This week, I was invited to join a knit group in Hong Kong. On the night, a few ladies joined wanting to know how to knit. This had me thinking…not all of us were exposed to knitting or crochet from a young age.
For me it all started in primary school around age 8 or 9. As part of the usual curriculum of maths, languages and so on, we also had ‘handwerk’, roughly translated to handwork or handiwork. And in this class, we were taught a variety of crafts that, at the time, were believed to be a necessity for any wife! We had to bring a shoe box to school which we duly decorated with pictures of karate kid, the Goonies and lots of stickers. This was to be our own craft box and it would store any current projects. We were shown how to sew on an ancient handcranked Singer, did cross-stitch on a piece of blue stitch fabric and of course learnt how to knit.
Our very first full project, after knitting squares with varying success, was an elephant. Our teacher may have been a little ambitious and needless to say, my mom finished mine (sorry Miss Du Toit!).
It wasn’t until years and years later that I picked it up again and I’ve never looked back.
The enjoyment of teaching someone to knit and seeing their faces light up when they finish their first row is priceless!
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