I inherited my hands from my nan. Long and slim with hard but feminine nails, we called them “piano fingers”, though neither of us ever learned to play. While I went on to use mine for writing, my maternal grandmother dedicated hers to knitting. Decades before the Sewing Bee or Tom Daley’s Instagram, Barbara would go to the local wool shop for designs and supplies – everything, right down to tiny buttons. As her first born granddaughters, my elder sister and I were the natural beneficiaries of this skill, willing mannequins covered in glitter glue and nostalgia.
When I look back at photos of myself until around the age of six, I realise I’m usually in knitwear. This commitment to wool was not limited by season or location: in my early years, whenever I was photographed on a beach, I was wearing a cardigan as the waves splash at my feet, like an influencer promoting swimwear for people with hypothermia.
