The Knitting-Table

From The Manchester Guardian, March 1st, 1915.

The Knitting-Table.

Formerly grandmother knitted and granddaughters held the wool.  It was an arm-aching business, too, for grandmothers were deliberate in their movements and wool was not so well put into skeins as is at present the case.  Nowadays, however, when everybody is knitting, irrespective of generations, it is no longer the thing to ask someone to hold one’s wool, since by doing so a certain amount of energy is necessarily deflected from the true path.  Thus it is by no means unusual to see knitters of all ages tramping painfully round a chair-back winding their wool, or attempting to use that same unyielding chair-back as though it were a nice yielding pair of arms adapting themselves to the idiosyncrasies of wool.;

For the comfort of the knitter, however, the knitting-table has come to light.  It consists of a nice large space which contains comfortably a couple of pounds of wool without mixing them.  Thus comforters and bodybelts or helmets and socks can be proceeded with simultaneously without confusion.  In compartments at the side needles of different sizes can be kept, and, for further comfort, there can be obtained at the same time little clips which keep together the respective sets of needles.  Attached to the table is a winder, which folds up and tucks away.  Amid confusion order is enabled to reign, and the knitter no longer has any excuse for the shapeless masses of woolly endeavour which lie about in every sitting-room.

Should the knitter wish to be more mobile than is possible with the knitting-table, rather useful bags are now made to contain knitting.  Since wool is apt to stick to any kind of textile material, these bags are made of leather, and can be slung over the arm.  It would indeed be quite easy to go for a walk knitting on the way, which seems not improbable, since people have taken to knitting even at concerts.  The leather is in all sorts of bright colours, and the bag is a sensible, workmanlike article.

[I guess that the winder attached to the table was something like a swift, i.e. something that would hold the yarn, in lieu of a granddaughter. 

"Shapeless masses of woolly endeavour" - seems familiar somehow.]