Have you noticed how many paintings there are of ladies knitting? I hadn’t until recently. Knitting is one of my favorite winter pass times for me. Whenever I sit down to knit, I like to make an event out of it. Light candles, put on a good podcast, and make a fire in my fireplace. Anyway, I was looking through paintings of women knitting that date back to the early 1900s, and of course, I loved all their outfits.
Whenever I knit, I feel like I’m taking part of a lady ritual dating back to so many generations before me. It’s an action that is so closely connected to matrilineal lineage. I’m not saying men don’t knit or can’t knit, but it’s undeniable that traditionally knitting has been a feminine past time.
It’ also still amazing to me that humans would make everything of theirs by hand. My father told me stories of his mother making him and his siblings underwear. She was a seamstress, so luckily she could probably do it fairly easily. I like to think about all socks being knitted by hand back then.
For a while I would get together with my girlfriends to sit in a circle, knit, and talk. I love to think of how this is an activity ladies have been doing for more than a century.
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Le Cantal, St. Jacques and the Puy-Griou, Auvergne Mountains, France
