"Tell Them Of Us" Update

March 3, 2014, 1:15 pm

I wrote last month here about the project to make a film about the village of Thimbleby in Lincolnshire in the First World War, and the men commemorated on its war memorial. I have been supplying copies of patterns from the Knitting & Crochet Guild collections to the knitters and crocheters who are making costumes for the film, via the costumier, Pauline Loven.

A recent update on the project described packaging up yarn and patterns to send to the volunteers around the country (and around the world). There was a photo of a table strewn with copies of patterns, and I was thrilled to recognise them as ones I had sent.

Photo by permission of Pauline Loven.

I think I can recognise on the table a pattern that featured in my earlier post - one of the Paton's leaflets.

Paton's Helps to Knitters IX

Also on the table are copies of two issues of Leach's Home Needlework series. The originals are a bit worn and discoloured, after 100 years - the paper was not top quality in the first place - but they are perfectly readable.

Leach's Home Needlework Series no. 4 -- Comforts for Men

One is a booklet of things to knit for soldiers and sailors, including the strange helmet with ear flaps on the cover - the idea is that the flaps could be tucked in to keep the ears warm, or folded back when it was important to be able to hear well.

The other booklet has instructions for garments for babies and small children, including the small boy's suit shown on the cover. It has a jersey, buttoned on one shoulder, and with a diamond pattern on the yoke, shorts, a cap and socks, all knitted. The instructions say that "It can be made in useful navy blue, brown or other dark shade, but white has a much better appearance." (You would have to really love washing clothes to dress a small boy in white wool. Especially in the days before machine washable wool and washing machines.)

Leach's Home Needlework Series No. 10 - Garments for Children

The little girl's outfit on the cover is a coat and cap, in green wool if you follow the suggestion in the booklet. It is in "apple-seed" stitch, which I had not met until recently. I am knitting an Aran sweater for my husband to an Alice Starmore pattern, and the side panels of that are in what she calls sand stitch, but it is the same as the apple-seed stitch in this pattern. (More on the Aran sweater later.)

I recognise other patterns on the table from The Lady's World Fancy Work Book - maybe some from Weldon's Practical Needlework too. It's very satisfying to think of all these patterns being used again, to create the costumes for the film.

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Sanquhar Gloves

March 6, 2014, 1:55 am

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I've just bought a new pair of gloves - for a hand-knitter that wouldn't usually be anything to write about, but these are very special gloves. They are traditional Sanquhar-pattern gloves, hand-knitted in Sanquhar (in Dumfriesshire in Scotland). And as you can see, they were knitted just for me, with my initials knitted into panels on the wrist.

In theory, I could knit gloves like this myself, but actually I don't have the skill, or the patience. They are in very fine wool (3-ply?) and the detail is just amazing. (I generally make people look at the gussets between the fingers. Phenomenal.)

The pattern is very similar to one of the first published patterns for Sanquhar gloves, Patons & Baldwins leaflet 87 that appeared in the 1950s.

Patons & Baldwins 87

I ordered the gloves from the Sanquhar Arts Cente, A' the Airts, which is just opposite the Tollbooth Museum. We visited both in May 2012, but I didn't know then that you could order gloves from the Arts Centre. I think they can be ordered in other colour combinations, and other stitch patterns, but I wanted to stick to the traditional black and white. The pattern is called 'the Duke' - the squares are supposed to represent the enclosure of the land.

The gloves are very warm - too warm to wear in the spring-like weather we are having. But I'll be ready for the next cold spell.

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Name that Stitch

March 10, 2014, 1:56 pm

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I went to Sheffield last week, bought myself a new top and while I was looking around the tin the fashion floor, saw an interesting stitch pattern on a sweater. This is getting to be a habit - it was seeing a sweater in John Lewis that led me to experiment with two-colour moss stitch. The latest stitch pattern seemed to be a slip stitch pattern, with the yarn carried across the front of the fabric.

In fact, if I've got it right, it was a mixture of linen stitch and stocking stitch. On an odd number of stitches:
Row 1 (right side): (Knit 1, slip 1 with yarn in front) to last stitch, knit 1.
Row 2 (wrong side) Purl.

On the right side, it looks a bit like single rib, but is less stretchy. The sweater I saw was in a flecked yarn that made the horizontal 'bars' more obvious - I think it would be interesting, too, to try it in two colours, one for the knit rows and one for the purl rows.

