Blanket Stories: Textile Society, R.R. Stewart, Ancient One

A site-specific installation for the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan

5.
Sally Mansfield
Washington Grove, MD

This afghan was knitted for me by my aunt Alma when I was about eleven or twelve (1962-63). My sister received an orange and green version. Alma was my father’s oldest sibling and her husband was in the Foreign Service. The afghans arrived out of the blue. They were the only THINGS she ever gave my sister and me, but we had heard tales of her prodigious knitting. Alma died a few years ago at the age of ninety-three, the last of that generation, and I am the last to carry the family name.

I think that she would be pleased to have her afghan be part of this art work, especially in an embassy in a part of the world in which she and her husband served. (I also work in the State Department, in Art in Embassies).