So very Seventies.

For Flashback Friday this week, I give you, along with the purple flared corduroy pants which I would totally still be seen dead in (although possibly not with white frilly socks and white shoes, and probably not worn quite so high up the ankle - ankle-freezers, we called them and a worse fashion crime you could not commit), my crocheted poncho.

I'm standing in front of the first house that I remember living in - and one of my strongest memories of it is the scratchy steel wool carpet down the kids' end of the house. I was nine-ish when we left there but I reckon I could still draw a floor plan. Behind me is the window that my sister famously somersaulted through, thus earning her smile shaped knee-scar. I would guess that this photo was taken not long before we left the gentility of Canberra's inner south for our foray into community-based housing, an effort to counteract Canberra's famed cold-heartedness by recreating village values through proximity to neighbours, a community centre, a communal vegie patch and best of all, a pool!

There is something about a poncho that is so very 70's, don't you think? I think I wore them for most of the decade and possibly slightly beyond. It was lovingly made by my Mum. She didn't like sewing, although every so often she'd haul out the sewing machine and give it another red-hot go. And she didn't knit. But she did and still does crochet. Many a newborn of my mother's acquaintance has slept soundly under a beautiful crocheted baby rug, including of course my own 2 boys.

Here you see the bassinet rug for Climber.

Then here is the Climber's cot blanket.

And finally, the Cherub's cot blanket.

My babies have graduated from the cot to the bunk-bed, but I will never give these away. They will be warming my knees on a winter night for ever.