The wrong side is also quite attractive - like a slightly corrugated reverse stocking stitch.

It makes a nice fabric - softer and much less dense than linen stitch. In comparison with stocking stitch, it's thicker and doesn't curl up, though it does still curl inwards a bit. Is it a standard stitch, I wonder? I have been thinking of it as the fatface stitch (it was a fatface sweater) but clearly that won't do, especially if it has a name already.

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A Vintage Wool Wrapper

March 13, 2014, 4:06 am

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A wrapper from a vintage skein of yarn turned up recently at Lee Mills (just the wrapper, no yarn) in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection. I think it dates from 1920 or not much later - the brand is J. & J. Baldwin's Beehive yarn, but the manufacturer is Patons & Baldwins - the two companies merged in 1920. I like the little engravings of things you could knit with Beehive yarn - a lady's stocking, a pair of leggings for a child, a pair of baby's bootees are all easy to guess at. The objects at the top right look like some sort of wristlet for a lady. The drawing at the top left is, I think, a shawl - it is worn over the shoulders and the strings cross over in front and tie at the back. (I have seen a pattern for something like that.) All very charming, though they seem a bit old-fashioned for 1920 - similar patterns were current before the First World War.

On a later ball band, from the 1950s or 1960s, the company is named as Patons & Baldwins, and the beehive (which was originally the symbol of J. & J. Baldwin) still appears in vestigial form.

And it is still there on a recent ball-band, though the Baldwin name has disappeared altogether.

So, you should save your ball-bands and one day they will be fascinating historic documents. (I just found three, all different, lurking in the bottom of one of my knitting bags, so it turns out I am already saving ball bands, without actually deciding to.)

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In Aran Style, 1959

March 16, 2014, 11:57 am

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On Friday I did my talk on "The Evolution of Aran Style" once again for the Leeds branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild. It's the 4th or 5th time I've given the talk, but it changes a bit each time, and I use a slightly different selection of Aran sweaters to illustrate it. The new entry this time was a jumper that the cataloguers were recording a few weeks ago.

The donor had included the pattern with the garment - otherwise we might not have felt confident in describing it as "Aran style". The pattern was published in Woman's Weekly in 1959. The headline is "In Aran style is this chunky patterned sweater", and the magazine goes on to say "These magnificent husky patterns, so like those from the Atlantic Isles of Aran, make up a Double Knitting jersey we think you will find irresistible." It is hardly chunky or husky in modern terms, but the description suggests that Woman's Weekly readers were usually knitting with finer yarn at that time - they are assured that because it's Double Knitting, "the sweater will grow quickly on the needles." In fact, the sweater we have in the collection was knitted in 4-ply, not DK - I think that the knitter followed the instructions for a larger size than she was aiming for, to compensate. It is a very 1950s sweater, especially as styled in the magazine.

I used to read Woman's Weekly back then at my Grandma's, and I was always fascinated by the suggested colour schemes for outfits. It seemed like a glimpse of some profound and esoteric knowledge that the Woman's Weekly writers had mastered, and if only I tried hard enough I could acquire it too. For this sweater, the magazine declares: "There are appropriate colours to choose" and then lists them:

Leprechaun green jersey, beige cavalry twill skirt, cream silk scarf.
Unbleached natural jersey, peat brown skirt, emerald green scarf.
Atlantic blue jersey, dark navy skirt, pale lemon yellow scarf.
Gypsy red jersey, black and white check trews, pale grey scarf.
Gorse yellow jersey, green tartan skirt, dark green headband.

Too bad if you'd like purple or pink.

The largest size (40 in.) is intended for a man (who ideally should have an open-topped sports car to go with it) and the magazine advises: "Choose the stronger colours of granite grey, storm blue or unbleached natural if you are knitting for a man."

It's interesting that the possibility of knitting in unbleached wool is offered in both cases - only a few years later, Patons introduced Capstan yarn specifically for knitting Aran sweaters. It was what we would now call Aran weight yarn, i.e. thicker than DK, and initially was only available unbleached. After that, Aran sweaters knitted in Capstan or similar yarns, in "traditional" Aran patterns, became extremely popular in this country. Perhaps the Woman's Weekly pattern shows the beginnings of a trend towards knitting Aran sweaters in unbleached wool.

