thedailytextile-blog

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Conference room carpet. ⁣ ⁣ All the sound fuzzed out, in full favour of my eyes on a Paisley daydream. ⁣

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Welcoming the sun with warm yellow turmeric tones. This length of cotton was eagerly dyed by a group of year 6 students, during one of my workshops in creating colour from domestic store cupboard ingredients. ⁣

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Two Cardigans

Side by side these two cardigans, though of the same pattern and the same type of yarn, sit with 34 years worth of familial love between them.⁣ ⁣ Both were made by Marcia (my Nan), who was inspired to start knitting at the age of 14, after watching her older sister Peg make a shawl. She passed away at 87 years old, so had been working those needles for 73 years.⁣ ⁣ In her later years, Marcia knitted because of the personal benefit it had for both her body and mind. She found it ‘therapeutic and relaxing’ and it kept her hands moving; something she found particularly beneficial in easing the painful symptoms of the arthritis that found its way into her fingers.⁣ ⁣ She told me that her favourite thing to knit is baby items, ‘for the pleasure of seeing the little one wearing it’, and to date Marcia knitted for her 4 children, her 8 Grandchildren, and 12 Great-Grandchildren. When I think about her hands working creatively to express her love for her family, and of mine and my daughters tiny and identical cardigans, the comparative brightness of the yarns and the different buttons holding them together become remindful of all of the family bonds that have been made during those 34 years between them.⁣ ⁣ I imagine Marcia heading out as an excited and proud new grandmother to select the yarn in 1984, and then again in 2018 for another great-grandchild. I think about all the raising she has done of her children and her children’s children, and of the meditative thoughts that she may have had as she sat down and settled in to the rhythmic click clack click clack of her task; counting off the stitches in her mind and seeing the rows slowly appear as shapes, made into tangible realities from what was once, just like her family, a simple but beautiful idea.⁣

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Marcia

Marcia

10.06.1932 - 12.09.2019

A warm, peachy morning glow in your guest room. Soothing silence, and soft carpets that eased the comings and goings of your wonderful husband, 4 children, 8 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren.....⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ A wood pigeon would quietly coo outside, and then a tiny tap at the door as you would tenderly bring the perfect cup of tea in bright entrance to a new day.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ The walls were full of love. Their papers textured with shapes that repeated in the company of playful rainbows cast across the room as if by magic, bouncing from your tiny crystal figures as we lifted them to play in the light.⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ There was so much love there. In everything, and everywhere, but most of all in you.⁣⁣⁣

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Gazing into a universe of colour/forgetting to tidy away a dye vat of Murex.