#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.

#52Stories, Week 50, Which of your childhood holiday traditions have you carried on into adulthood. What new traditions have you started ?

Making a fruit cake is the obvious tradition which I have continued. (Although it has been missing the last couple of years since I became a bit of a gypsy.)

I still send cards each year, not as many as I did once. Not because there are less people to send to; more that I make my own and lack of organisation often means I run out of time. It is also more costly these days as postal services struggle to run their businesses. But as connected as I am on the web, I still believe in snail mail. If we all give up and don’t use it – it will be lost forever. (In New Zealand anyway. Other countries who complain about their services still have effective services operating today. Don’t get me started on the indefinite amount of time it takes to send and receive mail on three teeny islands.)

So, making cards is a new thing and there have been many different designs over the years (I just found about 15 or 16 years of photos !).

Packaging. This has become a real part of the process for me. The thought which goes into the gift and then the presentation.

Writing a Christmas newsletter to update friends and family of the happenings during the year.

Decorating with a theme. This too has gone a bit by the by since moving around more. White tree/Red & green tree/Gold tree/Silver tree/Red & white tree

I have a bit of a thing about snowmen – like Frosty who I made some years ago.

I have a couple of other snowman ornaments packed away. I like penguins too – not so many of those ornaments though. Santas too – big fat round ones, tall skinny wizardy looking ones; and then houses. “Claire’s Card Shop” which was given to me one year as well as a gingerbread house and others lit by led lights run on batteries.

Then there is bunting – nowhere really to put this up this year so it is safely in a box with the others waiting for “one day” to arrive.

Carols by candlelight, or just carols in the park. One thing I miss from Wellington is the Onslow Brass Band. They would walk around the streets, stop at intervals and play carols, collecting for charity at the same time. Hearing the strains of a carol played across the valley or at the bottom of the drive always had that “feelgood feeling”. Like Christmas really is here.

Going to church for Christmas Eve carols, sometimes going to the same church each year, other times going somewhere else, a new faith or a church in a different suburb.

Checking out the Christmas light displays. This probably started when we lived in Hamilton when Lauren was 2 or 3 and we went to the lights at the Temple in Tuhikaramea. Lots of late night driving to streets and suburbs far afield ensued. Sometimes we’d go after the Christmas Eve church service as well. This year, no car, so it will depend how far we need to walk.

Some traditions have gone for now; retired – letters from Santa, snowy footprints under the tree, cookies and milk left on a table and water outside for the reindeer.