While I was knitting this afternoon, my thoughts wandered back in time to my knitting beginnings. Have I told this story before? I don't think so. Not here, anyway.
So, long about 1959 or so, maybe even earlier than that, I must have expressed a desire to learn to knit. Or maybe my dad just thought it was time for me to learn. At any rate, he sat me down between his legs on the step at the back door and showed me how to knit. How, you ask, did my outdoors man, paratrooper, smokejumper dad know how to knit? Simple. He was mostly raised by his maternal grandparents after his father's death, and that grandmother was a knitter. She taught him. I remember seeing a pair of socks he'd knitted when he was around fourteen in a trunk at my grandmother's.
After showing me how, Dad turned over the remainder of his Grandmother Whitworth's knitting supplies to me--needles and yarn in army green. She died in January of 1945 and had been busy knitting warm things for Dad who had just spent Christmas in the Battle of the Bulge during one of the coldest winters on record. (I have a vest she knit and managed to get sent off to him before her passing.)
With my own supplies, I began to churn out scarves and hats and slippers. I was hooked! And appear to still be hooked.
Here is a picture of my Whitworth great-grandparents, she of the knitting needles, along with their faithful dog (and my dad's true buddy), Boots.
I've heard so many stories of them, I wish I could have known them. I think she'd like that one of her great-granddaughters loves to knit, too. ♥
Oh! Grandma Whitworth would come over for a long afternoon of visiting and knitting. In fact, I think she does!
ReplyDeleteYou are lucky to have that Army green knit sweater. My dad had one that a friend knit for him, but I didn't realize what it was when we parted with his clothes. Well, no matter. Maybe somewhere along the line, someone recognized it as an Army vest.
I wonder -- did they use a standard pattern for that vest?
Here's a link to info: http://www.nww2m.com/2014/08/home-front-friday-knit-your-bit/
ReplyDeletebut you might want to google it yourself because there's a lot of info. At any rate, the Red Cross provided patterns for vests, socks, and fingerless mitts, but patterns could be found elsewhere as well.
Thanks for the info! I'll have to do some looking. I probably had the patterns in the things Dad gave me, but they were meaningless at the time and went by the wayside.
DeleteI am lucky to have that vest. It was very special to Dad and one of the last things he talked to me about.
My dad didn't serve in the way that yours did, but he -- and other "old" men -- struggled in boot camp. Apparently his friend received permission of her knitting group to make him a vest, and it was special to him. He wore that vest from time to time during the winter, but he didn't tell me how he came to have it. I figured it out later. I would have saved it had I known. But -- the other side is that I can't take it with me anyway, and I don't need the sweater to know that this special thing happened.
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