Some years ago in Camden, Maine, the Windjammer Weekend festival featured ditty-bag contests. Sailors displayed the small bags they used to hold sailmak-ing and rigging gear, and the bags, which showed the skill of their owners in palm-and-needle work and in creating functional and fancy ropework, were judged for their decoration and functionality. Some had features a lot like those Frank Rosenow wrote about and illustrated in The Ditty Bag Book 35 years ago. First published in 1976, with a second edition in 1982, Rosenow's book is now back on the market in this reprint edition. It deserves to be. Reading this little volume and practicing the skills therein is like being an apprentice to a master sailmaker showing you everything from tool selection to the details of how to hold a needle. Frank Rosenow (1944-1993) straddled two worlds. Growing up in Marstrand, Sweden, he sailed racing dinghies and modern cruiser-racers. After wandering the ocean, he returned to apprentice with a master traditional sailmaker, Gunnar Andersson, who in turn had apprenticed in the day when you bought your master a dram for every skill shown. There were many ways to work thread and canvas, but from Andersson you learned The Right Way. In the 1970s Rosenow became a columnist for Sail magazine while continuing to cruise.
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