THE NEEDLES AND THE DAMAGE DONE
My daughter. I brought her up. I taught her wrong from right
And black from white and all the grey bits in between,
Know what I mean? So what does she do,
The artless, heartless little moo? Frightens me
Fartless by sodding off to live in Brighton,
The Sussex Sodom & Gomorrah of yesterday, today,
Tomorrow and well into the middle of next week,
Magnet for every freak from John O’Groats to Lands End,
Chock full of gender-benders, boozers, cruisers,
Serial substance abusers - and unusually, I’m not talking muesli!
The stuff they smoke would make Puff the Magic Dragon choke.
The lengths they go to in pursuit of carnal satisfaction
Would put Casanova in traction.
And are all these salacious South Coast groins enough
To gratify the sole feminine fruit of my loins?
Is there no depth of depravity, no unexplored corporeal cavity
With which she is unacquainted? Brace yourselves, people.
Folk have fainted at this disclosure. Strive to maintain
Your composure. My wild, sensation-seeking child,
With a consenting partner, was sitting in a pub
When she was asked to leave - for knitting!
I must confess that when she said "Hold me, daddy,"
And told me, I was in stitches. I laughed so much
I bust my britches, and she looked at them penitently
And whimpered, " Can I sew them for you, ever so gently? "
The poor kid’s crochet-hooked on yarn-based products.
She’s a fool for wool, a pushover for pullover patterns,
A slattern for tatting, an embroidery hoyden - and she’s not alone.
She only has to pick up a phone to unravel a whole skein
Of thread-heads, running a patchwork of internet chat rooms
Where they groom the unwitting into a total dependence
On knitting, an unsustainable greed for tweed.

Mind you, you gotta be hardy to survive in the sordid world of full Fair Isle
Cardy. Not for them the exquisitely stitched hem, the romance of
" Knit one, purl one. " More a frantic clicketty-clack, flat on your back
And not an ounce of 4-ply. Addicts, wasted on worsted, rove Hove,
So bestial and rotten as to fleece old ladies for a single spool of cotton.
And the social cost of these lost souls is incalculable. When
They need a fix of mixed shades they’re reduced to visiting
Rough-trade haberdashers shops who can be relied upon not to call the cops.
Cast off by society, if they commit the impropriety of coming out
And parading their perversion in a pub or club, they risk a snub
From someone like the churl who told my girl, " I don’t allow spitting,
And I don’t allow knitting! I know it’s crewel hard but, YOU’RE BARRED."
© Peter Wyton
For more of Peter's work click here. He has a new book out which features the above poem, as well as 'Not All Men Are From Mars' in support of Women's Aid with all profits going to the charity.

More Yarn Will Do The Trick is available together with two other tailor-made songs for textile lovers. Order your copy here. Read the lyrics of the title track below.

MORE YARN WILL DO THE TRICK
Cast off your cares and woes, set your needles free
come with me to doze and dream beneath the knitters' tree.
We'll spin ourselves a yarn that we've got stacks of cash
to fill a gigantic barn with an ever-increasing stash.

Visit a local yarn store, for it's therapy if you're sick
Why pay shrinks and doctors when more yarn will do the trick?

We'll knit ourselves a planet with a gauge of perfect order
every nation will be patterned with a wavy aran border.
We'll twist on moss stitch mountain and climb a cabled tree
swim in the sapphire picot edging of a bobble-patterned sea

Don't listen to trouble, don't give way to fears,
Purl away your problems, knit away your tears.

So if you feel the itch and need to get your fingers going
Just open up that pattern book and get those yarns a-flowing
But if your rows are tight and you want to just hang loose
Always park your needles before you hit the juice

The sky will be fairisle with a big intarsia sun
the flora will be cashmere and the buttonholes will be fun.
Our homes will be rainbow-colored, with yarns hand-painted and dyed
we'll knit spaghetti for our supper and in a cable car we'll ride

Visit a local yarn store, for it's therapy if you're sick
Why pay shrinks and doctors when more yarn will do the trick?

We'll cast on many friendships and we'll knit them up real tight
And get together often and party all the night
We'll lift our glasses joyfully and knit the whole town red
Cos when it comes to the good times, knitting's streets ahead!

Don't listen to trouble, don't give way to fears,
Purl away your problems, knit away your tears.
Visit a local yarn store, for it's therapy if you're sick
Why pay shrinks and doctors when more yarn will do the trick?
Why pay shrinks and doctors when more yarn will do the trick?
© Jean Moss, Rory Motion & Roger Smith. All rights reserved

THE TRICOTEUSE
She has brows like a knitting machine; teeth
grinding, sliding back and forth, hands
tense twitching, like the furies, knitting revenge
into every stitch, like Madame Defarge,
the tricoteuse. Like Nero, she could be knitting
while Rome burned. For each

stitch that drops off the needle,
another head will roll. Stitch on
stitch, she builds a scaffold of reprisal
to shore up her pain and punish her foes,
fatally – clickety-clack. As she watches

the guillotine swing, she never lets go of those
knitting pins, pinning elbows to sides, tight,
pressing breasts together, like a turnkey, pointed,
like knives piercing nooses, tearing at thread
and yarn. She never lets up on the rhythm of plains
and purls and slip stitch over, knitting holes for the holy,
knotting sutures for her bleeding wounds. She knits

her worries into the fabric, repetition relieving her
heart’s terror. She experiences no trauma. The edge
of life is taken off, woven into lacy borders, colours,
a jacquard array, balm for her sorry soul. Falling apart,
she knits to keep herself whole.

