Some of you will already have seen this photo on my Instagram account.
As the caption there explains, I posted the photo (and a few more to show details) in response to the 5th prompt — “puzzled” — for a month-long daily challenge (#mendmarch2023) hosted by academic and mending advocate-activist Kate Sekules. You can pop over to my IG post to see how I described my response to the prompt: A bit of a stumper, that, but I thought of this vest which an older sister (or possibly even a hopeful sweetheart—neither sister nor sweetheart a very neat finisher, according to that side seam) made for my dad when he was in his late teens or early 20s. So [that would have been] during the 10 years he served in the British Merchant Marines from 1942 (when he was just 15!). Thus the vest is probably 80+ years old and has had moths sampling it for some decades. I vaguely remember seeing my dad wear this once or twice, but it stayed in a drawer from at least the 60s onward.
And after he died in 2000, I saw that someone had consigned it to a giveaway bin. I saved it from that fate only to relegate it to another drawer. (More accurately, a plastic Rubbermaid under-bed box, checked seasonally to ensure moths weren’t find their egg-laying way in. Drawer space is at a high premium here in our condo.)
In that Instagram post, I posed myself this question — this “puzzle” as the mending challenge prompt put it: Why haven’t I risen to the fairly modest mending challenge [this moth-eaten garment] presents? Especially now that “slipovers” or vests in FairIsle are having a moment. I even have some Jameson and Smith fingering in related or close colours.
Apparently, after 23 years, that prompt was what it took to dislodge my inertia. While I’ve abandoned any commitment to daily posts for MendMarch2023, I’ve worked on the vest regularly since that first post: You can see my first efforts here and more here; each of those posts has a few paragraphs about my approach to the damaged knitting. More than any mending I’ve ever done, unsurprisingly, repairing a vest my father will never wear again (a vest which, during his lifetime was the only remnant here in Canada of the life he’d once lived in England and at sea); while I think about the hands that knit and stitched together and laundered and folded it; when I imagine the young man it once fit. . . . and the husband and father who outgrew it. . . . yes, it’s been a moving and meditative process. . .
I’m going to write more when the vest is mended and being worn again (by me!), and I will tell you something of what the yarn and the stitches and the condition of the knitted fabric disclosed. This fabric that holds material traces of my much-loved father, my Dad. A garment that molded itself to his shoulders, chest, belly, that torso across whose expanse stretched the cartography of a surgeon’s life-saving work. A garment that even now surely holds molecules that testify to our shared DNA . . . But that writing is for later. For after I finish the mending.
Which mending I interrupted because I wanted to get back to sketching, which has been neglected lately — and recently prompted out of inertia (see a pattern here?) by Koosje Koene’s recent Draw Tip Tuesday video on Drawing Faces. Koosje advocates for keeping the emphasis on quick, fun drawings of faces in photographs — drawing with Stabilo’s Woody 3-in-1 crayons on a colourful gouache background. Here’s one I did, for example, from a favourite photograph of my daughter. . .
And after a few more sketches from old family photos (and a few quick face sketches while watching The Banshees of Inisherin, sometimes to release some of film’s tension!), as I’d begun mending Dad’s vest, I thought I might try sketching the faces from a diptych of photos: my Dad (on the left) and his brother Dan (on the right) circa 1935-1937, and then in a recreation of that photo taken in the mid-90s. The more recent photo (on the right, below) was taken on one of the last visits Dad made to his family in Yorkshire, and to my eye, at least, a certain puffiness in his face shows the effects of the palliative cancer treatment he was undergoing by then.
My mother had the diptych framed, and it came home with me when her place was cleared out ten years ago next month. . . It hangs on a wall in our walk-through closet. . . that’s where I photo-bombed Dad and Uncle Danny (can you see me there, in the background with my iphone?).
Then I took it down and brought it to my happily cluttered worktop (which I’ve posted about before here and here), so that while I worked on myriad other projects I could look ahead to sketching those dear faces.
Here’s a first attempt — the young boys sketched in (Pilot Black Tsuwairo) ink with that fountain pen I bought (and had stolen and then bought again) in Rome last year; I switched to pencil for the old fellas 😉
Whether or not I’ve captured any likeness here is secondary to the process of really looking at these faces and trying to transfer that observation to paper in a way that’s meaningful to me. . . which truth doesn’t mean that I didn’t get frustrated. Nor that I wouldn’t love to have the skill to be able to “get them” in a few quick and elegant lines. But “hours of craft,” my artist friends will remind me. Besides their natural talent, they have clocked hours and hours of craft. I’m still a neophyte!
