Brilliant yarn (From The Northern Echo)

Brilliant yarn

2:17pm Tuesday 2nd August 2011 in Echo Woman By Sharon Griffiths

Some crafts are more than museum pieces.

Sharon Griffiths talks to Anne Hewitt about the delights of knitting, spinning and weaving.

IT’S not quite what you expect from a museum. Instead of the usual respectful hush there’s a happy buzz of conversation, the whirr of a spinning wheel, the click of needles and the welcoming clatter of coffee cups.

Swaledale Museum doesn’t just show the crafts of the past, it keeps them alive in the nicest possible way.

The small, but perfectly formed, museum tucked in a cobbled corner off the village green in Reeth has long had a knitting club meeting there once a month. But this year Anne Hewitt has been settling herself into a corner every week demonstrating different craft – spinning, weaving, patchwork… anything.

“There’s a two generation gap now,”

says Anne. “Traditionally mothers or grandmothers have passed skills onto daughters, but we’ve had a generation who hasn’t automatically learnt to knit or sew or make anything. Now that generation are the mothers and grandmothers, so all these basic skills are in danger of dying out unless we can teach more people.

“ But they’re much too important to lose, which is why I really want to encourage as many people as possible to have a go.”

Anne, who lives in Wensleydale, trained in horticulture but has always made things. “For many years, my home and children were my focus, but creating things was almost as essential as breathing.”

The traditional skills, she says, have always been downplayed.

“They didn’t count because they were women’s skills and they were to do with the everyday necessities – making yarn, making fabrics, making clothes – so the creative part was never valued, but they are as important as any art work.”

A keen photographer, she often uses the colours of the Dales landscape in her work. “Everywhere you look there’s inspiration, and in the museum itself there are so many lovely things, all with their own stories.”

Wool she had spun and dyed provides a backdrop to her working corner in the museum.

“Wool from every different breed of sheep has its own colours and qualities, each best for a different purpose.”

A display of hanks of wool she’s spun range from almost white to black, with every shade in between.

Others are dyed – sometimes using food colouring – to mirror the shades of bright green moss on a grey stone wall. Other yarns were inspired by the colours of sweet peas.

“A jar of marbles in the museum inspired the colours in a cushion cover.”

Most Thursday afternoons, Anne brings something to demonstrate.

“It’s just a way of letting people have a go and showing that it’s easy really. Children are fascinated. Most of them have never seen anyone knitting, let alone spinning. Just as they have no idea of where the milk in the supermarket comes from, they don’t know anything about wool either. But I show them this…”

She pauses and takes a messy handful of fleece “even a small scrap caught on a fence will do” and then twirls it in her fingers and in seconds it is recognisable as a length of yarn, ready for knitting. “Children just love seeing that because suddenly they understand where yarn comes from, how it happens and they can make the connection with the sheep they see in the fields.”

There’s nothing formal about the Thursday afternoon sessions. Sometimes there are just one or two people, sometimes many more, but it all seems very relaxing, companionable.

Christine Price spent 30 years working in the NHS before she came to Reeth and ran a teashop for four years. Now she’s making some very impressive multi- coloured socks and something light and delicate in pale yellows and oranges.

She says: “Everything Anne makes is so good that sometimes I just take the bits of wool that she’s discarded and try and do something with it, to see how it turns out.”

An interested visitor hovers on the edge of the little group, intrigued, fascinated.

“Some people say they used to knit or spin or do patchwork years ago and have forgotten about it,” says Anne.

“Others have never learnt and want to, but don’t know where to start and I think there’s a bit of a groundswell at the moment as people realise what we’re in danger of losing.

“But once you can do a basic knit stitch, you can make something and you’re away. Everyone can make something. Everyone can have a go.”

􀁧 Anne Hewitt will be at the Swaledale Museum most Thursday afternoons for the rest of the summer.

The next Knitting Club meets at the museum on August 29.

More information and to confirm dates and times: Swaledalemusem.org or tel: 01748- 884118.