Sarah Cawkwell: Essay:
An essay by the artist from catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Threadlines at the Millinery Works 2009
"Like a knitter drowsed
Whose fingers play in skilled unmindfulness,
The will has woven with an absent heed
Since life first was; and ever so will weave"
(Hardy: The Dynasts)
Meander, loop, snake, crankle, twist and turn. One of my earliest memories is of my mother knitting and one of my earliest useful activities was to hold the yarn as she wound it into balls of wool. I don't remember when I first grasped knitting as a metaphor for a life - perhaps it was when I reflected I had difficulty in mastering the art. Sewing cloth didn't defeat me in that way. I could nimbly cut cloth, run seams, sew darts, insert zips, conceal a placket, turn hems and create clothes I actually wore. But wool, like life, seemed trickier. My patience would wear thread thin as I contemplated the endless rows that had to be knitted.
A friend once told me how her father had taught her that to turn page after page in a book is tedious but that if she read page after page the repetition of turning those pages would be as nothing to the revelation of the story. It took me many years to understand that it wasn't the stitch after stitch or the row by row of knitting that mattered but rather the shape, the texture, the colour that would emerge along the way.
"Mankind is a weaver who from the wrong side works on the carpet of time. The day will come when he will see the right side and understand the grandeur of the pattern he with his own hands has woven through the centuries without seeing anything but a tangle of strings". (Lamartine)
I have a pattern in my head. I set out gaily to see if it can work. But along the way, somehow I mislay that pattern, stitches get knitted ill and dropped and rows get unravelled. The pattern becomes vague and uncertain and seems to fade. I wonder what I was thinking about. But I continue, somehow, driven not to fail. I take a deep breath when I realise I have to destroy a part that is working to reach a part that has so singularly failed. I undo with a heavy heart some fine work to tackle what is so unsatisfactory. But tackle it I must until suddenly the pattern seems to be reappearing. I feel able to continue. Then the final casting off is in sight. There is a warm feeling for having overcome moments of tedium and despair not to mention the humdrum nature of life.
"Being an artist does mean knowing something about oneself. The way in which you do that is through working." (Bridget Riley)
There are so many images and feelings that come into my mind around knitting. Of course, there is Ariadne with her ball of yarn trustfully and manipulatively placed into the hands of the treacherous Theseus. I think of 'Les Tricoteuses' who sat, imperturbable, as people lost their heads (that's one way of coping I suppose!). I think of the dales-people who would walk from one place to another with a ball of yarn under their arm knitting as they went along; of those old black and white photographs of women knitting outside their cottages in the now lost community of St Kilda's absorbing the few rays of sun that shone on their lives; and of the women who knitted socks and warmers and scarves for their men in the trenches. I think of my mother, not to be idle, setting a rhythm and a calm to an evening as she knitted with barely a glance at what she had in her hands.
This is the story of a friend, a real knitter, who, during a long talk together about knitting, told how she learnt to knit and how she and her grandmother and her aunt would sit on a sofa in a row knitting and what it meant to her.
"I remember sitting at my Grandmother’s feet on warm sunny days, watching a ball of yarn being jerked back and forth, again and again, across the carpet. I remember the sound: a clickety-clack made by her knitting needles that filled the air like the noise of typewriter keys being rapidly struck. So hypnotized was I by the rapier-like dual between those two needles, I would forget my task to look after the yarn, which would then invariably get knotted. Then the clicking had to stop while the yarn was untangled.
"Whenever her daily chores ended, my Grandmother’s hands, ever busy, instinctively, unmindfully, reached to pick up her knitting. Waiting for her to sit on the couch, I would rummage through her bag full of scraps and knitted samples, winding yarn around my fingers, dreaming of my first cuffs and collars. Sometimes she would pull out an old cardigan from her cupboard, take off the buttons, unpick the stitches, calmly loosen its threads. Slowly, as if it could take forever, she would unravel the entire piece to form a new ball of wool to knit me a new jumper. Strong old yarn reborn once again to be passed on, concealed, in new cables and stitches, all part of the ancient ritual of hand knitting. I was spellbound, learning the art of knitting by osmosis.
"My first stitch was knitted, sitting on my Grandmother’s knee, in a golden yellow yarn. Soon I had knitted a small triangular scarf, albeit full of mistakes. And although I knew early on the first steps to this age-old craft, it was some time before I could join her and my aunt in the companionship of dropped stitches and unravelled rows. Three generations knitting on one sofa where family bonds were strengthened through the language of cast-ons and bind-offs.
"There was a lot to learn, a lot to practise. All the patterns that stitches could make and all the shapes that knitting could create, stitch by stitch, row by row. Starting from a simple loop I am inevitably caught in the spiral of a repetitive, calming motion unable to stop as I lose myself in its soothing magic." (Hania Dudziak 2008)
Knitting is a sacred and ancient art, one that has been handed down from generation to generation sustaining cultures and clothing mankind. Its very textures and patterns and language seem deeply etched into my consciousness and my art feels infused with its very ways during the making of a drawing or the teasing out of a relief. Knitting is like life, one stitch at a time, little by little. And that's how my work feels to me.
SC January 2009