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A Host of Hats

March 24, 2014, 9:49 am

≫ Next: March 1914

≪ Previous: In Aran Style, 1959

Last week, we had the monthly meeting of the Huddersfield branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild. Everyone was invited to bring along one or more hats and talk about them (or bring no hats and hear the stories). It was fascinating to see the huge variety of hats that were brought - old hats, new hats, designer hats, make-it-up-as-you-go-along hats. Hats that turned out well, and one that didn't.

I took photos of some of them - unfortunately, the lighting in the cafe was not very good for photography, and the colours in particular are sometimes a bit weird.

First, the vintage knits. Pamela brought along two Fair Isle tams that she knitted many years ago, and the booklet that the patterns came from.

Patons SC104

I brought the Aran bobble that that my mother knitted for my sister in the late 60s, which I wrote about here.

I also brought my latest project, which was inspired by a 1914 pattern, so it is a sort of vintage knit, but also new. More on that later.

Then the designer hats. There were three designs by Woolly Wormhead. Margaret has made her Meret beret more than once - here are photos of two, one much slouchier than the other.

Sarah and Marie both brought their Encircle hat, which was Woolly Wormhead's mystery hat design in 2012. I knitted it too, and wrote about it here.

Sarah's Encircle

Marie also brought in Erica, which was WW's 2013 mystery hat.

Marie's Erica

And Lorien by Ann Kingstone. (She also brought Ann's Ilkley Moor design - the hat to go with the Baht 'At fingerless mitts. It is beautiful, in the limited edition blue version of Baa Ram Ewe's Titus yarn called Boothroyd - but I didn't manage to get a good enough photo of it to show the delicate cables.)

Marie's Lorien

There were several hats that people had knitted to their own designs. Angharad brought a navy and mauve hat she made to use up wool left over from a pair of mittens - the photo really doesn't do justice to the colours.

And Marie brought a design of her own in feather-and-fan stitch to show off some yarn she spun herself.

Marie really likes knitting hats, especially blue ones. She also brought in the funniest hat of the evening - one that didn't quite work. Beautifully knitted, though. And blue.

Marie's disaster

Apologies to those who brought hats that are featured (either because I didn't get a photo, or it didn't turn out well), and to anyone whose hat is wrongly attributed or described - let me know if so.

It was a very entertaining evening. I feel inspired to knit more hats.

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March 1914

March 27, 2014, 9:27 am

≫ Next: Holiday in the Peloponnese

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It's hard to look at anything published in the first half of 1914 and not feel a sense of foreboding - they didn't know what was about to hit them. In fact, authors sometimes write about the First World War almost as though they should have, e.g. in later 1914, "Little did they know that the war would go on for another four years." Well, of course they didn't (except perhaps Lord Kitchener, and little did he know that he'd be dead by then). Life wasn't comfortable for everyone - and extremely wretched for many - but I imagine that most people assumed that it would carry on in the same way for a good long time. And in March 1914, spring was around the corner, primroses were in flower on the covers of magazines, and the Archduke hadn't even been shot yet.

The Girl's Own Paper was edited by Flora Klickmann, a prolific and successful author as well as editor. You would expect that she would be sympathetic to women who wanted to be financially independent and self-supporting, with their own careers, because she was herself, and there are some signs of that. For instance, there is an article on "Quick Steps in Cooking - Suggestions for the Business Woman who has to look after Herself". The recipes in it are designed to minimise washing up - "one of the chief problems of the worker. Only those who have tried the experiment of doing everything for themselves, and earning their living besides, realise the strict economy of plates and spoons and forks and pans which must be maintained if life is not to become an impossible burden." (Odd that doing your own washing up, etc., is viewed as an experiment, rather than something you had to do because you couldn't afford to employ someone.) The article is aimed at both business women who have a "daily servant for a few hours daily" and also those who attend to themselves entirely. In either case a meal that doesn't require a lot of attention is needed, so soups and stews are suggested, and risotto - though I have to say that the risotto recipe is not at all authentic. (You cook the rice by "furious boiling" and then add other ingredients afterwards.)

Some of the ads in the magazine also seem to be aimed at women who did not have servants - or just possibly who were servants themselves, though 6d for a monthly magazine seems a bit steep for the sort of lowly servant who would have to blacklead all the grates.

