The Sisterhood of the Traveling Coat

The Jaywalker sock has been frogged and a new version, a simple stockinette sock, has been started. I love the colors in this Trekking yarn, and it seemed a shame to complicate it with a pattern stitch. Well, third time is the charm.

When the department store I worked in as a knitting instructor decided to eliminate the fabric and yarn departments, I had already decided to leave the job. My husband was in the army at the time, stationed at the Sacramento Army Depot. His hitch was about to be over, and he had never taken leave so he had two months of leave pay due. We decided to use the money to travel all over the country for two months, because it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and we were young and unencumbered with property or children. It was going to be the Bicentennial year, so I planned a travel wardrobe in red, white, and blue, mostly in the popular doubleknits of the time. We were going to be traveling through the fall, and would come home in early winter. I needed a coat for the trip, and a knitted coat seemed like a comfortable option. Of course, I was from California so I had no idea how cold Real Cold could be, but I was lucky and never really ran into any extreme weather on that trip.


I found this pattern for a coat and bought the yarn with my discount at the store where I worked. I think the yarn was Bernat Berella Bulky. It knitted up very fast and was indeed very very comfortable. I only have one picture of me in the coat, and there I am seated in front of Boscobel in Garrison, NY, on the Hudson River. This picture makes me laugh at the strange spacey expression on my face. The spouse and I had picked up a case of food poisoning in Boston and when this picture was taken, I was still a little lightheaded and queasy. As a matter of fact, the lady giving the tour in Boscobel thought I looked faint, so she gave me the one and only dose of smelling salts I have ever experienced. That stuff really packs a wallop. So there I am, sitting in front of the mansion in the Red Coat, post smelling salts, looking woozy.


I had the coat for some years after that, but I didn't wear it anymore, and it didn't fit anymore anyway. My mom was telling a fellow employee at UCBerkeley about the coat, and since the girl really liked it, we gave it to her for a trip she was going to take. I like to think of the coat still out there, being passed along like the traveling pants, seeing the world. It was acrylic, so I doubt if it would ever wear out.