By Erick Wamanji
If it gets chilly today, you have no reason to worry. Just pop into a nearby garments shop and you will be spoilt for choice: sweaters, bootees, scarves and shawls.
Yet, this advantage means one thing — the demise of knitting and crocheting craft.
There was a time when yarns, hooks and needles were a woman’s trademark. Today, few will bet on this.
"Knitting and crocheting is no longer fashionable," says Ms Stella Wanjiku, 56.
"Women no longer want to bother their tender fingers with needles. It is sad we have disregarded a great art," she says.
"It was like cooking; a part of homemaking," she recalls.
Knitting was once a pastime for women. [PHOTOS: ERICK WAMANJI AND COURTESY] |
She knits sparingly for her grandchildren.
Then, mothers boasted of oodles of patterns and yarns of every hue. They seized every opportunity to knit or crochet in offices, buses, or during Sunday afternoon tittle-tattle.
Knitting was to women what Face Book is to today’s youth — addictive, irresistible. Women found thrill in learning and developing new designs.
As some would put it, baby-girls were born holding the crochet hook or knitting needle.
Yet, knitting today is rocket science to most young women. When The Standard on Saturday asked several of them about their ability to knit, most gave blank stares.
"Knitting? Oh, that’s so yesterday. Who has time for that?" poses Ms Catherine Ndotty.
At 23, Ndotty, a sales executive, says she has never knitted. And chances are she will never learn the art. She represents the views of many young women about the craft.
But a few still religiously hold onto the hook and crochet.
Ms Anita Momanyi is one of them. "I knit and crotchet, although most of my friends don’t. I knit sweaters and bootees for my baby. It’s fun," she says.
"It’s about passion, the strength of a woman and women should reclaim this diminishing craft," she suggests.
For those still passionate about it, they say knitting is like a beautiful ballad, where the stitches are prose and patterns form the odes that fulfil a woman’s soul. And thus a Sunday afternoon would be perfect time for it, when there is little disturbance.
Passed on by mothers
"I used to do it but I stopped. I was good at patterns and I would make schoolbags, sweaters and scarves. But now there is no time. In the evenings, I go to school, I get home when I’m too tired for anything," remarks Ms Jacinta Mbula, a librarian.
Mbula, Momanyi and Wanjiku have one thing in common: they learnt the craft from their mothers. "I started with sticks, then crooked wires before my mother gave me some of her needles," Mbula says.
"By the time I was in Standard Six, I could easily make sweaters and scarves. It was fun. We competed with other girls to see who was fastest and creative," she reminisces.
Yet others perceive the art as a show of submissiveness.
"It is just like petticoats, no girl wants them anymore," says social psychologist Njeri Kuria.
"Women want to be seen as liberated, modern and independent. Anything that is deemed not sexy is buried fast and furiously," Kuria observes.
Now only a few like Jacinta Mbula enjoy knitting. |
While even the village kiosk stocked yarn, this is a rarity today.
"Such crafts as knitting or crocheting thrive in rural societies. That is why knitting suited housewives and the rural woman," explains Ms Sarah Karanja, a sociologist.
But the craft was not necessarily for commerce. It had a deeper social meaning. It cultivated friendship between mothers and daughters, and gave one a sense of accomplishment. In fact, friends knitted for friends and it enhanced social ties.
Besides, the craft was near spontaneous when a woman was about to go into labour.
"This way, it even nurtured a great bond between mother and daughter. It taught girls responsibility and hard work. It inspired creativity," says Karanja.
If you grew up in the countryside, chances are that when it got chilly, mother’s cardigan came in handy. If you performed well in school, a neatly knitted sweater was the present. It was easy to show it off as your Sunday best.
Some women even made heavily flowered tablemats or scarves for their lovers.
If it is this good, why is the craft suddenly threatened with extinction?
"This is because it’s much easier to walk into a shop and buy a woollen garment," explains Karanja.
"Besides, women are busy. They spend their evenings in classrooms and weekends on work assignments. Knitting is also tedious," she explains.
"Daughters learn from their mothers. But from the start of 1990s, mothers got busy. And ever since they are never even around to cook in the house. How do you expect anyone to knit?" she poses.
Lack of time? Wanjiku disagrees: "Ours is a lazy generation that has lost its inner soul and depends on the factory to produce even happiness for them."
"Who said the rural woman is idle. The day begins at dawn and ends late in the night. We have to do everything, most of it back breaking, but still find time to knit," she retorts.
But knitting is not the only craft threatened with extinction. Most will find even replacing a button or retouching a seam tedious.
"But there is something sweet when you knit for your baby. It is not the same as buying an expensive garment," says Momanyi.
As historians say, everything has its time, and this seemingly is not the era of knitting and crocheting.
