Memory Monday

Back in the summer of 1959 Mother and and I moved from Tacoma WA to Baker OR, her home-town. We moved in with her mother - my Grandma - and one of her sisters - my Aunt Hilma. In the fall, I began attending Jr. High school and one of my classes was Home Ec. I don't remember the teacher's name, but I do have a visual image of her stored away in my brain...She was a little grey-haired woman who wore glasses. I towered over her and probably out-weighed her by fifty pounds. One thing I remember learning in her class was that the cloth one used in a sewing project was correctly referred to as "fabric", not "material".


I know we did a variety of cooking projects and sewing projects, but the only project I actually remember is that we made gathered skirts. (The last thing I wanted to wear was a gathered skirt. I did not need a waist-band to accentuate my non-waist, nor three yards of fabric - or was it four yards?- to add bulk to my silhouette!) Anyway, we learned to gather using the longest stitch on the sewing machine, and we learned how to make a sewed-on waist band. I don't remember if we made buttonholes or used some other method to fasten.


At school we had nice electric sewing machines. At home I had the use of Grandma's treadle sewing machine. Straight stitches all the way. At school we cooked on electric stoves. At home Grandma cooked on an old wood-fire cook stove (which also heated the North end of the house). In the summer when the weather was really hot, Grandma often cooked early in the day. But when the cherries were ripe she canned cherries, and when the raspberries came on she made jelly, and when Aunt Jean's garden yielded produce, there was my Grandma in that hot old kitchen canning pickles or green beans or whatever there was to be preserved. She baked bread at least once a week and on Sundays there was almost always a pot roast and scalloped potatoes. Her cherry pies were legendary.



Knitting...Last fall I stitched this Rose Trellis Lace scarf. I charted the pattern, using the instructions in one of Barbara Walker's books. The yarn is a lace weight part-mohair blend leftover from a long-ago scarf I made for my dear Aunt Chris. I think this pattern is one of my favorite lace patterns. Looking back over my pattern notes I see that I cast-on with a size 8 needle and then knitted the piece with a size 6.