A Little Knitting Yarn

Our  girls are both wearing skirts knitted by their grandmother, my mother Maiji.

My love of knitting is something I've inherited from my mother. She knits round the year and keeps the entire family supplied with sweaters, ponchos and shawls. Knitting keeps the mind alert and the fingers agile. Summer or winter, it’s good to have a little project going. I’m sharing some memories of friends and past associations that come to mind whenever I knit.

When I was at school in Delhi, Miss Saldhana the needlework teacher taught our class how to knit. She took a double period with us on Tuesday afternoons. It was 1972, and it must have been a golden era if girls in Class V were actually allowed time for classes in needlework, art, elocution, singing and dancing.

Many of us found Miss Saldhana scary. Our first project was a pair of baby’s bootees. We had to bring two balls of wool from home. One girl brought black wool. Miss Saldhana called her to the front of the class and shook her shoulder with one hand while wagging the bag of wool at us with the other. 'Black wool! For baby's bootees. Like a sign of death on the baby's feet!'

Miss Saldhana's sharp tongue and good teaching ensured that we all completed the bootees in very little time. We actually enjoyed the work too. In the winter holidays that followed, I'd ask my mother or sisters for a bit of wool and knit useless little patches that could be undone and re-done.

Just one of the dozens of dolls Maiji has knitted!

My mother knitted all my sweaters, as she'd done for my brothers and sisters before me. I'd show off her creations in college. Some of my friends asked if Aunty would be so kind as to knit for them too, and she always obliged. It took her hardly any time to turn out colourful and imaginatively designed pullovers.

More knits by Maiji

I enjoyed going with her to the wool shop in Sarojini Nagar. We would spot a good knitting pattern in the latest issues of the English magazines 'Woman' or 'Woman and Home' from the mobile lending library which the magazine wala carried around on his bicycle. The patterns of those days fuelled the imagination. 'Our model is wearing this sweater in Ash, Rose and Snowflake,' one would say, and it might continue: 'Our knitting editor also recommends Toffee, Russet and Freesia or Navy, Cornflower and Magnolia.' The names were enough to transport me to an unseen land.  

The shop was quite big. It had 'lacchas' or bundles of wool tumbling out of shelves that ranged up to the ceiling. There were cardboard boxes, neatly stacked, which held balls of wool. There was wool in sacks on the floor. The shop was always packed with people buying, and there were many salesmen. One of them assigned himself to my mother, who was a big buyer. His name was Bhagwan Das. He wasn’t very young, but he could hop over the counter and up into the loft if required. He always managed to find just the shade we wanted.

I only felt the need to knit when I became a mother myself. The babies had outgrown what their grandmother had knitted, and she was going to be away that winter. Living in a tea garden was like living in an extended family. I turned to the other ladies on the garden for help.

I first asked Rosie if she could teach me to make warm vests for the babies. Rosie promised to come over and give me a lesson. Two or three days passed. A packet came from her bungalow with a note. It said, 'Sorry I didn't wait to wash them, Gowri. I was in a hurry to give them to you.' There were two pink vests, knitted in just the right sizes for the girls! I went to Rosie’s as soon as I could and thanked her with a big hug. She laughed happily and said she'd had such fun planning the surprise. It was lovely to be   knitting little pink things, she said, being a mother of two boys! That memory is warm, just like the handy vests which the babies wore for years. 

When our elder daughter started school, she needed a V necked sweater. This time Smita took what I had knitted and worked on it. I could only knit the back and the front pieces up to the point where they needed shaping. These pieces were sent off to Smita’s bungalow, where she did all the hard work, shaping the armholes and neck, and making borders for them. 

The next year I started on a sweater for my husband and took my work to the club like an experienced knitter. Western Dooars Club was full of ladies who knitted frantically in preparation for the cold weather. They all became my gurus.

Rafat took one look at what I was doing. 'Not Fisherman's Rib, Gowri,' she said. 'You'll use kilos of wool, and it'll take you ages to finish.' She made me rip out what I’d done, and thanks to her, Mohan got a sweater which was knitted in a sensible pattern - one which I could finish!

The following year, Mridula ripped out whatever I'd knitted of a sweater for my youngest because I'd cast on too many stitches. She sat and supervised while I cast on the correct number and began again.

Cold weather mornings in the club on the days leading up to the Christmas party were the most enjoyable ever. The mothers would be as excited about Christmas as the children were. We all wanted our little ones to be wearing new sweaters, coats or knitted frocks, so when we weren't putting up Christmas decorations we'd be knitting.

This Super Mario sweater pattern was in Woman's Weekly

Those days the good wool shops were all in Siliguri. We'd talk about them for hours at the club. There was 'Vandana Wool Emporium' and 'Bengal Wool House'. You could take your pick from many brands, but Vardhman was the best then as it is now. Later on two well-stocked shops came up in Mal Bazar, both called 'Siddhi Gopal Stores'. There was one in Birpara as well. 

Over the last few years, the unpretentious wool shop in Binnaguri has become the only place where I am able to shop for wool. This is where I find wool not only for my needs, but also for my mother, who can't get good wool in Chennai. When I need a little cheering up, it's the best place to go. The names on the ball bands send me on those little imaginary trips again – Gold Mohair, Feather Glow, Passion, Blossom, Christina - and the varieties, soft or sparkly, speckled or tweedy, suggest endless possibilities. It doesn't cost much to pick up a few balls of wool and start a small project like a muffler or a hat. Some bright wool and a finished product at the end of two or three days is just the cure for that 'Nobody Loves Me' mood.

I love what the wool shop stocks these days!

I asked Deepak, who runs the shop, if he had a lot of customers buying wool. I wondered what kept his shop going in Binnaguri when so many others had closed down. The Birpara shop stopped keeping any wool at all. So did the shop in Banarhat. Deepak told me most of his customers were the ladies who lived in the army cantonment. The jawans’ wives knit a lot. 'Hardly anyone from “civil” knits, ' he added.

The big shops in Siliguri, the ones we used to long to be able to visit frequently, don't look like wool shops any more. Four or five years ago, I found they had hardly any new stocks of wool, even after the cold weather and the knitting season had begun. What's more, the shopkeeper said it was a waste of time to knit when you could buy ready-mades! When he saw the expression on my face, he quickly said the women in his family were lazy and didn’t bother to knit. He got a positively dirty look from me for running down his own women.

I don’t carry my knitting to the club any more, but there are still many of us who knit in tea gardens – and I like to think we are all reasonably ‘civil’. The internet has any number of websites featuring knitting techniques and patterns. There are ace knitters out there who are willing to share their expertise: some for a price, and some for free. I don’t miss that old mobile magazine wala library any more.