About

The story behind the picture

This photo of me with a horse was taken by my father in about 1961. It accidentally combines my two passions – knitting and origami.

One day browsing my photo albums I noticed that I’m holding an origami fan that I’d just folded wanting to share my joy. The art of folding paper I always enjoyed as a child, without even knowing its name. In my thirties I learned origami properly and it became my other passion.

It was a cold winter day and I was wrapped in a sheepskin coat, scarf and knitted hat (and mittens and valenki, of course). Later, the coat was passed to my younger brother, but the hat wore out and ended in my hands to be unravelled for reuse. At that time I entered a school and there I learned knitting. Thanks to my primary teacher I quickly learned how to knit, purl and cast on. I still remember the first thing I knitted  –  a garter stitch sample made from kinked yellow yarn, from an old scarf.

While I was unravelling the red, blue and white hat, I was fascinated by its structure of loops and chains. I couldn’t understand how it was made, because it had loops as in knitting and the chains as in crocheting! This puzzled me for many years, until in my twenties I discovered Tunisian crochet, a special type of knitting that combines together knitting and crocheting.

By a lucky chance, a small part of the hat front survives, and I keep it in a box together with other treasures, as a symbol of my curiosity that lead me to explore this craft in depth.