THE STORY OF MICHAETT 

Patience in the hand. Joy that is shared. A craft that carries on.

I grew up in a small Czech village. My grandfather cut the meadow with a scythe, early in the morning while the dew was still on the grass. I would walk beside him, and sometimes he let me try. It was slow work, but it spared everything living in the meadow. He loved the sunrise, and so do I.

My grandmother grew flowers. Geraniums on every windowsill, and a front garden so beautiful it won the village prize. She shared her joy in flowers with me, and with everyone who walked past.

My other grandmother lived in the city. After the war she made ladies’ hats in a small private workshop, in the years when no woman left the house without one. When the communists closed private businesses, the workshop closed too, and she went to work in a factory. She taught me needlework as a child, but never millinery. What I remember most is her flat, full of wooden hat blocks.

I found hats much later, almost by accident, in a class I joined out of boredom, and fell in love. The first hat I made was for her: yellow sinamay with feathers, and honestly, quite terrible. I made her wear it to my cousin’s garden party anyway. She couldn’t understand where it had come from.

A few of her hat blocks survived the years. Today they are with me in Bowral.

My grandfather’s patience is in every stitch you will never see. My grandmother’s garden is in every petal and leaf I shape by hand. And in every hat, I pick up the thread my other grandmother had to put down.