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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;jamesicus, post: 4781359, member: 14873&quot;]That brings to mind for me WWII England in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. It seemed everybody was involved in the war effort. I was an 11 year old schoolboy at that time. Our school participated in the knitting of warm items of apparel for the RAF (as I think all schools did). Boys and girls participated. The government issued the (steel blue colored) wool, knitting needles and patterns (scarves, gloves, socks and Balaclava helmets) to the schools - the teachers provided the knitting instructions to the boys (in those days just about all girls were proficient knitters) and took care of the logistics (distributing materials, gathering up completed items and shipping them off, etc.).</p><p><br /></p><p>As with most families, my grandmothers, mother and aunties knitted at every possible opportunity - family gatherings, in the Doctor’s waiting room, at home in spare time ..... and so on. It seemed all housewives (and quite a few daughters - and now some sons - carried a knitting basket with needles and balls of wool - and half finished items, wherever they went). So I had plenty of on the job training and help (I always had a hard time joining the halves of socks and Balaclava helmets).</p><p><br /></p><p>At first there was the usual scoffing and ribbing from the boys: “knitting is girl stuff” - “only sissy boys knit” ... and so on. But all that was quickly put behind with the realization that this was a serious part of the war effort. I became a pretty proficient knitter (most of the boys did) and was proud of it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course when the war was over (actually some time before) the boys went back to playing football (soccer), cricket and scrumping apples and pears - as always.</p><p><br /></p><p>I am still proud of my knitting, but I have almost forgotten how to do it - let’s see “purl one, knit two ..... “, or something like that.</p><p><br /></p><p>James[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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