Talking to my Mom yesterday and telling her about how my latest sweater was going. Mom is 94, soon to be 95, and she's knit a lot of stuff in her lifetime...

When she was a young woman... about 13 years old, she fell down two flights of stairs and broke both her legs. She was confined to bed for a whole year, her legs hanging from straps attached to the ceiling. Then the bad news was... the dr's had set her legs wrong. They re-broke her legs and she spent another year in these restraints.

She was pretty bored so her mother bot her a box of yarn and some needles. From these things, my Mom at the age of 14, knit herself a suit. The suit was a jacket and a skirt.

She said the jacket was easy... but the skirt just seemed to go on and on. She was using circular needles to knit the thing.

I was so surprised when she said that! I had no idea Circulars had been around so long! I asked her if she meant DPN's instead but she didn't.

Honestly, I thought circulars were a new invention.... :chair:

Mom was born in 1917.
TEMA:thumbsup:

I know there were some in the 1940s, but that would have about 1930 for your mom. Wonder when the first ones appeared.

This article (http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall03/FEATtheresa.html) in Knitty puts the advent of circular needles somewhere in the early 20th century. Your grandmother must have been at the forefront of the circular era when she gave your mother a circ to knit with.

Neat! Thanks for sharing. :)

@Tema - what an amzing story - something to add to the 'history of knitting' archive. I think it means much more when you use circular needles and love knitting. I was really impressed with her knitting a whole suit - that's a lot of kntting. But then I guess that if you're limited with what else you can do, then it becomes much more possible.

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