(Perhaps our heroine should have knitted for herself!)

Leave to it P. G. Wodehouse, comic genius and creator of The Inimitable Jeeves and Wooster, to bring levity to my growing obsession with wartime knitters. Lately I have been reading The Clicking of Cuthbert, a collection of Wodehouse’s golf tales. And let me add here: even if you, like me, know nothing of golf, you can still embrace these comedies set among the niblicks and mashies. Included in this volume is a cautionary tale about two rival golfing men, one stout and one lean, who attempt to guess which of them is favored by a certain young lady by studying the size of the item she is knitting. The assumption that they make is that she’s knitting for one of them. Of course, since this tale is by Wodehouse nothing turns out as these golfing gallants might expect. And Wodehouse includes the following warning, concerning the risks of amateur knitting:

“With amateur knitters there must always be allowed a margin for involuntary error. There were many cases during the war where our girls sent sweaters to their sweethearts which would have induced strangulation in their young brothers.”

If Wodehouse’s humor is your style, then check out NYPL's holdings for this prolific writer, musician, and essayist. A quick author search for him (Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville), 1881-1975.) will point the way. On that note, toodle pip!