Моите две баби. Световете на тъкачката и на плетачката
My Two Grandmothers. The Universe of the Weaver and the One of the Knitter

Summary/Abstract: The author presents basic technological skills and life universe peculiarities of her grandmothers named Irina and Ivanka, having in mind her interviews, observations and memories. Both women had been born and grown up in a small rural setting approximately at one and the same time – the very beginning of the XX century, i.e. in a period when village culture had undergone substantial changes to incorporate in itself traditional, but also modern components. Thus the two grandmothers had acquired general skills, needed to perform traditional feminine activities such as spinning and weaving, but also ones connected to knitting, lace making and embroidery. At the same time the first woman was more likely to spin and weave and the second one – to knit, to make laces and to do embroidery. This particular incoherence in preferences connected with a domination of a tendency to keep close to the tradition in the case of Irina, or, on the contrary, being more likely to accept innovations in the case of Ivanka, is interpreted in the article with respect to the specific cultural milieu, set by the flow and way of life, typical for everyone of the women under consideration (descent, education, marriage, social contacts, etc.). Further the author argues that the peculiarities are also to be explained with the difference in the type of labour, predominating in the two families, as the agricultural preoccupation in Irina’s family had presupposed longer preservation of traditional values and behavioural stereotypes, while the special kind of labour which Ivanka had had to perform as a wife of a priest, was more or less connected with the acquisition of new models of activities, brought to life by the changing social and cultural situation.

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