#52Ancestors, Week 26, Black Sheep

Are there truly people who are black sheep ? Isn’t that label just a judgement we have cast upon someone who chose a different path to the norm, or to us ? Do they see themselves as misfits and rebels ? Or as progressive and adventurous ?

Anyway, I can’t think who to write about for this. My brickwall people aren’t really black sheep, they are just secret keepers, or actually too normal and not attracting attention to get themselves documented and more easily found.

So, I’m going out of the box again, way out on a lateral tangent with this topic. I saw something recently that said about 7% of American adults (16.4 million !) actually thought chocolate milk came from brown cows.

Black wool comes from black sheep, white wool from white sheep; are there actually rainbow coloured sheep out there somewhere in a paddock I’ve not yet found ? I don’t believe so. But now that I have segued myself to where I want to be, let’s talk about knitting.

People have been knitting for a long time, fashioning items of clothing, working on a frame and making blankets and the like. Soldiers knitted in the trenches and in past centuries many men knitted alongside their womenfolk.

My Bartlett forebears were glovers & sailmakers from Somerset. My Coopers were tailors – did they knit too ?

I remember both my grandmothers knitting and crocheting. My mother and my aunts all knit too. Skills they all learned while young, passed on by their mothers. I learnt to knit too although I have never been a great producer of knitted garments. It is something I do sporadically. Scarves, jumpers, cardigans, baby booties, bonnets, dresses and hats, blankets.

I remember my first attempts which involved either lots of dropped stitches and holes needing to be rescued and repaired by my patient teachers, or rows where extra stitches seemed to multiply exponentially when they didn’t need to.

Sadly it is a skill which I haven’t successfully passed on. I’m still working on that. Kids don’t wear knitted homespun garments now, like they used to. Perhaps the children of hipsters and eco warriors will once more, in the future.

Here in Australia, there seem to be woollen mills everywhere. The wool industry is alive and well. In New Zealand it seems to have become very artisan and expensive, sheep farming appears to be not be as common as it was when I was younger. Dirty dairying is on the rise. (Seriously how much milk does a tiny country need ?)

Anyways, thanks for passing on these skills to me, Mum and Nana. Maybe one day I will be a super knitter too. Maybe I’ll start a knitting club, or classes to teach others. Although I do remember once attempting to teach my Brownie pack to knit and nearly tearing my hair out, so maybe not 20 students at a time ! Perhaps I should have learned this rhyme

In through the front door

Run around the back

Down through the window

And off jumps Jack.

Maybe that would have made the task clearer for them all. Meantime, I’m off to finish a jumper I have taken over and dream about one day when I’m feeling more settled and I can knit (and craft) to my heart’s content.

Baa baa black sheep

Have you any wool ?

Yes sir ! Yes sir !

Three bags full.

One for my master, one for my dame,

And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.