Knitters keep tradition alive – by visiting tea room
Two workshops a week allow Women to pass on art of making sweaters and quilts
Published:
A GROUP of women are keeping a historic north-east tradition alive from a small tea room in Moray.
The Puddleduck group, made up of mainly elderly women from Cullen and surrounding villages, hold two workshops every week in an effort to pass on the art of knitting gansey sweaters and embroidered quilts.
The tradition goes back many generations, with the wives of fishermen along the entire east coast of the north of Scotland making the jumpers to keep their men warm while at sea.
Margaret Donn, 81, of Cullen, is one of the women teaching younger generations how to make the jumpers, which were an important part of her childhood.
The daughter of a fisherman who died at sea 60 years ago, Mrs Donn was taught how to knit a gansey by her mother and mother-in-law when she first married her husband James in 1949.
As an already established knitter who was taught at school from the age of 10, she learned how to make a gansey “as a matter of necessity”, like all the other wives.
Anchors
The patterns would be made up by the women as they went along, sometimes including anchors or ropes or cables, running in straight lines down the front and back.
Knitters used four small steel needles to make the body of the jumper, working their way up to the arms and then joining the pieces together using more wool. A “wesker” belt would be used to prop up the needles as the heavy garment took shape.
A gansey is made using one colour of wool, and each community would use its own pattern.
Mrs Donn said: “The women worked very hard getting every intricate detail correct.”
She recalled how the wives would often gather by the harbour and sit on the wall late at night while their men were at sea, making use of the midsummer light by knitting clothes for their families. They also knitted blankets for the men’s bunks on the boats. Mrs Donn said no matter how often her husband went to sea, she never got used to it.
“You have to have a lot of faith when they are away. They are out there doing a horrendous job. In those days knitting brought the women together.
“We have to keep it alive for the next generation. I hope we can encourage the young folk to continue. It should be taught in school because there is nothing better than a properly knitted jumper. It gives me great pleasure to see it taking shape.” The Puddleduck group meets at the Puddleduck Patch cafe in Cullen on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
