retired primary school principal and when I was age 3 to 6 years he would babysit me in the afternoons when the kindergarten was closed. My mother worked full time as a teacher but I grew up in the countryside where the majority of the mothers stayed at home and kindergarten was only for ‘socialising’ your child.

I remember being taught in the kindergarten how to make these round woolen tassels and very proudly showing one to my Grandfather. He must have felt inspired, because he immediately brought out his knitting gear and let me choose some yarn myself. He then knitted a hat for me and I made the tassel to go on top. As I remember it the two things took about the same time! It was a most successful experience for me and from my perspective the hat was very much made by myself.

I wore this hat for a long time but must eventually have forgotten about it. When I recently asked my mother for it she was nevertheless able to find it for me in no time – from the family’s basket of dress-up clothes! I don’t know how or why it had ended up there, but maybe it was the colour combination chosen by a 5-years-old that had doomed it worthy of a carnival costume.

The outcome of my first knitting experience is now more carefully looked after and hopefully someday I will be able to show it to the family’s next generation and tell them about their amazing great-grandfather, and maybe give them their first experience with knitting.

The images in this post are copyright of Helene. If you wish to use the images please request permission from Helene.