Virginia Woolf...

Some of you make get a daily newsletter from knittingdaily. Today there was a post about Virginia Woolf being a knitter.  I know many of us at the shop are voracious readers as well as knitters and crocheters.  I thought I'd post this tribute to Virginia Woolf in honor of our eclectic tastes in knitting as well as literature.

Did you know Virginia Woolf was a knitter?

(NPG 5933. Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) by Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), 1912. Oil on board, 15 3⁄4 x 13 3⁄8 inches (400 x 340 mm). National Portrait Gallery, London)

The one I'm featuring here, about Virginia Woolf's portrait by her sister, Vanessa Bell, really struck me. I'm a big reader, and judging from the number of comments on the August 23 newsletter about needlework in literature, so are you!

I had no idea Virginia was a knitter; knowing that makes me admire her even more. And her quote below about knitting being the saving of life is so poignant, especially considering her ultimate suicide.

I have to think that Virginia was able to lose herself in her knitting, in the feeling of the yarn slipping through her fingers and the needles gently clicking against each other. I hope she found the peace that she sought as she spent time with her knitting.

And I hope you'll enjoy this insight into Vanessa's portrait of her sister.

Virginia Woolf (née Stephen)

In 1911 or 1912, when Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) painted this small portrait of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Virginia was working on the draft of what would be her first book, The Voyage Out, published in 1915.

The writer hated to pose and be looked at. The indistinctness of Virginia's features—the eyes and mouth are smudges—might suggest that Vanessa accommodated her sister's dislike of being scrutinized by neglecting to clearly delineate those features.

In fact, the simplified forms and strong colors typified Vanessa's style at the time. All elements of the painting are reduced to flat planes of color outlined in black, with virtually no modeling to suggest three-dimensionality. The colors are bold but not pure—mauves, greens, and blues, orange, turquoise, and gray-green—against which the pink of the knitting is shocking. It is likely that Vanessa experimented with these flat, strong colors after seeing paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne in a small exhibition organized in 1910 by her then-lover, Roger Fry. Vanessa characterized her response to the exhibit as "a sudden liberation and encouragement to feel for oneself which were absolutely overwhelming."

It was well-known among her friends that Virginia was a knitter. After Virginia's death Dame Edith Sitwell reminisced: "I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her 'a beautiful little knitter.'"

Virginia thought of knitting as therapy. Early in 1912 she reported to Leonard Woolf, before they were married and shortly after she had been in a rest home, that "Knitting is the saving of life." That salvation worked until 1941, when Virginia took her life.
—Fronia E. Wissman