Once upon a time there was a beautiful maiden (well, not really so beautiful) who lived in a small hamlet by the sea. She possessed (or was possessed by) a German mother and an English aunt, both of whom decided to teach her to knit. The results were predictable:
- hold the wool in the left hand
- no, hold the wool in the right hand
- pic up the wool
- no, flick the wool
She got completely confused, and gave up. Eight years of is too young to understand that there are often two perfectly good ways to get to the same end result. A fact that needs to be learnt over and over throughout life, and one that some never learn.
Instead I learnt embroidery, not cross-stitch, which wasn't in vogue in those lone ago days, but real embroidery, with lots of different stitches. I was given a kit of a peacock one Christmas Day and had finished it by the end of Boxing Day. Well, there wasn't much to do once the food had been eaten and the presents unwrapped. We didn't have a television then. Yes, it had been invented, but we didn't have one. I remember the day I got into serious trouble at primary school as we were asked to write about something we had seen on TV in the last week, and I couldn't. I got the ruler (across my hand) and my mother came in and shouted, politely(she was never less than polite, which only made her more scary) at the headteacher. Anyway embroidery had me hooked.
I still have the peacock.
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| Peacock, in all his 60's flower power glory. |
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