I have asked myself if knitting and the love for yarn is in my DNA. Same really with my love for farm animals and animals in general. But more about that later.
My grandma was born in Dirschau, Germany (now Tczew, Poland) with her 2 sisters, all 10 years apart, with more sibling in between who sadly all died and one in particular a little boy made my grandma a very sad person all her life. He died of pneumonia under the care of their stepmother. Their mother died when the youngest sister was born due to excessive blood loss. The father remarried very quickly because then they were my grandma, already married and a mother herself and incapable of looking after 4 children as a 20 years old in 1939 was impossible. Like I said her father remarried really quickly, but the stepmother was just after the money and didn't care for the children and during this time her 4 years old brother died of pneumonia because the stepmother didn't take him to the hospital. After that, the middle and the youngest daughter were given to another family member to bring up. And the youngest always resented my grandma for not taking her in. She couldn't understand that it was just impossible. And she always told me that if my mum hadn't been already there, she would have taken her in. But how can you explain this to a 2-year-old.
As I mentioned, my great grandad was a farmer. He loved his animals so much he would disappear when the butcher came and would return late in the evening when everything was done and dusted. He fired a help once for beating his work horse. To cut a long story short, WWII happened, my grandma and mum escaped to Denmark and spent a few years there as refugees. My grandma told me if she had known my grandpa had died, she would have never returned to then Eastern Germany, She would have stayed in Denmark and made a life for my mum and herself there.
After returning and finding out, that my grandpa was no more, my gran had to work. She worked as a shift worker in a yarn factory. I remember, she told me they had been paid by piece. So the more they worked, the better they got paid. They had a worker who would steal yarn cones from others, including my gran. My gran had the same sense of justice and hated when someone cheated and lied. So she started to mark her finished cones. Of course, gran's work vanished again, and she called her boss. Told him what had happened. He went to the thief and confronted her. When he checked her work, he found the cones my gran had marked and sacked that woman on the spot.
The company my gran worked for was called:
Schmitt'sche Wolle in Altenburg, Thüringen, Germany
So, a few years ago, I was watching a program on the BBC, don't ask me what it was called, but they showed still photos from a yarn factory. And then I nearly fell off my chair. There was a photo of my grandma at work. 😲 So I scrambled to find it on iPlayer and took a screenshot.
I showed it to my mum, and she said, yes, that's grandma. That's how she dressed, that's how her hair was, and she would always tilt her head a little.
So that's a little bit of my personal history and probably the reason why I love yarn and knitting. And why I rescued so many pets. 😽🐰🐹🐟🐠🐦
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