When I was a small child during the war, toys were in such short supply that
I can remember quite clearly not only my first doll, but the journey by bus to Lewisham to buy her. I called her Susan and although I must have spent some time playing with her only the excitement of her acquisition has survived the passage of time.
Most of my toys were home made. My father enjoyed woodwork, and Susan was followed by a puppet, made by my father and dressed by my mother. She held my interest for a long time. Although I never really became an accomplished puppeteer I enjoyed pulling the strings and watching the puppet's haphazard movements. The downside was that I spent as much time undoing the tangles as I did playing with her.
Perhaps inspired by a red knitted rabbit called Henry, I then turned my attention to knitting. In those days every little girl learned her purl and plain but for me it was a frustrating and unfruitful activity. By the time I had disciplined my lefthandedness to knit in the righthanded manner my mother prescribed, the novelty had worn off and did not resurface again for fifteen years.
But learning to knit had opened the door to my creative side. I discovered cotton reels, empty ones that is. A wooden cotton reel could be transformed into a tank very easily and cheaply too. All I needed was an elastic band, a piece of candle, a lollypop stick and a match. I made my tank and discovered a competitive spirit as I raced mine against my friends. If it broke down all I had to do was replace either the piece of candle (which had a habit of breaking in half) or the elastic band which did much the same thing.
The game came to an end when I found a far more absorbing use for the cotton reel. Four small nails hammered around the hole would transform it into a knitting machine which worked perfectly well turned either clockwise or anticlockwise and that put me on a par with my righthanded friends. Once the technique of winding the wool and passing it over the nails with a darning needle had been mastered I became an avid French knitter.
This craft, although engrossing, presented only one actual moment of excitement. This was when, after countless futile pulls at the tail of wool hanging through the hole in the middle of the reel, the knitting finally appeared. It was then that the dreaming could begin.
I dreamed of making a rug as I wound the wool, passed the stitches over one by one and tugged at the tail to keep a good tension. It didn't seem so unrealistic at the time. After all my mother made rag rugs. I used to cut up little strips of material for her to hook into a canvas. They were placed at strategic points around the house, accumulating dust from the street and excluding draughts from under the doors.
My rug, in multi coloured wool, was destined for better things. It would be placed in the hall, a carefully wound circle of soft wool to be admired by visitors and family alike.
When the rope of French knitting stretched from one end of the house to the other and the nails had made my fingers sore and the darning needle a permanent dent on the first finger of my left hand, I felt that the time had come to roll and sew it into shape. The result was disappointing. The circle was small and unimpressive. It was going to take longer than I had expected to reach my desired goal.
I continued to wind, pass over and pull, but the larger the circle the more slowly it seemed to grow.
Sadly, the task proved too daunting, but it took months before I finally admitted defeat. Or did I? Even now, all these years later, I can see my rug sitting in pride of place on the bare linoleum in all its completed glory.
Am I still dreaming or did I perhaps finish my rug after all?
