02 Heart Knots – Children’s scarf for grown-ups

The starting point for this scarf is a painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker. Paula Modersohn-Becker was a brilliant German painter born 1876 in Dresden. She was only 31 when she died, a couple of days after she gave birth to her daughter Mathilde. During her life time she wasn’t recognised as an artist.

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Self-portrait seen from the window in Paris, 1900

Scarf in the making – pure merino wool

Young girl sitting with arms folded

Sitzendes Maedchen mit verschraenkten Armen, Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907

Cloud – Sutton

The painting shows a girl with crossed arms sitting (see above). It was painted 1903. The girl’s head is slightly tilted, she looks directly back to us viewers and she doesn’t smile. Her eyes are quite big and their colour are similar to the background colour, a beautiful bottle green. Her eyebrows, two fine bows, are in a caramel tone like her hair. The green of the background and eyes are in contrast with the dominating colour of the dress/skirt, a lovely brick red beside different shades of brown, beige, salmon. The tone of her skin is similar to the top of her dress. The colour of her arms are the brightest in the painting, they nearly seem to glow a bit

Hand knitted scarf

A scarf is something simple and useful, children and adults are wearing them.

After trying a couple of samples (see below) I decided to knit with a caramel coloured merino wool. It’s a warm, sweet and mellow colour. I am doing some ribbing, an easy pattern. The finished scarf is light and soft. It looks twice as wide when you stretch it.  I’ve added red merino threads knotted into the scarf. They are like little markers. In life you have the knots you want and the knots you don’t want, sometimes they remain unnoticed. One of the many things we learn when we are children is how to make knots. Undoing knots can be much harder even for adults.

I am holding, I am not holding

Thought-Snippets

Sometimes my eye is catching a specific movement or expression of an adult and I am thinking they must have had exactly the same movement or expression when they were children.

When I was three years old I watched the moon landing on our neighbour’s black & white TV. I have quite a clear memory about the state of my mind: I felt like a full person, the same I feel today and I was aware of the significance of what I was watching  on the TV.