Home Comfort

The WWII War Office's request for knitted garments known as 'home comforts' provided Florence with the opportunity to publicly appear to be supporting the war effort. Privately, knitting gave her time to grieve over her family's decimation - the deaths of her husband and eldest son; the absence of two sons away at war. Florence worked in a conflicted state to rationalize and emotionally resolve the duality of supporting the war effort while sacrificing her sons. She had to come to terms with enabling her children to put their lives at risk while battling the strength of the mother-child bond. Florence took to knitting to physically keep her sons warm, emotionally connect with them, do her patriotic duty and provide a means for processing the traumas of war. Endless knitting became a repeated prayer, a meditative chant of 'knit one, purl one,' a mantra to calm a battle-weary mind - a home comfort.