As a child, I was much less competent than my peers in this art. In the first form, we were issued some little, steel needles and some harsh yarn and taught to do plain and purl. I was about five and not too deft.

While my classmates had been moved on to knitting woolly scarves, on big needles, I was struggling along with the skinnies. Finally I went up to the mistress and allowed that I'd do a better job with the larger stuff; she was surprised, since 5 year olds were not expected to be so articulate, but she gave me some and helped me to cast on the scarf. I don't think that I ever finished it, as we moved from Tilehurst to Byfleet, and I don't ever remember seeing it again.

Our Mother was an exceptionally good knitter and it didn't seem possible to meet her high standards so embroidery, and sewing, were my household staples. We wore black, wool stockings and darning them was a frequent chore.

When I was in training I bought a magazine which featured a beautiful sweater on its front cover. It had three bands of colour from bottom to top, being a deep hyacinth blue, a lighter hyacinth blue and a rose pink. Each strip had an inserted, white Fair Isle pattern. Gorgeous! Oh, I wanted it so much .. but, Mother didn't do Fair Isle. Only one way for me to get it and that was to knit it, myself. Hmmm. The upshot was that I did; learning how was less difficult than I'd expected. I got many compliments on that sweater.

I made the sweaters that you see on Keith's children and Doreen was sweet enough to send me their picture; she also had to widen their necks, which I'd left very snug. There were no kids around for me to test them on.