Lion Brand Flattering Knit Jacket, Mom's White Sweater and Hurricane Carla

Flattering Jacket from Lion Brand

Since I talked about my finished object, I'll add a note about my on-going project -- the Lion Brand Knitted Flattering Jacket. It's working up nicely with the Montero yarn. I'm about 1/3 of the way up the back. The stitches are more pronounced than they would be with Homespun. I'll need to check gauge again when the section is a bit bigger. The gauge seems right, but the stitches look tighter than I remember the Homespun working when I tried this before.

I started this pattern about eight years ago in the crocheted version, using the recommended Lion Brand yarn in "Denim." I crocheted the back and the left side of the pattern, but could never wrap my mind around reversing the left side instructions to create the right side. It just didn't work out. I ended up frogging the entire sweater and making a Basket Weave Afghan for Reyes. He loves it and still has it on his bed. At least the yarn wasn't wasted.

But I still really like the look of that sweater. When I was a kid, Mom spent nearly a year crocheting a white sweater. It was sewn together but never worn when Dad took a "road job" with Navion, in Galveston, Texas in 1960. (Dad was a tool-and-die maker who did contract work in the aircraft industry. Our home base was in Kansas, but the whole family might travel out of state for periods of time when he had a "road job.") Here is the whole family posing before the palm tree in our front yard. I'm the short one. :)

That fall, Hurricane Carla (a level 5 storm) was heading straight for Galveston. The neighbors told us that our house was high enough that we shouldn't worry about water getting too deep. If we put the important stuff up higher than, say 12", we should be fine. Mom put all of our clothes, including the white sweater, in the moving trunks that we always used. She tucked other valuables inside -- Dad's guns, any breakables she didn't want to lose, that sort of thing, and stacked the trunks on top the kitchen table. Since most of our possessions were still in Kansas, she didn't have a lot of things to rescue from the water. There was no furniture in the house that we were concerned about losing. The "good stuff" was in Kansas.

Carla went in at Port Aransas, south of the Island, but it was the worst storm to hit Galveston since 1900. In today's parlance, it was equal to Hurricane Katrina. A young weatherman on one of the Houston stations did a master's effort keeping everyone informed and reporting the story of the storm. (CBS was impressed enough with his work to put him on national TV. He's still around. His name is Dan Rather.)

Dan Rather and the Weather Bureau told folks to evacuate and we believed him. We went west toward Austin, but danged if the Hurricane didn't follow us. We were in a building in a state park when the eye of the storm when right over our heads. The storm veered north and played havoc with weather systems clear to Canada for a goodly time afterward. We worked our way back to Pearland, Texas and stayed with friends until people were allowed back on the Island.

Houses tossed into a jumble by Hurricane Carla

The devastation was mind-blowing. They had taken bulldozers and pushed debris off the streets to allow cars to move. The piles that lined the boulevard as we got off the causeway were as tall as a building. Boards, mud, pieces of furniture, toys -- everything was caught in those piles. One-ton concrete benches that were bolted to the seawall had been ripped loose and tossed across a six lane road. Many houses were destroyed or totally gone. Murdock's Bath House, a landmark from the turn of the century, didn't survive. The Pleasure Pier with its drive-in theater over the water would never be the same. The picture posted here shows houses that sat on the beach below the seawall. They were picked up and tossed together like abandoned toys. The City was under martial law. We lived on the airport which had been a World War II military base. Armed National Guardsmen manned the gates just like in the war years and we had to prove we lived there to get inside.

The seawall held and none of the direct water from the storm reached our house, but Offat's Bayou backed up and got us from the rear. We had three feet of water in the house. When Dad opened the front door the kidney-shaped vanity from my room and my accordion were crumpled in the mud. It looked like they were trying to get out. The moving trunks that held all our clothes and important things had floated around the kitchen and the sheet rock was dissolved from the walls as high as the water had stood. Dad told us to watch out for snakes and be careful as we started cleaning up.

The snakes worried me. I was twelve and from rural Kansas, but I didn't like snakes. That first night, I pulled my camp cot into my brother's room and tried to coax his dog onto the cot with me. My dog was already curled against my legs. I don't know how fourteen-year-old Skip or his dog Dixie could have saved me from a snake in the night, but I was sure they would do it.

Dad and Skip grabbed shovels and started pushing the mud out of the house. Mom and I rummaged through the muck to salvage anything that could be cleaned. It took weeks. When Mom got to the trunks, the guns had rusted all over the clothes. The white sweater was ruined. She boiled it on the stove with Rit Color Remover. The fiber didn't felt, but it stretched badly. However, the rust went away.

I LOVED THAT SWEATER! It stretched to tunic length, had great boxy pockets and was warm enough to wear as a jacket. I grabbed it and wore it all through high school. I don't know why I didn't take it off to college with me. Mom, on the other hand, saw the sweater as a failure. She took it to Goodwill when my back was turned. Whimper.

So now, 40-some years later, I'm going to replace that sweater come Hell or High Water. It looked much like the Lion Brand Flattering Jacket. (If I ever find Mom's crochet pattern in her stash, I'll post the picture to this blog entry.) Since I didn't get the crocheted version of the Lion Brand sweater to work, I'm back to it with the knitted version. I'm using llama-wool yarn called Montera that is wonderful to touch. I just want to snuggle it! I purchased it at the Emporia Fiber Fest from Ann O'Neil. From her stash to mine...

Since Spring has arrived, I haven't done much knitting at home. Most of my knitting has been done in the car when we are running errands. I've found a bag big enough to carry the sweater, so it may become my traveling project. I'd really like to be able to wear it this fall. Hm... Reyes has all those baseball practices and ball games coming up... KNITTING TIME!!