But elsewhere, the magazine is aiming at women who don't want to be independent. One article begins, "Women are said to be the keepers of men. This being true, it is good to know that there are many women who seem born to the purple of wifehood and motherhood, and they seem to find in the seclusion of their own homes, and by their own firesides, a fuller and more satisfying life than anything the outside world has to offer them. The need of this world to-day is not for professional women, but for educated, intelligent and conscientious women as home-makers. The world would wag along very comfortably if there never were another woman lecturer or doctor, for all those places would be filled very creditably by men; but it takes a woman to make a home, and the home is the one thing needful for the safeguarding of humanity."

Not altogether consistent, for elsewhere in the same issue an article discusses how difficult it is to find good servants - being a middle-class home-maker wasn't just a matter of comfortable seclusion by your own fireside, but of managing staff, who were then liable to do inconvenient things like leaving to get married.

As usual in women's magazines, there are features on clothes. In 1914, they were very constraining (on a foundation of corsets, of course) - the silhouette was very narrow, so that if you were really fashionable, it was hard to take more than small steps. There are several pages of illustrations of garments that you could make yourself - paper patterns for dresses, underwear, children's clothes, etc. could be bought from the magazine. Ready-made clothes are advertised, too.

And you had to wear a hat. To be fashionable, it had to be large and highly decorated - but if you were short of money you could refurbish an old hat by dyeing it.

Other ads are for sports clothes, which were considerably freer. Sometimes, a woman is posed in a long narrow skirt holding a golf club and you wonder how anyone could possibly play golf dressed like that. But the Tootal's tennis dress shows that at least sometimes women's dress could allow a lot more movement.

The long cardigan and not-too-tight skirt shown in other ads for "sports" clothes were I think what many women wore every day - they were not just for sports. As the Pryce-Jones ad says "No lady's wardrobe can be considered complete without one of these delightful models, which are so very inexpensive."

Ad for Pryce-Jones, Newtown, Wales

But... little did they know that in only a few months the country would be at war, and their world would change completely.

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Holiday in the Peloponnese

April 11, 2014, 3:55 am

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The lighthouse at Cape Tainaron

The lack of blog posts for a couple of weeks is due to the fact that we have been on holiday in Greece (and then it's taken me a week to catch up with things). We went with 13 friends from our walking group, and had a wonderful time. It was planned to be a mixture of walks, history and nature - all organised by Gareth Trewartha of Naturally Greece. There were spring flowers everywhere, and we saw birds on their migration north from Africa. The weather was mostly lovely - sunny and warm, but not too hot. (The exception was a hailstorm while we were visiting the temple of Apollo at Vassae - altogether a rather disappointing experience as the temple is now under a vast tent to protect it from the weather.) We ate vast quantities of delicious food. And Gareth taught us a bit of Greek on the coach journeys, so I can now say please, thank you, hello, good morning, and count to 20. (Knowing some geometry helps with the counting - e.g. dodecahedron and icosahedron.) I took lots of photos - here's a small selection with an extremely brief summary of what we did.

We visited Olympia first - walking to the ancient site from our hotel in the countryside a couple of miles away, through olive groves and orange orchards, and fording the River Kladeos (with the help of a pick-up truck from the hotel).

The museum at Olympia is excellent, and full of amazing treasures.

Olympia Museum: from the Temple of Zeus

From there we moved on to Pylos (mentioned by Homer), where our hotel overlooked the bay (site of the battle of Navarino, 1827) and the island enclosing the bay (where the Athenians defeated the Spartans in 425 B.C.)

Sunset at Pylos

After Pylos, we went further south and stayed on the coast near Itilo, to visit the Mani, which is the finger of the Peloponnese projecting into the Mediterranean and culminating in the southernmost point of mainland Greece at Cape Tainaron.

A church in Areopolis.

We visited Areopolis nearby, which was once almost deserted, like many other places in the Mani, but now seems thriving. And on another day we went south to Vathia, still almost uninhabited, and full of the defensive tower houses that are common in the Mani. (Built by the Maniots to defend themselves from each other.)

A tower house in Vathia

From Vathia, we went even further south, and finally walked to the Cape and its lighthouse from the nearest habitation (a taverna, handily, where we had lunch).

After the Mani, we headed back towards Athens for our flight home, visiting Mistra, an amazing deserted mediaeval city, on the way.

