North Sea Islands - knitting the hard way!

I've been meaning to post this story for a while, and finally got the energy to do so!!!

Location: Flight from Chicago to Long Island, NY. Date: 10-17-08

Spoke with an 81-year-old German native woman who upon watching me knit, told me about how she learned to knit as a young girl. She grew up on a little island in the North Sea. Her grandmother taught her to knit. The children in her village picked up chicken feathers during molting season. They saved the biggest and strongest feathers. Then they removed the feathers leaving a long sturdy stalk which was their knitting needle. Since they were poor, they did not have sheep, nor money to buy wool. So they would walk along the barbed wire fences separating properties and gather wool left there by sheep that used the fences to walk close alongside and sooth an itch! The wool was white (although sometimes dirtied by normal activity.) No browns, greys, etc. The children would gather this found wool and take it to their grandmother. They would help carding the wool. When it was prepared for spinning, their grandmother would use the borrowed spinning wheel which was available. Very occasionally my seatmate would be allowed, with help from her grandmother, to try the spinning process.

I found her story so amazing - not having read much about the history of knitting - and hearing her personal experience of finding raw materials, including chicken feathers for knitting needles, was a wonderful eye opener!

She left the flight, on her way to visit her brother, a staunch Republican, she said - she was going to do everything she could to try to sway his opinion and his vote in the upcoming election! what an amazing woman! She said she could only stay five days - that more than that would be too taxing on her!