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Volume 16, Spring 2004 |
Features
Crocheting: Exploring Art Through Yarn
Copy Chief
Agnes Wiesing is sitting in the living room of her adult-community home on a snowy February with crochet magazines spread across a coffee table.
"I'm already thinking about Christmas," says the 79-year-old Lakewood resident, nicknamed "Moomee" by her grandchildren. "I learned to start early."
Moomee begins another row of crochet stitches in a series of doilies she hopes to complete for her daughter, Virginia, before the holiday. This long-time needle artist has another piece on her mind: a crocheted depiction of the Last Supper, in the spirit of Leonardo Da Vinci, which she created more than eight years ago from directions out of one of her crochet magazines. "I still have the pattern," she says, laughing. "I put a line through each row in the pattern so I would know I wouldn't loose my place."
Moomee calls her crocheted Last Supper her greatest achievement in the craft, which she describes as painting a picture with thread.
Her mind goes to what will happen to the 4-by-2-foot piece, now that the recipients, Virginia and her minister husband, Spencer, will retire from the church where the religious piece now hangs. Moomee calls her crocheted Last Supper her greatest achievement in the craft, which she describes as painting a picture with thread.
"Crochet is like this: Take any piece of string or yarn and make a chain with a needle; from that chain, it's like drawing a picture - like painting, like making a mark on a piece of canvas - and from that chain, you start building that picture," she says. The needlecraft is often compared to knitting, but Moomee says that never interested her.
The hobby was at one point a source of income to her, selling crochet at craft shows and even in a store of her own.
"I think I took up crocheting because everyone on my mother's side knew how," she says. The hobby was at one point a source of income to her, selling crochet at craft shows and even in a store of her own. "I just hope I can crochet to my last breath," Moomee says. "I love it so much. It is very, very important to me."
The Last Supper piece is special to her because it was not only challenging and took more than three months to make, but because of its religious significance. "I would like to see the piece have a legacy," she says.
Instead, the Otega, N.Y. Presbyterian Church, in which Spencer preaches and in whose religious offices the framed art hangs, may just become a chapter in the piece's life. "Now that my son-in-law is retiring from the clergy, I'd like to see it go home with them," Moomee says.
But, the couple is moving, possibly to Florida, and she does not know if they plan to take it with them. "It may not be something they want to hang behind the couch," she says, laughing. Instead of having it remain in a church that her family no longer has an attachment to, the grandmother would rather see it kept in her daughter's new home, wherever that may be, or else in a local church Moomee has prayed at for the past eight years.
With the move fast approaching, Moomee will set upon the task of asking her daughter about what she plans to do with the off-white piece, which is backed by maroon felt and mounted on plywood with a frame that Moomee made in a woodshop class.
"It doesn't make you feel too good - not knowing," she said. "It was an amazing thing to finish."
When Moomee first took up crochet, she created "Granny squares" out of which many afghans are made .
The piece, which took up three-quarters of her kitchen table, is made in a style of crochet called "filet," which Moomee describes as a pattern that creates open and closed blocks in which pictures or words can be crocheted.
"It's very pretty," she says. "I always liked detailed work."
However, when Moomee first took up crochet, she created "Granny squares" out of which many afghans are made.
"I still have that first afghan - a black border on all these red, white and green blocks," she said.
It is that same attachment that she feels to the Last Supper crochet, but also to all the countless other things (Christmas ornaments, doilies, tablecloths, bedspreads) that she has crocheted over 71 years.
"No matter what you make, when you're done, you have a real sense of accomplishment, of amazement."
But, it is the Last Supper that she cites as the pinnacle to her crochet handiwork.
"Whenever I see it, I think 'Did I actually do that?' I remember spending three or four hours a day on it," she says.
The piece was so intricate, the craftswoman still made mistakes. "And when I would make one, I had to rip out a whole line of crochet; it was undoing a whole day's work," she says.
"Like many pieces, it's like building a house."
The piece became a puzzle to solve. "Like many pieces, it's like building a house," she says. "You have a foundation that you build on, and you do all this work, watching it grow."
The portions where the twelve apostles sit were particularly challenging. "The figures are so close together and you have to separate them," she says, "but if you put the wrong stitch in, the figure won't be there."
"That's how I feel about religion. I don't believe about broadcasting it - it's what in your heart that counts."
Moomee laughs about having to crochet in apostles' feet (they are all barefoot in the painting) and reflects on finishing the Judas figure. "It really makes you think about the story of the Last Supper, go over it in your mind," she says. Moomee liked the pattern in the first place for that reason. "It was part of faith," she adds, "Without it, you're nothing. That's how I feel about religion. I don't believe about broadcasting it - it's what in your heart that counts."
Moomee smiles and says, "The Last Supper piece: it's something that I really feel is a major accomplishment in this life of mine, other than two great kids and grandkids."
She continues about giving the piece to her daughter: "I knew that they would really love it. I knew my daughter would be like, just, 'Wow,' the way she relates to anything I make her."
After completing the piece, she had to stretch it into place, and Moomee took notice of another unique feature within it - an un-fixable mistake.
"There was one flaw, one there was no way I could repair," she says. "It's in the right-hand corner."
Moomee laughs and says, "I decided to call it my signature."
Catherine E. Galioto, a junior journalism/professional writing major at The College of New Jersey, is the unbound Copy Chief; so if you find any mistakes, please blame her. She is also a freelance writer with several accolades who appears regularly in more than seven publications. Outside of that, things get much harder to define.