All the week, we were seeing interesting birds, though I didn't manage to take many good photos. Birds tend to move too fast - the little owl was easy because it was having a rest.

And some birds were actually chimney cowls (also easy to photograph).

We saw many lizards, but often just glimpses of them disappearing. I found one that was enjoying the sun, and stayed put, before diving back into its hole in the wall.

A lizard on a wall at Mistra

And there were flowers everywhere. Lots of orchids - I was told the names at the time, but I've mostly forgotten. I will identify them again in time.

An orchid

Another orchid

Star of Bethlehem growing in steps at Mistra

There was very little knitting on the holiday, except for some interesting socks in the folk museum at Andritsaina (not a good photo, because the light levels were low to protect the textiles, but good enough to show the colour-work).

A really wonderful holiday - we'd like to go back to Greece another year in spring.

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My 1914 Hat

April 17, 2014, 2:57 am

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≪ Previous: Holiday in the Peloponnese

Here's a hat I knitted last month, and already mentioned here. (I'm still trying to catch up with myself. It won't happen.) The idea came from all the knitting and crochet patterns from the First World War that I was collecting together to send to the costumier of the"Tell Them Of Us" film. One of the sources I used was a Weldon's Practical Knitter magazine, issued in 1914, with patterns for a lady's knitted coat and hat. I really liked the look of the hat (after mentally adjusting the picture - in 1914, women had lots of hair and hats were worn very big so that they wouldn't crush the hair-style).

When I read the pattern, I found that it's a very simple idea. The preamble to the pattern says: "This cap is knitted in "bag-shape", which is at present the most fashionable wear for ladies and children. It is very easy to make, being simply a piece of knitting, about 28 inches wide and 24 inches long, and sewn up in the form of a bag. The brim is folded in place, the top corners are brought down and lightly stitched over the edge of the brim on each side of the cap, and a fancy button is sewn on each point." That's the essence of the pattern, although it then goes into more detail - and I think there is a mistake in the measurements quoted, because a piece 24 inches long would give a circumference of 48 inches, which even for 1914 hairstyles is much too big. The detailed instructions say to knit 112 rows, which is more like 12 inches.

The brim in the illustration is a garter stitch border at each edge of the 28 inch wide piece, and the seams are at the sides, underneath the buttons. I decided that although I liked the overall idea, I didn't want to have the seams at the sides. The brim would be neater without a seam, so I knitted a tube instead of a rectangle, starting at the brim. The seam is instead across the top, from point to point. I used a 3-needle bind-off and it is quite inconspicuous.

I kept to the "dice" stitch pattern from the original pattern, i.e. alternating squares of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch, 4 stitches by 4 rows. I used Wendy Merino DK in dark grey and cast on 120 stitches to fit the circumference of my head. (It had to be a multiple of 8 stitches, so that the dice pattern would line up exactly along the seam.)

The buttons are a key part, of course, and here's an opportunity to use some really special ones. I chose some Fimo buttons made by my friend Steph - she sells similar things on Etsy here and also in the Spun shop in the Byram Arcade in Huddersfield, which is where I bought these.

You can see that I wasn't trying to achieve an authentic 1914 look - I would hardly have chosen Fimo buttons if so.

The Weldon's pattern said that this was a fashionable shape for hats in 1914, and I did in fact find several similar hats in my search for WW1 patterns. There is even a doll's crocheted coat and hat which is very cute.

Doll's crochet coat and hat

The crocheted golfing outfit (below) features a similar hat, but it's a cone shape rather than a rectangle, with only one point fastened to the brim rather than two.

Crochet coat and useful cap

And you could buy similar hats ready-made - the Pryce-Jones ad from the Girl's Own Paper of March 1914 that I showed here offers a cap to match the sports coat, for 10½d (about 4p).

Pryce-Jones ad, Girl's Own Paper, March 1914.

I made my 1914 hat because it is a beautifully simple idea that I thought would look good (and it does). I wore it a couple of times last month while it was still cold enough for a woolly hat, and it will come out again next winter. And although it is not entirely authentic, I love the fact that it is essentially a 100 year old idea.

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Cycling & Recycling

April 20, 2014, 2:17 am

≫ Next: "Waistcoat Tailored in Knitting"

≪ Previous: My 1914 Hat

Horse chestnut leaves emerging

Friday was a beautiful spring day, with a bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds. John and I went for a walk around Mytholmroyd in the Calder valley. Trees were just coming into leaf, and there were celandines in the woods. (And lots of dandelions in flower, too, but we don't talk about them.)

