Childhood Crochet

This is really all about family life in the 1940s, because I was born in 1935 and in all that period up til the end of the 40s – when I’d been to Cargilfield and even got to Rugby – the routine in the evenings was absolutely regular: after father got home from work we’d have our evening meal together, and afterwards would all sit down together and do things, or play games. We did have a drawing room, which is what we’d later use, but at that time we never used it because the cost of heating it was too great, so we just lived in the dining room / living room. There was a fire at one end, and we may have eaten in the kitchen, but usually there was a cook, or helper, or nanny person who used to eat there, so we tended to eat in the dining room.

There was one big sofa (which ended up at no 9) and then mother and father’s chairs. Susan, Jane, Me, and then eventually Charles, would sit on the sofa or some other chair and talk, and as an absolute rule mother and my two sisters would be doing needlework of some sort or another. The most usual was knitting, but also embroidery work etc. My sisters tried to teach me to knit, and I tried but wasted so much of their time getting them to pick up stitches that I’d dropped that it was hopeless, though I must have spent one or two, or even three years steadily at my knitting! Father would sit there smoking his pipe and doing his crossword (the Glasgow Herald or Telegraph, I think), helped to a greater extent by Susan, a lesser extent by mother, and a minimal extent by Jane and me.

I knitted at least one scarf, possibly two, but it was very frustrating. I didn’t enjoy it, and eventually someone said I should take up crochet because there is only one stitch to drop, and I did! I took up crochet with enthusiasm, and the standard thing, typical of that time – probably dating from the war – was to crochet these squares: over one hundred squares and they are all different. I was fascinated – just simple repetitive work; bog standard design, all joined together with exactly the same stitch. I chose green – green was always my favourite colour – but I never really used the blanket at all – it’s only in the last ten years that I’ve come to use it. [Mil – has it been in a plastic bag for 60 years?] Yes, it’s been well protected from Mum’s moths!

I can’t remember when television came in? We regularly listened to the news… listened to the radio. I think we got television much later… for the Queen’s Coronation in 1952. We listened to light music – my mother was a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, she was an absolute enthusiast and she had gramophone record sets of the full operas so we often listened to those on the gramophone, but the programme I really remember listening to was on a Sunday evening. It was dance music with a signature tune – The Palm Court Orchestra – and we always listened to that. Father didn’t… he wanted peace. If there was a serious talk he might listen, but he was much more a news man and that’s that.

I’d finished it [the blanket] before I went to Rugby, so it must have been round about the age 12/3. It probably took… I don’t know…  more than one school holidays, a one and a half to two year project.

Anthony