MAEVE EDWARDS recalls the sense of dread caused by the impending arrival of the Cigire to inspect their sewing and knitting skills.

 

Recently, while searching for a needle and thread in the jumble of haberdashery that I call my ‘sewing box’, I pricked the tip of my finger with a darning needle. Ouch, I said, immediately placing the injured finger in my mouth.

This action ricocheted me back to my childhood classroom on a Friday morning at a ‘Fuála agus Cniotála’ class, where pricking the tips of fingers was a regular occurrence.

We were a happy bunch of eleven-year-old girls on those Friday mornings, all thoughts of long division an An Aimsir Laithreach out the window. Our knitting class was always a happy hum of girls, plaining and purling to our heart’s content.

That is until the day the teacher said with great alarm. “Éist, a chailíní! Tá an cigire ag teacht an tseachtain seo chugainn!” Listen, girls. The inspector is coming next week! Get your Scrap Books out!”

Oh, the flurry of activity that followed these words. The teacher had to galvanise us girls into catching up with what we should have been doing at our Fuála agus Cniotála classes since the beginning of the year. We were way behind.

Our Scrap Books were supposed to present samples of work we had completed. The Inspector came once a year to inspect these samples, the purpose of which, I suppose, was to ensure our generation of young girls could go out into the world, ready to knit jupers and patch a hole on a pair of trousers.

In the first few pages of this book, my samples of knitting of small squares of garter stitch, moss stitch and ribbing, were perfect. My casting off was exemplary.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own