That said, I’m much happier with this third sketch of my uncle’s 70-something face (I didn’t show you the second, which I learned a few things from, at least).
Notice my last words in my little sketchbook suggesting that I “stop while I’m ahead?” I think I’ll actually keep at both these faces, trying a few different approaches to loosen up a bit first. I also think I’ve got more to write about my Dad and my Uncle Danny. For today’s post, however, I think I’ll stop here, ahead or not. We have a canine guest right now, so there’s all kinds of walking to do, and we have a non-canine Ten arriving shortly for the day, her brother, almost Eight, arriving once he’s burned off some energy in a morning of soccer camp.
I think I’ll show them their great-grandfather’s vest, tell them a few things about him, maybe chat about moths and mending and clothes that people wore a very long time ago (and from their perspective, the 1940s definitely qualify!). Maybe we’ll even try drawing those faces together. And I’ll tell them about going to England by myself when I was 14 and how good my Uncle Danny’s family was to me then. Do you think I can hold their interest?
A lovely post Frances , very poignant . I’m looking forward to hearing more about your Dad & your uncle . I seem to remember Middlesbrough being mentioned ? My mum was from South Shields , not far from there & with many of the same hardships in those days . All her side of the family seemed to have a great sense of humour . I think they needed it .
You’ve definitely caught the likeness in your sketch – your dad’s eyebrows !
Author
Yes, Middlesbrough, good memory! Still have many, many relatives in Teeside.
He had quite the eyebrows — used to joke that if he went bald he could just comb them up and back 😉
What a wonderful story and a precious vest-it is a complicated pattern (at least for me)! I was thinking about The Banshees….,too
It will be an interesting story for your dear guests
I can understand the connection you feel-I’m still wearing my late father’s polo shirts from time to time. It is not comparable with your father’s vest with the history,but nevertheless…..
And,sketching as well,looking faces you love……
Dottoressa
Author
It’s such a funny connection, isn’t it, wearing clothes that they wore. . . .
(the Banshees! what a film! beautiful and devastating! Have you seen The Whale as well?)
Yes! Both poignant and amazing performances! Couldn’t decide between Brendan Fraser and Colin Farrel for Oscar
I’m going to see Everything….. today
D.
Author
I haven’t seen it yet — enjoy! (The Fabelmans is also very good)
Going back to look again, really look at the photos of your dad and uncle, thinking of Wendy’s eyebrow comment. And I noticed that when they were older your dad and his brother had the same eyebrows. Love that. We all need to learn to look… really look, don’t you think? Gosh those are such sweet photos, Frances.
Author
They did!! The same eyebrows! I’m not sure if all seven men in the family had them — pretty sure my Grandpa did as well though
Frances, I so love this, your thought process, and the drawing. These sketching examples are from the heart, not from your head….
Ali
Author
Ah, thanks so much for this encouraging feedback!
(you must be out in the garden this weekend — enjoy!)
This is so sweet and I was going to say lovely but no, loving.
Your idea to tell the kids about how people dressed in olden times reminded me. My dad claimed to remember being a baby dressed in wool from the skin out. He said he was itchy all the time. I asked about the diapers, he admitted they were cotton but covered in a wool pant. He never showed this remarkable gift of recall for any other detail of his early life. (I’m sensitive to wool too but the idea of that offended baby carrying a grudge for oh, say, seventy years still makes me laugh.)
Author
Oh dear! I would imagine the wool they were knitting up wasn’t always merino. Nor from lambs. . . but a knit garment would have been able to stretch with a growing baby with the wool’s bactericidal qualities meaning it wouldn’t have to be laundered for every bit of spit-up or diaper leakage. . . very important before widely available washing machines!
The vest is an appropriate vehicle for weaving a story about your father and his brother and your attempts to sketch them. You are a lovely story teller and my day is made richer by visiting your space and reading your tales.
I hope that your grandchildren enjoyed some of your stories.
Today I had a call with my younger sister, who vaguely remembered that there was a lady kept upstairs at my grandmother’s house. She was wondering if she had a mental illness of some sort. I hadn’t realized that she didn’t know that it was her great-grandmother, who was quite elderly and had Alzheimer’s disease. I had the pleasure of relating to my sister the stories that my mother told me about how much she loved her grandmother. They had a special bond. My sister now knows who was living upstairs and how special she was.
