The Story of a Life-Long Knitter: Ethel Harvey

By Helen Shannon

Ethel Harvey was born in Norfolk; that lovely area of England on the North
Sea, a land of winding rivers and shallow lakes called Broads – a popular
holiday area for many years for sailors. She attended the local village
Church of England school; that is where she learned to knit, at age five! In
those days village schools all had a one-hour lesson a week for knitting and
another hour a week for sewing lessons. While the girls were busy knitting,
the boys learnt simple carpentry and gardening.

The wool at the schools was not wound in neat balls as it is today, but came
in twisted skeins. To be wound, it required two people, one to hold the
skein taut on outstretched arms and one to wind the yarn into a round ball.
Ethel says that she and her friends would go on the school porch to wind
wool and if the following lesson was not too popular, they would
deliberately tangle the wool. Then they had the excuse that it had to be
untangled before they could return to class!

The first completed article that Ethel knitted was a potholder in orange &
beige that she backed with a piece of tweed – probably somebody’s old
trousers cut up! She gave this to her mother, who never used it, but when
Ethel grew up and got married; her mother presented it back to her. In 1948,
Ethel, her husband Geoffrey and daughter Ena immigrated to Canada. Ethel
knitted for her baby daughter and for herself and eventually for the
grandchildren as they came along.

For over twenty years Ethel has knitted baby outfits for Etobicoke and
Georgetown Hospital Gift shops, plus some sweaters for older children.
Ethel estimates she knits approximately twenty baby sets a year – jacket,
bonnet and booties. She also knits for the Seniors Christmas Bazaar as well
as for our own Bazaar at St. George’s.

Ethel loves to knit! She admits to waking up in the night sometimes and,
unable to get back to sleep, she will sit up and add a few more rows to her
current project.

Knitting is having a resurgence; even Hollywood stars are photographed
knitting away during takes. As Ethel points out, there are only two
stitches, plain and purl – everything else is just a variation on these two
stitches.

Some years ago, Ethel told me that she and her husband were at a craft sale
and saw a knitting machine. He asked her if she would like one and she was
horrified! “Not doing it myself would take away the soul of my hobby”, she
told him.

If you have not knitted for a while, pick it up again. Make a fluffy scarf
for a daughter or granddaughter (really simple: 2 balls of eyelash wool, 25
stitches, 5 ½ mm needles and knit until you run out of yarn); try tiny, tiny
bonnets for preemie babies – Young’s Drugstore has a pattern; and for
something really, really easy, knit cotton dishcloths. Knit for yourself,
your family or Christmas Bazaars. It is highly satisfying, great therapy and
at the end you have something to brag about!

Thank you Ethel, and keep knitting!