Knitting technique can still delight

One cold winter’s evening in the 1950s when my sister and I were whining about having nothing to do, my father asked my mother for an empty wooden thread spool, a big one, “the kind that Aunt Lydia’s thread comes on,” he said. My mother pawed through a drawer in the 1880s-vintage New Home treadle sewing machine that was a legacy from her grandmother and produced the spool. In those days, empty wooden thread spools were not thrown away.

My father asked my mother for a hammer and four brads – she was the one in the family who fixed things – she had the tools. Besides the hammer and brads, she gave him a small ball of gray yarn left over from mittens she had knit. She also handed him a steel crochet hook.

My sister and I stood by and watched curiously while my father pounded the brads around the hole in the thread spool. He took the yarn and dropped the end through the spool, wrapping the strand several times around the brads. With the crochet hook, he lifted the bottom strand over the top one, rotating the spool as he did so, repeating the action at each brad. After a few minutes, the tail of a knitted cord appeared at the bottom of the spool.

It didn’t take my sister and me long to figure out what to do. By bedtime we had become quite adept at spool knitting.

In the evenings that followed, we passed the spool knitter back and forth as we took turns working rounds and watching the length of the cord grow.

Inevitably, the question arose: What was that long cord going to be good for? My mother suggested that we sew it into a coil and make a potholder or even a chair pad if we stuck to the task and made a cord long enough. We said we’d think about it. The next day we rejected her idea – too much work to do all that coiling and sewing. We preferred the knitting part.

Thus, the cord grew in size. When we ran out of gray yarn, my mother rummaged around in another sewing machine drawer and found pink yarn to donate to our cause. When Grandmother Hamlin heard of the project, she raided her yarn basket and gave us balls of red, pale green, white and navy blue yarn.

When we ran out of yarn again, we decided the cord of many colors was long enough. I don’t recall how long, but very long. My mother helped us disengage the cord from the spool. It snaked around our feet in a most delightful way. Again, she tried to interest us in turning it into a chair pad or a battalion of potholders. But we shook our heads, no.

My sister liked to use the cord, doubled back on itself several times, for a jump rope. I was much more interested in using it to tie her to chairs, or trees, wrapping the cord around and around her chest, legs, hands and feet. I’d leave her there until she yelled to be let loose. Sometimes, I let her tie me up – but not often.

We also liked to drape the cord around the kitchen from doorknob to chair back to table leg, creating what we called a “trap.” Step into our trap and my sister and I pounced like spiders – evil little Arachnes – winding the cord around and around our victim, invariably our older brother, who was not amused.

Sometimes we wound it around ourselves, separately and individually, pretending to be attacked by very bad snakes.

I don’t recall what happened to the cord or the spool knitter. Most likely, we outgrew our interest in it and moved on to something else, such as learning how to tie square knots, bowlines and half-hitches, which we figured would come in handy if we ever got a pony – or if some mean boy needed quelling.

However, I am happy to say that spool knitting is still on the craft radar. Lion Brand Yarn has available at its Web site, www.lionbrand.com, a cache of items one can make with a spool knitter, including hot pads shaped like a shamrock, a rabbit or daisy, and an apple-shaped coaster.

And, at www.fromyesteryear.com/wp-content/spoolknitting.htm you can access the vintage instruction book “Spool Knitting” by Mary A. McCormack, published in the late 19th or early 20th century. This little tome, which runs to 42 pages, gives basic spool knitting instructions for two- and four-prong spool knitters, and instructions for turning those yards of knit cord into mittens, slippers, caps, scarves, doll clothes, jump ropes and other things. It sounds like so much fun I may take up spool knitting again – only this time I’ll teach my grandson. No, not how to coil and sew things – how to make a “trap” of spool knit cord in my kitchen where we’ll tie up his father (my son) if he dares venture into our waiting web.

Spool knitters are available in plastic and wood models at yarn stores, craft departments and online. (Google it, you’ll see.) Better yet, make your own spool knitter with a wooden thread spool and four brads.

ahamlin@bangordailynews.net

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