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Woven Lives
Yvonne Miskin and her three daughters, Meg, Sue and Christina, have kept in touch with their family history - through the making of a rug ...
Around the time of the Second World War, three sisters started work on a rug. Ribbie, a schoolteacher, Lily, the milliner and Grace, who ran the Cambridgeshire farm on which they lived with their mother. The sisters remained single and lived a quiet life on the Fens.
The Miskin's describe the beginnings of the rug made by Yvonne's aunts, and her daughters' great aunts: "There was an advertisement in one of the women's magazines which said 'Send for a sack of Thrums', which are the ends of stuff from the carpet mills, the ends of spools, the tangly bits and make your own rug. It was an enormous bag." It took three years for Ribbie, Lily and Grace to sort through the bag so that they could begin their rug. Looking at it now, the Miskin's try to identify which aunt worked which part of the rug,"This rather delicate use of single square and the little cruciform bit, that's Auntie Lily, I'm sure ..."
When the aunts died, the Miskin family found the incomplete rug, and started work on it again, "We started off really well. We did the same thing,sorting the wool out first of all. And we all sat in a corner of the rug and kind of worked inwards from there - it was a competition to see who could do the most squares in one go."
History has repeated itself; 30 years on 3 sisters and a mother in one house working on the same rug. The family remember their relatives through the rug, especially Auntie Grace, "We all wanted to grow up like her, she used to flex her muscles like Popeye, was sweet natured, and had a long grey plait, and used wear voluminous nighties, to the floor ..."
The rug, now complete, now lies on a bedroom floor. Sometimes, the great great niece of Ribbie, Lily and Grace play on it. Yvonne's daughters feel that "It's our history - all of us are linked with my mother's family in the fens ..."
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