Boys Don't Knit

Boys Don’t Knit

Boys Don’t Knit ©

By

Michael Casey

Boys don’t knit, your nan does, your mum did, your aunty does, but boys don’t knit. I do confess when I was 9 I did try it. Mum had knitting needles in the back of the dinner table’s drawers. A heavy mahogany table with curvy ends  with holes in, it’s probably an antique now, it’s still in the old family house. It weighs a ton and a ton of food passed over that table over the years.

So having found the needles I went in search of wool, I found it in mum’s plastic wicker basket which was in the back of the pantry under the stairs. So off I went knitting. Only my knitting was totally linear, I filled up one needle then another. My knitting did not grow, or whatever is the official word for it. Iwas no Kaffe Fassett I could only produce one line, it would be ok if I were making a jumper for a caterpillar, but for a human, my knitting just would not do.

So that was 40 years plus ago, now we have a new knitter in the family, my eldest daughter. And she knows how to make her knitting grow, I am so impressed. She got a knitting set and soon ran out of wool, she made a scarf, not as long as Dr Who’s but just as nice. I was impressed.

Being a good dad I had to go and find more wool for her. A man asking for wool does raise eyebrows, but a modern dad has to do what a modern dad does. I found some in the plastic shop, it’s a shop that sells all things that are made of plastic, and everything else, a modern bazar. Then I wondered would our local market have a wool section.

In the market, halfway up on the right I found wools galore. All sizes and colours, you cannot imagine the variety of wools there are.  Sparkly wool, fluffy wool, fat wool, thin wool, neon coloured wool. I’ve never noticed this on the sheep when we’ve driven past in the car, the sheep must keep their secrets to themselves, until they are sheared.

So my daughter has knitting as a hobby now, she says its relaxing, after all the choir and piano practice, not to mention maths and book reading. I know she’ll never starve as she can always knit jumpers as an occupation into her old age, imagine 80 years of knitting.

My mother used to knit for all of us her children, I can remember her holding up the knitting against my back to see how much more she had to knit. We had so many jumpers in the house. We used to have a corner cupboard that held all our jumpers. One day when mum was out, just for fun we made our little sister wear all 9 or ten jumpers. There were so many jumpers that my sister could not put her arms down. Her arms were outstretched, she was like a letter T. Mum was not happy when she came home to see our little sister standing like a letter of the alphabet. T.

Nobody knits nowadays; it’s cheaper to buy jumpers in the shop. Which is such a pity, as knitting is so much fun, especially if you don’t sit on the knitting needles!

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