Jenny Walton's Packing for a Woman's Journey

In addition to founding and managing Victoria, a women's lifestyle magazine, Lindemeyer contributes a column under the name Jenny Walton. Selecting from among those pieces, she recalls the large Victorian home of her Connecticut childhood; a knitting club with high school chums; the bygone women's dormitory she lived in after college; and most of all, her grandmother's homespun wisdom and skills at the stove and needle. Taken together, the pieces resemble a memoir, although Lindemeyer notes the book ""is not exactly autobiographical."" Arranged in a nonchronological, patchwork sequence, the essays muse on the activities and sentiments traditionally associated with domesticity, or, as Lindemeyer puts it, ""the beauty of a woman's life through the artfulness of the things she has gathered about her."" After a few samplings, however, even sticky buns and apple pie become tiresome, especially when set under glittering windows that conspicuously sport fresh lace curtains. Illustrations. (Apr.)