A BOOM IN KNITTING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 63, 14 July 1915, Page 4

A BOOM IN KNITTING.

A writer in the Auckland Star says that some idea of the extent to which knitting for soldiers has caught on in Auckland may he ganged fi'om the fact that the shops can no longer supply bone knitting needles. One brightj little saleswoman in a big Queen Street emporium explained all about it to a pressman. The pressman found he had got well out of his depth, and couldn’t f|iiite grasp the details about, the hundred and one tilings a woman wants to know when she pays twopence for a box of four wire knitting needles, hut ho did

{father that a week or so ago there

was a “famine” in Auckland. No one

had worked a corner in the market. The supply had simply given out. and day after day hundreds, nay thousands, of fair dames, both young and old, tramped from one shop to an-j other, in the vain hope of buying thoj weapons with which to knit. Ulti-j mutely the Auckland furniture makers were prevailed upon to try and manufacture something that would' meet the position, and the idea proved to be a good one. for now there are scores of apprentices in that turning out wooden knitting needles as hard as they can go. How long the craze will last remains to be seen.' One cannot help wondering, in fact,! what will be done with the millions of socks, and caps and belts, ; ana things that our good women make in such numbers. In places of amusement, and in all sorts of unexpected places, you see busy lingers “purling” and “plaining.” and you wonder do they never grow tired. Even in the churches the sermon is delivered to the accompaniment of subdued clicking, more than one Auckland clergyman having intimated to his flock that knitting in church is no sin.