“I’VE BEEN KNITTING SINCE 1936!”
Enny Petronella Bruin has knitted more than 150 world flags and turned them into cosy blankets.
Say hello to Enny Petronella Bruin, born in Rotterdam in 1928. She has been knitting for over 80 years, and she’s got a lot to show for it! With decades of knitting experience behind her, Enny more than rose to the challenge when her granddaughter-inlaw asked her: “Oma, can you knit a blanket from little lapjes (patches)?” “Yes I can,” said Enny. “So when I started I had red wool and thought ‘oh, I can put red, white and blue and make a ag of it” so the ag was born!” This rst patch was the Dutch ag and it sparked the beginning of a knitting vexillologist’s dream. “Altogether, I made about 150,” says Enny, “but it takes a long time because when you make a ag, you have to put the threads away that are wasted and later on you crochet the whole lot together. You can’t do it in a week or a month.” Despite each ag taking an hour or more to do, since starting, Enny has now made an amazing three ag blankets and is currently working on her fourth, this time for charity. “I gave one to my granddaughter-in-law, one to my daughter and one is ready for my granddaughter in America,” explains Enny. “It’s a surprise for when she comes to the Netherlands to celebrate my 90th birthday on 24 June.”
“Now, I am making one for poor children, for a society where I can give it to kiddies (in Ukraine),” she adds.
Enny discovered her love of knitting when she was just eight years old. “In school, when I was a little girl, I had knitting lessons,” she says. “We all had to learn to knit, we even used to knit men’s socks. Back then, people couldn’t buy them in the shops – women used to knit for their husbands.” Over the years, Enny has ne-tuned her knitting skills, and taken on other crafts such as embroidery, sewing and crochet. She now attends a weekly knitting club in Ermelo, where she has met a group of ladies who share her passion.
The ags for Enny’s blankets are selected by how dif cult they will be to knit. “It’s all my own idea,” Enny explains. “I follow the ags in the book, but not with a knitting pattern.” “The rst and second blanket are ags from all over the world” she says, “but the hard ags I can’t do. New Zealand, Australia, the Union Jack, South Africa, they’re too dif cult!”
Even without those ags,
Enny’s blankets are spectacular and she has no plans to stop knitting them anytime soon.