Knitting is not just for women and girls....

Sailors, lighthouse keepers, shepherds and men in a variety of other occupations knitted, as a way of passing time productively, and making hats, socks, and other garments that weren't readily available for purchase in the isolated places that they lived and worked. Some men are rediscovering the joys of knitting, and other yarn crafts.











And for @Ganado and the girls.....


There are health benefits to knitting which have payoffs as men get older...

 

My grandmother carded and spun wool to make yarn and my granddad always knitted mittens, socks, etc from the yarn, some was dyed, some raw wool. He had arthritis in his hands, was in his 70's and 80's as I grew up, and said that knitting and raw wool kept his fingers from freezing up in the winter. Might of been true or an excuse, but I wore out and lost a lot of his mittens. That is another skill I should of learned from them, in the 1940's in rural Minnesota, a lot of the 70 year olds could and did still spin and knit, saw very few looms, but a lot of yarn made as a kid.
He used to tan deer hide, make the outer mitten from that and knit the liners out of raw wool, when the got wet, if you let them air dry, they wouldn't stiffen up or shrink. Kept your hands real warm, even when wet, but with only a thumb, were a little awkward to use.

 

Adding a trigger finger, would help in mitten versatility.

I have accumulated few pairs of 'trigger mittens' of different kinds...some woollen, just like these...



and some leather and Nomex fabric similar to these.



Trigger Finger Mittens - Great for the cold winters while driving, hunting, or anything outdoors.

This reference has a complete pattern for trigger finger mittens.


Via: Newfoundland Trigger Mitts | Holli Yeoh

 

Thread used to rot out on the leather part of the mitten, so grand dad would use the fine copper wire from a radio transformer to sew them together and they would last for years, of course nylon thread took care of that, but he didn't like it, too slippery and such in the 1940's.
Saw them and trigger finger mittens were around as a child, just never owned a pair and my grand dad never made them.

 

Your grand dad and my dad would have gotten along fine. My father built the family home almost entirely on his own, without the benefit of power tools. Did his own bricklaying, concrete footings, framing, roofing, tiling, door hanging, interior and exterior carpentry and joinery, and doing the architectural plans and drawings for the local council. The only thing that he didn't do himself were the electrical and plumbing installations which required qualified certified tradesmen. He was working as a building trades tool storeman into his mid 70's and doing home carpentry into his 80's

He was a tinkerer. And could make just about anything from junk and discarded objects. It would often be ugly (though sometimes beautiful) but it would usually be functional and useful.

His workshop was a treasure trove of tools and building materials and other stuff he couldn't bear to part with. I guess living through the depression, surviving WW2 (including the bombing of Dresden) and surviving in the immediate post war years as an immigrant in a a country the language of which he did not speak, and with a very disrupted schooling, influencing the thriftyness and frugality of much of his later life.

He had a soft spot for Americans, who treated him well in the DP camps in the American occuption zone.

 

I never will know your dad, but from what little you have said I admire him and wish him well. Today in America we are having a crisis in our Universities over writing I LIKE TRUMP and WHITES ARE BEAUTIFUL on the walls of the foot ball fields and all our snowflakes are screaming and having nervous breakdowns. Your father was a member of a generation were no one knew if they would get enough to eat, depression and wars, if they would be alive tomorrow, millions died through out the world of famine, in wars and "political affairs", where they would live tomorrow, hundreds of millions forced to move, whole countries appearing and dis appearing, and being forced to move to new areas, learn new languages, new skills, new customs, and yet continue to lead a "normal" life.

Some how the ones that survived became the greatest generation and I mean that world wide. It is just as true of the ordinary German, Russian, Chinese, American, English, Australian, and all the rest of them, who survived and went home or became a stranger in a strange land, picked up the pieces, did his or her best to lead a normal family life and do their best to make sure that their children's lives were better than theirs. I know of many people like your dad whose stories will never be told who lead lives that if were told would never be believed. As has been said many times, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and our lives, and all of our "achievements" are based on our fore fathers and mothers hard earned lives. It is humbling to me to think that if something different had happened to those who came before me, none of this would have happened. From now on when I read your words of wisdom chelloveck, they will remind me of your father, not of his wood shop, etc, but that some how, the grace of God, random chance, tremendous struggle and hard work, etc, became a "normal" Australian and raised a well educated son who has to remind us of the struggles in his past as we neither know of them or expect them to have happened. My great grand father was the son of an uneducated German peasant who left his home, came to the US , learned a new language, fought in the Union army during our little scrap, homesteaded in Minnesota after the war, married a Lakota, raised a family, and lead a good life and died. His children and the generations that follow him will never know, but only benefit from his work. Each of us in our own way face struggles each day, money, health, personal interactions, societal changes, etc, but perhaps it would be best to try to place them in their proper perspective, being upset by some ones actions, BLM or such, is really a little different than being hungry and hiding in the rubble during a major bombing raid or being in a DP camp and not knowing where or even if you will live.
Thank you for sharing chelloveck.

Didn't mean to hijack the thread, but sometimes the asides are a lot more important than the topic and I don't know of any other way to comment.

 

For 13 yests worked at a second chance school for court ordered boys and they were taught how to knit and would make some if the coolest blankets and watch caps they would make a lot for single moms at the women's center and in all that time I never learned to do it one of the things I wish I would have taken the time to learn

 

I'm sure you would be making some sort of blow/throw weapon out of the needles perhaps?

 

Chello, Is this how you meet and pick up the older ladies?

Damn clever of you BTW Carry on!

 

I used to make ceramic pots and Macramé hangers, as a boy. I learned how to tie a lot of knots that way.

 

Cape Cod Mass area is famous for its very well made baskets made be men on the light ships etc in their off time and of course the scrimshaw made by the whalers. The separation between men's and women's work in a lot of ways did not exist in survival situations.

 

I knew no one in my family that knitted, so when I took an interest I learned on my own for a while .
It was a good past time and it was good for my hands and maintaining some productivity but the hobby/craft only lasted a bout a year .
Dad being raised during the depression developed a lot of different skills , and passed that creativity down to me, so I don't spend a life time doing much of a routine ,too many different things to be done and learned .
Not to be little knitting ,but I have plenty of other means to make clothing my time is better spent.
If /when the time comes that I cannot do the things I do now ,knitting is a good skill to continue using. And seeing I don't do things that are considered normal, I'd probably knit something out of a paracord.

 

My mom tried to teach me how to knit...

Lets just says its much safer for everyone if I dont try co-ordinated knot tying with stabby sticks....

 

I got it in my head I was going to learn to knit 2 xmases ago. About 15 minutes into it I decided I'd rather watch paint dry while chewing broken glass. How anyone can sit still long enough to knit anything larger than a coaster is beyond me.