Page 5 - Gwennie Pottie of West Tarbot

ISSUE : Issue 67

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1994/8/1

make sure that you were ready when the saw? mill would come to your place. You know, whoever would be ready first would get it, but everybody made sure that everybody was ready for the mill when it would come. They were visiting all the time. I remem? ber when we first got the first radio. When the fights would come on, the place would fill up Saturday night with people to listen to the fights. There'd be quilting bees and there'd be spinning bees and probably they'd get to? gether to put a quilt together and have it ready for quilting. (Did you take part in that?) I made my first quilt all by myself when I was 16. That was the beginning of my crafts, really. From then on I was doing the spinning and knitting and sew- ing, crocheting. Mostly in the home. Of course those days.... The old lady and I used to make mitts and socks for the men that were working out in the lumber woods. She was doing quite a bit of knitting for them in the winter time. (Now, would these be for sale for those men?) Oh, yeah. (So it was like a cottage industry.) Well, actually, yes, but there wasn't much in it in those days. Fifty cents for a pair of mitts and seventy-five cents for a pair of socks. But it was all our own wool. I mean, we had our own sheep. She'd sit down and knit and then she'd get me to get in on it. (Though she was crippled, her hands....) Oh, they were crippled! But you'd wonder how she was doing it, I re? member she'd make a hole like this in her apron. She'd pin it like this to have the end of the needle in it. She'd put the end of the needle like this and she'd knit like that. It was really amazing to watch her. Well, one of her hands, it was crippled all right, but not quite as bad as the oth? er. Now, she'd write a letter with that hand better than some people that's got good hands, really. But, she'd knit.... See, there were some of the men like D.W. MacLeod and his brother Angus, and they were going working in the lumber woods. And they'd come through our place--like, they'd go through the woods through the shortcut--and they'd give her an order'that so-and-so wanted a couple of pairs of mitts or a couple of pairs of socks. Every Saturday they'd come home they had an order for somebody, and "If you can have them ready by next Monday--a week from Monday--when we're going back." And, of course, this would be the order of the day. You'd sit down and you'd knit and she'd get up at eight o'clock in the morning and have her breakfast. And I'd wash her and comb her and have her ready. She'd sit down and she'd start knitting. And she was just something like myself, she always had the basket of knitting at her chair to get ready to get at it. And she was as cute as.... She'd always have a pair of needles with some knitting on it and if anyone else came to visit, she'd pass it to them to do the knitting. Oh yeah, or she'd have them spin- Our phone recognizes people as individuals. After all, everyone is different. Each and every one of us is an original. And our Call Minder phone with Call Display recognizes that. With a window that displays the name' and number of the individual who is calling you. So you can greet your caller any way you wish. I ~ Call now to lease the Call Minder phone and to get Call Display free for an 8-week ?? S trial- Plus you can try Call Answer, Call Return, Ring Again, Call Screen and Call Trace. ~ 5 services that suit your needs. For details, call 1-800-565-0622 (toll- JJ free). And be as personal as you like with anyone who happens to call. iJ TheMT&TCaUMinder.; AWTs

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