Forgotten Treasures

My summer project this year is cleaning out my parent's garage - with the onset of old age and poor health, it has become a disaster of a dumping ground for them, crammed on top of stuff packed up from when I went off to graduate school over a decade ago...so I'm slowly going to go through boxes, trunks, shelves, and I'll decide what needs to be kept or discarded. I'm beginning with my stuff, as it's pretty easy for me to assess what categories my junk falls under - Must Keep, Keep to Sell, Keep for Reassessment Later, and Trash. I came across some stuff of mine that my father had repacked, so it was a mish-mash of goods - books, files, rubber stamps, weird ephemera - and included in the books were a minor and a major knitting find, books I'd purchased over a decade ago and subsequently forgotten about when I moved back east.

The minor treasure is Barbara Walker's Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book. I've several older (1940's & 1950's) magazines that teach knitting this way, but I had completely forgotten I had this book. Purchased at a library sale over a decade ago. I don't think there are any undiscovered Barbara Walker stitches in there or anything, but it contains her 'how to knit' basics, and frankly, as a long-time admirer of hers, I'm glad I own a copy of it (and I probably didn't pay more than $1.50 for it!).



The major treasure is a 1960's era stitch book, "2000 Patterns of Design and Figure Knitting" by Y. Miyashita. Yes, a 1960's knitting stitch book from Japan! The cover, title page, and 2 pages of legend for reading the symbols are in English; everything else is in Japanese. Ah, this book is wonderful! Such beautiful laces, textures, etc.! I've had to talk myself out of spending the money for that great 250 stitches book five or six times in the last two months; I just remind myself of how much money it will cost me...this find from my forgotten archives, however, will quell that yearning for awhile.

I've included some crappy photos, just little samples. As I knit things up with some of these Japanese stitch patterns, I'll post photos and notes. I wish I could take next week off and just stay home and play with these designs and some of the new yarn I've purchased....