My Crochet Story

Hello! I am Amelie, and today I will present you with my crochet story. But first, I will describe the object to you. The crochet hook is made from plastic and metal. The crochet hook is bent, and the metal part is a little bit crooked. It is thin. The colour of the metal is gray and the plastic is turquoise. The length of the metal part is 4,4 centimeters, and the plastic part is 8,4 centimeters. The total length of the crochet is 12,8 centimeters.

Now let’s move to the story! Pay attention. My grandmother has had the crochet since 1983. Oh, the story began when my grandmother found it in a flea market. It was not very expensive, just an ordinary crochet on a table. From the day she bought it, my grandmother used it to create various decorative objects people used around the house, like tablecloths, napkins and coasters, until… Do you hear? A baby is crying. Oh! He is my dad. Yes, when my dad was born, Romania was under communist rule. He had a bigger sister, who was taking care of him because my grandmother worked the second shift at a factory. She was leaving for work at 2:00 p.m. and returned home at 9:00 p.m.  But there was still some time for crocheting every day.

One day, grandmother started crocheting rosettes. She crocheted a rosette stitch in five minutes. It was like a competition with herself to do those rosettes in exactly five minutes. She was giving them as presents, or sometimes she was selling them for money. She then had an idea to crochet a dress with straps. It was white and red, and it was made of rosette stitches. She remembers that those were hard times. 

When my dad turned three years old, Ceaușescu died. The family hoped things would change for the better. At that point, my grandmother crocheted another dress for her niece. It was the same model as the one made for her daughter. Once her daughter grew, she gave her dress to her niece, too, because she was younger. Now there were two dresses from different periods of my grandmother’s life. Then the times changed, and gobelin tapestry was in fashion. She made a lot of gobelins. Grandma hadn’t crocheted rosettes in a long time, but she didn’t forget how to do them. 

The years flew by, and her children have grown up. Her daughter married and moved to England. After some years, her son married too. He moved to Cluj-Napoca. Her son is my dad. My first parent’s child was I. I was born in 2014, in September. Then the middle child was born in our family, my brother, and after seven years, the third child came, my little sister. My aunt has five children: one girl and four boys. We, her grandchildren, were growing up and learned a lot of beautiful things. Her grandchildren were the reason why my grandmother started crocheting again. She made a lot of crocheted items for us, like socks, blouses, skirts, scarves, and handbags. 

When I was 10 years old, I went to visit my grandmother, as we usually did in summer, in a village in Botoșani, the place where she spent her childhood. There she taught me how to crochet, and she offered me an extraordinary gift, her crochet! It is fantastic to know you work with your grandmother's crochet. It is 44 years old! 

I made a lot of things with it. Of course, I learned how to make the same model of rosettes using my grandmother´s instructions. I also crocheted little blankets, a scarf, and other things. My grandmother also taught me how to make knitted scarves. It was hard work, but in the end, I learned. In my opinion, crocheting is easier than knitting. It is great to know that you can carry on the tradition! 

Returning to the crochet hook, it is a valuable object for our family, because it has been passed down from one generation to another. The crochet is from Romania, so it also has a cultural traditional value. It reminds me of the hard times my grandmother had during the communist regime. In those days, she had to work in a factory and take care of her two children: my father and my aunt. For my grandmother, raising the two children was difficult, especially since they had no heat in the house and no hot water. I cannot imagine living like this, because our homes are very comfortable. Despite those hard conditions, my grandmother still worked in two shifts, while my granddad worked in another country to raise money for his family. When she was not at the factory, she crocheted clothes for my dad’s sister using the crochet hook I now hold in my hands.

I already crocheted some items for myself and for my friends, but also for my siblings and my parents. In the future, I plan to learn how to crochet clothes for my upcoming children. Of course, I have to teach my future daughter and my niece how to crochet. I really want to keep the tradition alive, because I hope the story of my grandmother’s crochet will also travel through time together with the object.

Finally, the crochet is a valuable object for my family and me, because it tells my grandmother's story during the communist regime.