Weaving words,spinning tales 1

Once you notice something a whole theme develops 
before you know it. Also see 'Weddings' in April. 

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Chapter XV Knitting,Chapter XVI Still Knitting

Silas Marner,the Weaver of Raveloe by George Elliot

Bobbin Up by Dorothy Hewett (Virago Modern Classics)
Set in 1958, about a group of women working at the Jumbuck Woollen Mills in Sydney,Australia. Based on the author's experience of working in textile mills.

Quilts 1

Saw the exhibition 'Quilts' on Friday at the V & A, in advance of which I read

'A Widow's Quilt' by Sylvia Townsend Warner from 'The Oxford Book of English Short Stories'.

This is the dark tale of Charlotte who decides to make a black and white widow's quilt, 'narrow,you see,for a single bed', inspired by a visit to the quilt room in the American Museum in Dorset.

On the journey back to London, 'in a dreamlike frenzy ', Charlotte plans the construction of her own widow's quilt: the choice of fabrics of 'that lustreless soot-black,dead rook black'; remnants of the black out curtains used in the war, a shawl bought in Avignon,velvet, taffetta, sateen shaping the design of a 'trebbled ring of black velvet hexagons massively enclosing the primal hexagon of white wedding dress brocade. Extending to the four corners....., long black diagonals, the space between interspersed with star-spangled black hexagons not too close together.....; a border of a funeral wreath of black hexagons conjoined'.

She sets to work,soothed yet purposeful,referring to it as a magpie quilt,when her husband,who is still very much alive, returns home to find her busily stitching on Christmas Eve.

This is a poignant yet ironic story in which the elements come together like the quilt to tell the emotional account of a marriage and a life all down in black and white for all to see if you care to look.