Hello! We’re in the Moselle region again, where people have lived for thousands and thousands of years, leaving some of the things they made behind as evidence. We’re going for a walk that’ll be like time travelling. Don’t worry, it’s all downhill and not too strenuous. Our starting point is a place of contemplation that has drawn pilgrims for almost 800 years.
From here, a narrow track is taking us back in time…
…until we arrive in the 4th century BC. This is when the Treveri tribe lived here – farmers , traders and craftsmen known for their metalwork. They built a drystone wall with wooden posts to protect their settlement. I wonder what my life would have looked like had I lived here then. As a woman, I would probably not have been a metalworker, and nobody was knitting yet. So what would I have done with my hands instead? I can’t imagine not making something – maybe I’d have been a basket weaver?
A little further down the track, we are suddenly going 800.000 years back in time for a visit to a very early ancestor, the homo erectus. Pebble tools they made and left behind show that they had a camp here – all kinds of different tools used for hacking, cutting, scraping and chopping. In a reconstruction of the camp a corten steel woman is starting a fire. What is she going to make for dinner?
A man holding a spear is looking on, in front of their shelter. It looks quite cosy, really – a bit like the dome tent we camped in for years.
That is, until you zoom out and see the giant elephant looming behind their shelter.
Life must have been unimaginably hard all those millennia ago. Let’s quickly descend a little further to get back to the present day. Uhm, where exactly are we going next? I think we need to take a look at the map.
Ah, the trail is leading us to a big red dot with an S in Oberfell. I recognize most of the symbols on the map, but where does the S stand for? Oh, I see, the key tells us that the S stands for Stricken – German for knitting!
We’ve arrived at the home and business premises of the Trapp family (not Von Trapp as in The Sound of Music, just Trapp).
Their lovely, old-fashioned shop stocks clothes, table cloths and other textiles, and yarn. The yarn section is small, but if you’ve forgotten to bring your knitting, you’ll certainly find needles and yarn for a nice pair of socks, a scarf or a shawl here.
As happens so often among knitters, I got chatting with owner Bernadette and she told me about the knitwear manufacturing business her family used to run. Would I like to see the old knitting machines in the basement, perhaps? Yes please!
A sleeve is hanging over a knitting machine driven by what looks like a bicycle chain. Bernadette tells me how they knit their items from extremely fine yarn, with two or three threads combined.
She also tells me that the knitting business was founded by her grandmother in 1924. Another family member in the nearby city of Koblenz (I believe it was grandmother’s uncle) already had a knitting business farming out the knitting among many women in the region. This made him a wealthy man but didn’t bring in all that much for the knitters. Grandmother Veronika decided that it would be more profitable to start her own knitting business and so she did.
She had a large family (13 children if I remember correctly) and all of the children had their little jobs in the business, like winding the yarn from hanks onto cones.
One of these children later continued the business. An example of the style of jackets they knit hangs on another, slightly more modern-looking knitting machine.
Sewing on buttons and ribbons, and adding embroidery was all done by hand by members of the family, in this case by Bernadette herself. She also crocheted the lace on the pocket square in the breast pocket.
For the bakers in the region they knit jackets with beautiful stitch patterns on the front. White jackets, so that the bakers would still look presentable even though they were all covered in flour. People also came to Trapp when the cuffs on their sweaters were frayed or the elbows worn through, and new sleeves would be knit on. In the 1960s the family stopped producing knitwear as they were unable to compete with the mass produced items flooding the market, but the shop is still going strong.
I’ve loved getting a glimpse into this knitting business and didn’t leave empty-handed either – sock yarn always comes in handy.
Many old houses in the Moselle region have sayings on their gables. The saying on a gable a few houses down from the Trapp family business seems apt for closing off today’s post: “Wenn in der Welt ein Handwerksmann sein Mut und Fleiß tut wenden an, tragt solches ihm sein Nahrung ein, wie immer mag das Wetter sein.”
Roughly translated it means: “When a craftsman shows up in the world diligent and able, he will always have food on the table, no matter what the weather.” I’d love to have a saying like that on my gable, only I’d phrase it slightly differently:
Going through the world as a maker
Whether as a knitter, gardener or baker
Will keep you from feeling lost and blue
No matter what life throws at you
Well, it doesn’t always work, but I’m sure you’ll agree that making things often helps make things better. Now, back to my own knitting and I hope to tell you a bit about some of that next week. See you then!
Just beautiful. I always love traveling with you. Thank you for sharing all the history and yarn visits as well.
Such a beautiful journey. Thank you.