I was going to share some new ideas with you today; directions I was thinking of taking with my knitting.  But I cannot find comfort in knitting today.  Yesterday was a very sad day for the UK, for Europe and for the world.  I am too sad and angry now to think about the present or the future.  So instead I will look to the past.  Below is a post I had prepared for a rainy day; that day is now.

I found this photo the other day in a shoe box.  It is a (rather awful) photo of me, circa 1989, knitting on the back porch of my in-law’s house on the Seymour River in North Vancouver.  Not only am I knitting in the photo, but I am wearing a hand-knitted sweater.

The sweater that I am wearing is a very traditional fisherman’s sweater, and is one that has sadly been lost through the passage of time.  (See here for a post about long-lost sweaters; it is so sad to lose track of hand-knitted items).   Though the sweater is lost, I still have the pattern book I used:

As you can see, the sweater was unisex and came in all sizes, including children’s. Looking back on this now, I can’t imagine why I didn’t knit it in off-white; it’s so much prettier and more classic than the tweedy pink I used.

In the photo I am knitting a red baby sweater, with an intricate cable down the front. Below is a photo of the completed sweater, courtesy of said shoe box.   For the life of me, I can’t remember who I knit it for.  Given the very small number of baby garments I have knit in my life, you would think that I could remember this one.

In addition to the huge glasses and the funny hair, note how enormous the pullover is on me.  Clearly, this was a time for lots of positive ease.  You could have probably fit two of me in there.  (Which means it would likely still fit me today!  Alas!)

PS – If you’ve never heard of the Wayback Machine (or WABAC Machine), that’s just sad. You can read about it here.  Mr. Peabody says so.