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Made with Love

Knit one, purl one

Simon Goss
Ellemeno
Published in
4 min readOct 25, 2024

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Christening photo 1964. Black and white family group.
The baby bonnet. Me with my parents on the day of my Christening, 1964. © Simon Goss

Look at that photo of me with my parents after my christening. Ignore, if you can, the wonder of my apple cheeks and Mr. Spock ear, and admire my bonnet. A little white Tam O’Shanter, and I am in absolutely no doubt that my mother knitted it for me.

The sound of my mother’s knitting needles clicking incessantly was common throughout my childhood. She was, to say the least, a serial knitter, and I was assailed by her gentle tinnitus whenever she had a spare five minutes.

I was often the lucky recipient of her productive hands though, as she turned out jumper after increasingly large jumper as I grew. She spent hours poring over knitting patterns in Woman’s Weekly and an equal amount nattering to Jean Nicholas in her wool shop in the Banwen and later, Mrs. Thomas on the Waun. She must have spent hundreds of pounds on bales of wool to feed her habit and had filled a large cupboard at home with her stash. It’s fortunate that our little corner of Wales had more sheep than people.

My loving mother knitted me one of my first toys, a little blue and yellow dog called Binky which I loved to eventual destruction. When I was older, she made a jumper for my Action Man, which was so small it must have been a challenge to stitch together. It even had poppers at the shoulder to get it over…

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Ellemeno
Ellemeno

Published in Ellemeno

A literary journal dedicated to the exploration of life, memoir, culture, travel, and writing.

Simon Goss
Simon Goss

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