Knitting Daughters
Take fine threads; pure wool,
glossy silk, cotton, chenille.
Work in narrow bands.

Susanna’s a rainbow.
I weave her many coloured
as Joseph’s fine coat.

Isolde is Africa;
tawny as earth, copper, gold,
emerald, amber, brown.

Star’s the tender sky
of early evening; slate, mauves,
blue, pink, turquoise, jade.

Make them long, double;
carefully stitch, press, sew round
bobbles at each end.

My reward : women
who fold auras round them, wound
warm about their necks.

Recreation
Being preoccupied,
she failed to notice
her own unravelling in patches -
pieces of her drifting into space.

When finally she did, jutting her fingers
through holes the size of apples,
she sat calmly down to calculate
the yarn necessary
to reconstruct a life.

The yarns arrived in lorries.
There was cashmere (the breath of babies),
mohair a spider might have spun,
chenille soft as a puffy chick,
alpaca and angora: rabbits’ jackets, coats for goats,
worsted and homespun for strength,
heavy aran, thick and twisted
as a sailing rope,
silk, the shine of moon on water.

All were dyed in colours bearing
magical names like legends:-

azure, aquamarine, amethyst, amber,
burgundy, copper, cornelian, cyan,
chartreuse, cerise, cerulean, heliotrope,
indigo, lapiz lazuli, madder, magenta,
saffron, turquoise, topaz, and verdigris.

Enchanted, she sat in their midst
for days, just touching, looking.

Then she picked up her fine
bamboo needles; began to knit
her childhood home, long ago lost.
Building stones the colour of sunshine
she fabricated the mansion, created
simple airy spaces, with scarcely any furniture,
and that there was, old as her ancestors.
She made tall, narrow windows, paned,
arched at the top; sunlight
streaming in bright, wide panels
full of dust motes floating.
With the aran she wove
long floorboards in a long room
for her to dance upon.

She fashioned a bed shaped like a boat,
dressed all in white, of the most
luxurious cotton, mohair, cashmere.
At its foot, a corner shelf
on which she placed chinese
ceramic burial musicians
she had remembered, and copied,
to play her awake in the morning.

Now she forgot to feel homesick,
and stitched her new body
bonded lithe, supple, strong
well meshed and interlocked,
so that she might dance.
Her new brain sparked like fire, full
of languages, memories, names
of things she’d loved.
Her new hands, nimble, agile,
continued at her task.

She set her home in fairisle fields
spattered with buttercups;
bluebell woods beneath lime leaves
of embroidered trees;
banks of blackthorn scrub,
wood anemones, primroses,
all ranged above a little river
of spangled threads sparkling.

And now, tiring of being alone
she knit herself a partner,
moved him, and then four children, in.
Her knitting needles flew for them,
her hands full of joy.

Time passed, as it will,
until, alone again, content,
still holeless and complete, one day
she made a fine but simple grave,
a mossy stone
lettered in bright colours,
reading SHE WAS,
which she considered,
being being difficult,
a great achievement,
which not everyone aspires to.

She set aside her needles.
She lay down.

For those of us blessed to know Dollie
Her knitting was part of her life
She knitted her way through her problems
And cast off her troubles and strife

She was always half way through a jumper,
A teddy or more of those socks !
Or a pile of bright squares for a blanket
From odd bits of wool in a box

There wasn’t a day when her needles
Were idle and cast to one side
In fact we are sure she was knitting
The day we discovered she’d died

Her knitting was there on the arm chair
As if she had just put it down
Then her heart just gave up in an instant
And she passed away all on her own

So we’re sending the knitting with Dollie
We know she’d appreciate that
She’ll need it to keep her self busy
With that regular clickety-clack

So don’t be surprised in the future
if angel turn up in white socks
Or have soft woolly wings that have cables
And are wearing some nice Aran smocks

‘Cause Dollie will be up there knitting
On some fluffy white woollen cloud
She’ll be watching an old tape of Jethro
With a Baileys and laughing aloud

So although Dollie left us quite sudden
There’s no need to feel guilty or cry
That we didn’t have more time to tell her
That we loved her or just say goodbye

She’ll be looking down on us and smiling
And saying she’s just doing fine
And she’s popping off down to the Bingo
When she gets to the end of this line !

So please, when you think about Dollie
Look up to the sky for a while
And think of her knitting in Heaven
And remember her just with a smile