Booklets hold prolific knitter’s creative history

A few weeks ago, a stack of vintage knitting and crochet booklets came my way. They once belonged to a woman whose knitting days are now behind her. The booklets are a physical manifestation of the creative history of the woman who once owned them. They reflect her tastes and interests, and are testimony to her need to create beautiful things with her hands.

Just by thumbing through the booklets I learned a bit about her. She knitted and crocheted for her children and grandchildren, from the 1940s through the 1950s and into the 1990s. Many of the booklets are filled with patterns for baby sweaters, booties, caps and blankets. Others are sweater patterns for toddlers and older children. Perhaps she had many grandchildren and expressed her love for them with things she knit.

Some of the booklets have in them handwritten notations, such as “258 stitches,” “worsted weight yarn,” “Kim’s hand 41/2 inches before narrowing” or “Lara’s hand 33/4 inches before narrowing,” as if she had gone off on a pattern riff of her own.

As I looked through the collection of knitting booklets, it was easy to imagine this woman seated on the couch, the television tuned to “The Honeymooners” or “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Perhaps she was knitting red mittens for her children or crafting a crib-size yellow afghan for a sister who was expecting a baby. In those days the sex of a baby was never known and always a surprise, so it was better to steer clear of anything knit in pink or blue.

Perhaps her mother or her grandmother taught her to knit when she was a teenager, and she found she liked it. Then, after she married, she found knitting relaxing after a long day of baking cakes, mopping floors, making beds and taking care of her children.

Or maybe she took up knitting because she wanted something that challenged her mind and allowed her to handle beautiful yarn while at the same time making something useful, such as socks, for her husband and children.

The woman who owned the booklets must have been attracted to the intricacies of things, too. The crochet booklets are filled with patterns for lacy doilies in complex floral motifs.

The woman paid as little as 15 cents for some of the booklets and as much as $2.25 for others. That doesn’t sound like a lot of money today, but when this lady was young, and most people were lucky to earn $1 an hour, it was not an insignificant sum to spend. But considering the amount of use the woman got – judging by its bedraggled condition – from her copy of “Gloves and Mittens for the Entire Family” published in 1944, it was 15 cents well spent.

Since these booklets came to me, I have found homes for most of them. A knitting group that meets at the library in Bingham took a stack. A By Hand reader who knits caps and other items for charity asked for some of the booklets. And another lady who crochets items for worthy causes also requested some.

Thus the collection was dispersed like a ball of yarn unwinding, a link from one knitter or crocheter to another, keeping the craft of knitting and crocheting alive and well, and rolling on into the future.

Snippets

. Learn how to sew an embossed velvet pillow with a concealed zipper 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Hampden Municipal Building, 106 Western Ave. The class is conducted under the auspices of the Bangor chapter of the American Sewing Guild. The cost is $10 for members, $15 others. To register, call 941-8815.

. Those who love to crochet may want to join the Crochet Guild of America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving and advancing the art of crochet. Visit www.crochet.org, call (740) 452-4541 or

e-mail CGOA@Offinger.com to learn how to join the organization.

. What can you make from a bale of cotton? That question is posed at www.cotton.org. Here’s part of the answer: A bale of cotton weighs approximately 480 pounds and from that manufacturers can make quite a list of things, including 249 bedsheets, 215 pairs of jeans, 1,217 men’s T-shirts, 21,960 women’s handkerchiefs and 313,600 $100 bills.

In last fiscal year, which runs Aug. 1, 2006, to July 31, 2007, the United States produced 17,346 bales of cotton and imported 20. It exported 16,700 bales.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.