Humour: Amanda Blair
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the jumper, says the almost diedin-the-wool Amanda Blair. Yet now she’s nostalgic for Nanna knits. In every photo, I’m trying really hard not to itch or overheat.
When my Grandma died, her traditions died with her. Some I was happy to lose – like her birthday party offerings of Apricot Chicken Casserole and Chow
Mein – both recipes sourced from the back of the French Onion Soup sachet. Yet there is one tradition I really miss. The way she loved a yarn, preferably 8-ply.
She’d spend her days on the couch in the sunroom clickety clacking through the Patons Classic pattern book, whipping up garments for the grandkids. She’d keep a cracking pace all day, knitting one and purling one, only stopping to visit the toot or to break for cheese and tomato sandwiches at 12 o’clock sharp. I’d sit next to her, amazed at her ability to talk to me about the latest issues in my eight-year-old life and not miss a thread, either in her creation or our conversation. I’d tell anybody that cared to listen that my grandma doesn’t even look at what she’s doing when she knits. It was as fascinating and bewildering to me then as James Packer and Mariah Carey are to me now.
We’d have jumpers, vests, cardigans, beanies, scarves and even bed socks in moss, bobble, honeycomb, stocking and waffle stitch. Cables, Advance Australia Fair motifs, Ken Done prints, Jenny Kee koalas. There wasn’t a knitting pattern published that she didn’t own or hadn’t stolen from a magazine in a hairdressing salon. Like knights to the royal court, we grandkids would be called to her suburban castle once a year to receive our allocation. We’d haul on our hand-knits and parade around so Grandma could admire her handiwork and ability to pick exactly the right size, not forgetting to tell us that “your kidneys will be warm now, darling”. Grandma still lived in a world where a child without a good solid winter jumper was a child calling for a bout of consumption.
Despite our protests, Mum forced us to wear the jumpers, deriving some sick pleasure from seeing her own children suffer for fashion like she had as a child. She knew the agony of heat rash and hives, and the embarrassment of being the only kid in school with a hand-knitted school jumper, but it didn’t soften her stance. You see, Grandma’s knitting solved a woolly situation for Mum – a birthday present for Gran – so every year we’d be dragged, trussed up in our hand-knits, to the local shopping centre in search of a PixiFoto. The snaps that ended up on Gran’s mantelpiece form a year-by-year history of my childhood awkwardness, made more so by the fact that, in every photo, I’m trying really hard not to itch, scratch or overheat. It was natural that I’d form an affinity with the humble sheep and to this day, when I spot a flock heaving under the weight of their winter fleece, I make a point of making eye contact, letting them know that I acknowledge their discomfort and perhaps to give them a little hope that spring will come again soon.
Having no nostalgic inclination back then, we regrettably gave all Grandma’s jumpers to the local op shop. It’s where most Nanna knits end up, disposed of by family members who don’t have room to store a collection that, over the years, can grow to rival the stocks of the Wool Corporation. Nowadays, I often find myself in op shops searching through other people’s discarded garments to find something for my own children to wear. As I scramble through the piles of natural fibres, I’m praying for a miracle that one day I might find something hand-knitted by my grandmother resting at the bottom of a shelf. I know it’s stupid and it probably won’t ever happen, but it won’t stop me from searching. See, now that I’m older and wiser, I know that nothing is as warm as a jumper knitted by your grandma. Amanda Blair lives in Adelaide with her four children and a husband she quite likes when she sees him. In her spare time, she talks a lot and sometimes does it on the radio and the telly.