Author
Thanks for the encouraging words, Dottie.
And for recounting that call with your sister — I’ve been surprised as well to realize what my siblings did or didn’t know about family stories (or how those had been twisted in the years between us and through our different perspectives). How rich your conversation must have been — cool that your sister acted on her vague memory and got you to fill in the details! — so how far back does that connect you in a direct line through to the 19th-century? I tell my grandkids that I’ve known a few people (my four grandparents) who lived in the century before this one (born 1885-1897, between them) . . . and that some of them might live into the next one . . . so that I might know people in four centuries — crazy, eh?!
This was such a rich post! You successfully wove–or knitted–together mulitple strands and made them come into a beautiful whole–the partly repaired vest of your father’s. . . The sets of photos of your father and his brother. . . Your work to capture the gestures of their faces with your drawings. . . I loved reading all of it.
There is a shelf over the desk in my little workroom, that I filled with generations of family photos when we moved to this condo a few years ago. I had not thought of drawing my great grandparents and grandparents from those old photos. Maybe something to consider in the future. I do love having them all around me as I stitch or write or draw. . .
Author
Thanks, Linda! I’m so pleased you enjoyed the post.
I would never have thought of drawing those photos either, but was inspired by a teaching artist I follow in social media. Putting the emphasis on the process rather than on “the product” was freeing — Of course I could never get a likeness comparable to a photo’s (some artists could, of course, but I’m not there!), but I could learn something through the observation and the sketching — and spend time with my memories while doing so. You should try it! 😉
I thought a lot about my father yesterday too, not a coincidence it being St. Patrick’s Day and he being Irish. He was born in the US but lived there for a while as a child. I often wish I had asked him more about his time there. I don’t have any of his clothes but my daughter has a flannel shirt he wore. I did not know she had it but a few years ago asked if she had a flannel shirt I could borrow to put together a scarecrow costume for a Halloween party. I was reluctant to give it back. I have two pictures of my father on display. One as a handsome young man, smiling, sitting on the grass with my mom, brother and me, perhaps three and one, the other probably in his 70’s and with mom and my children , having a conversation with my cousin and his toddler. He is gone now about 30 years, my mother 20. I had not known this photo existed but it arrived as a surprise a couple of years ago when my cousin was going through her things.
I think you did a remarkable job of capturing the likenesses of your father and uncle. Beautifully rendered and written.
Author
Thanks for this, Darby — How sweet that your daughter chose to keep an old shirt of your dad’s and that you could borrow it back from her!
And what a happy surprise to find a new photo of him, to see him anew from a slightly different perspective. Plus the extra connection with your cousin through that exchange. . .
It’s amazing what things come to us unexpectedly and how much they mean to us. One day I received a phone call from my aunt (my dad’s only sibling) whom I hadn’t heard from (outside of Christmas cards) in decades. She was calling to tell me to expect a package with my grandmother’s favorite bracelet which she never took off. I was never my grandmother’s favorite grandchild or my aunt’s favorite niece! This news came as a great surprise. It connected me to my aunt in way we had never been able to connect before, and now we are in more frequent communication and sharing news of our families. Enjoy working on your dad’s vest. So many memories there!
Author
Oh, how wonderful! What a gift — both the bracelet itself, of course, but also that strengthened connection with your aunt! Thanks so much for sharing this story.
Really poignant post (as always). Beautiful writing, stitching and sketching. It’s hard to convey how much I appreciate your posts. x
Author
Thank you so much, Genevieve. I do appreciate the encouragement!
I can’t type much–right hand in a cast–but I’d just like to say how moving I found this post.
Author
Thanks so much, Maggie! (Like the widow’s mite, this comment represents so much more than the number of words your poor hand managed to type!;-)
I love that last drawing of your uncle. What a spirit of joy comes through, in his eyes, his cheeks raised in a smile.
What a lovely post. I love the way you knit together the retrieval of the sweater, a movie, and what a movie, and your own memories and photographs. It is true the sketches come from the heart more than the head, there is such a quality about them, of searching (?), no not really, of yearning and rediscovery perhaps.
I am thinking of a sweater from my old family, not as old, from the 50s, a heavy ski sweater meant for the Alps. I wonder if the person who had it last has held on to it, a conversation there. and also of two old quilts from the 1930s which should not be lost, not so much for themselves, although that is present, but because of their connection to the many lives that made us who we are.