How it all began

Back in the 1950s when I was a small child many people knitted and made their own clothes. Seeing a sock grow on what looked like more that 15 dancing needles was incomprehensible and fascinating. I wanted to understand how it worked. How can winding thin stringy wool round pointy sticks make socks or jumpers?

I was given a French knitting kit. It came in a nice box and was called Knitting Nancy, I think it was made by Sharps. Eagerly I began winding the wool round each metal loop and making stitches. It seemed to take forever until the knitting actually came out of the wooden dolls feet, however hard I tugged on the long tail! I knitted yards and yards of 4 stitch iCord in assorted colours but never found a use for it. The box had pictures of 'jolly' coiled bags and table mats but to be honest they looked pretty lame, in a post-war make-do-and-mend worthy pastimes sort of way.

Frankly, French knitting was a disappointment. I wanted to make scarves and jumpers for teddies, not snakes!  So my mother taught me, with a pair of plastic children's knitting needles, which had a distinctive cellulose smell, especially if you chewed the ends. Anyway I got the hang of it and teddies got garter stitch scarves with dropped stitches and holes.

It was a start.