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<h5>From the editor's keyboard</h5>
<h1>Down memory lane in a pamphlet</h1>
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<p><img src="pix1.jpg" width="200" height="251" hspace="10" border="0" align="left" alt="">It cost 75 cents and it included 130 patterns. Published by Dominion Woollens and Worsteds Limited, Toronto, it was the first edition 1949 Bouquet Knitter's Guide.</p>
<p>It's one of a whole stack of knitting pamphlets from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s — cherished for decades by a friend's grandmother and recently passed along to me.</p>
<p>A tangible link with the not too distant past, I confess to being in love with the simple innocence of the chubby babies modeling layettes, the dimpled boys in short pants wearing patterned pullovers — with ties! — to play baseball, the men with pipes wearing vests — called sleeveless pullovers — and the darling women's decorative accessories, called fascinators and shoulderettes. </p>
<p><img src="pix2.jpg" width="200" height="266" hspace="10" border="0" align="right" alt="">These are the kinds of patterns my grandmother knitted and for me, they represent what must have been a simpler life. </p>
<p>I was lucky enough to know my grandmother pretty well and here's what she was all about: working hard to make a decent life for her family, cooking and sewing, learning — she went to a chef's school in her sixties, just for the fun of it — and being a good neighbour and member of her congregation. I think she had given up knitting garments once her grandchildren were, as my grandfather used to call it, “eleven-teen”, but there was never a time she didn't have an afghan or lap robe on the needles. She didn't think it was her job to be trendy or sexy. She didn't spend hours trying to avoid wrinkles or starve or exercise herself into a smaller size. She wore her hair in a bun until one day, well into her seventies, she decided a short haircut was more practical. Her hands had grown too arthritic to brush her waist-length hair every night. She taught me to sew and knit and my mother, who had learned from her, taught me to crochet and embroider.</p>
<p><img src="pix3.jpg" width="200" height="163" hspace="10" border="0" align="left" alt="">In this stack of nostalgic pamphlets included another treasure — envelopes of transfer patterns. Decorative designs were printed in wax — I think it was wax — on tissue paper. Every year, my sister and I were sent to the dime store to pick out an envelope of transfers, plain white men's handkerchiefs and plain tea towels and brand new skeins of embroidery thread. After great deliberation, you carefully cut out the transfers you liked best and ironed them on hankies and towels. Then you set to work making Christmas gifts for your aunts and uncles and grandparents. I remember one cool afternoon I sat on the front porch for hours, embroidering initials in the corner of a hanky for my father. When it was time to go in for dinner, I stood up to discover that I had embroidered the the hanky to my cotton skirt. No one laughed but I think my grandmother and mother would be very sorry to learn that I'm not much better at embroidery now.</p>
<div ALIGN="right"><span style = " font-style:italic; ">—<a HREF="mailto:editor@knitnet.com&Subject=Comment from Editor's Keyboard page">Sharon Airhart</a></span></div><br>
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