Sycamore leaves and flowers

Celandines

The walk did a loop either side of the road up Cragg Vale, which will be part of the Tour de France route in July - it's a well-known cycling challenge.

It was a nice walk, with a mixture of woods, fields, and open moor. Towards the end, we crossed a small area which is now permissive access land, and has been furnished with a new fence and new gates. And the fence and gate posts have all been topped with an assortment of re-used plastic containers - coleslaw tubs, washing-up liquid bottles cut in half, the bottoms cut of milk bottles, etc. They have all been nailed on to the posts, and I assume that it's intended to protect the wood (although the gates appear to have been treated with preservative as well).

Reusing and recycling plastic is a good thing in other contexts, and you see a variety of re-purposed plastic on allotments (bottles, pots and tubs of all shapes and sizes, odd bits of string). But in the countryside it just looks ugly.

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"Waistcoat Tailored in Knitting"

April 24, 2014, 2:47 am

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Many of the items in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection have no provenance - we don't know who made them, whether the maker designed it or used a pattern, and if a pattern which one it was. But occasionally we manage to pair up an item with its pattern, and sometimes donors gave the pattern with the item. Here's one of those.

Patons 943

The pattern was issued by Patons around 1950, and the knitter made it (I think) for her husband. She left off the two patch pockets, but otherwise followed the pattern closely. The waistcoat has obviously been well worn - there's an area on one armhole edge where the cast-off edge has begun to fray.

There seems to have been a fashion for men to wear yellow woollies in the early 1950s - earlier posts showed Roger Moore modelling a yellow pullover and a yellow cardigan. Having said that, I don't believe my father ever wore yellow in his life.

The pattern is titled "Waistcoat Tailored in Knitting" and says "the stitch cleverly reproduces the effect of woven fabric". The fronts of the waistcoat are in linen stitch, which does give a woven effect on the right side, while the reverse resembles moss (or seed) stitch. The back is in single rib, for stretchiness - linen stitch is a very un-stretchy stitch.

If you don't know linen stitch, it's a 2 row pattern. On an even number of stitches: on row 1, (knit 1, bring the yarn to the front, slip 1, take the yarn to the back), and repeat to the last stitch. On row 2, (purl 1, take the yarn to the back (i.e. right side), slip 1, bring the yarn to the front), and repeat to the last stitch. So on each row, you knit alternate stitches and take the yarn across the right side of the fabric when you slip a stitch.

The waistcoat is knitted in 3-ply wool: here's a close-up. I reckon that there are about 12 stitches and 20 rows to the inch. Linen stitch is very dense: not only does it take 2 rows to work all the stitches on the needle, but also slipping stitches has the effect of contracting the work sideways to some extent. The pattern leaflet only gives the tension in stocking stitch: 7½ stitches and 9½ rows to one inch. It says optimistically: "If you knit to the correct tension in stocking stitch, you will knit naturally to the correct tension for any stitch in this book." Really? In linen stitch, I suspect that knitters with the same stocking stitch tension might differ quite a lot in how tight they pull the yarn across each slipped stitch.

So knitting this waistcoat must have taken a very long time. Even when the main part is finished, the button band is knitted separately - 68 inches (1.73 m.) of single rib on 11 stitches, which would be very tedious. And then you have to sew it all on. Altogether a lot of work - but on the other hand, the finished waistcoat has lasted in pretty good condition for 60 years so far.

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An Easter Egg Cosy

April 27, 2014, 7:44 am

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"Cosy Coddles" egg cosy

The local branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild met just before Easter (on Maundy Thursday) and we had a seasonal theme - knitting egg cosies. The pattern was designed by Ann Kingstone, and featured several of her favourite techniques, including stranded knitting, provisional cast-on, i-cord and applied i-cord, and she was on hand to help with difficulties.

No-one managed to finish their cosy during the meeting, though most got a lot further than I did. In fact, I started again later - in spite of my extensive collection of knitting needles, I hadn't been able to find any double pointed needles of the right size, so I was using a circular needle and finding it very awkward to use the magic loop technique on such a small item. So last week I bought a set of dpns and started again, and here's the finished cosy.

There are three panels, with designs that Ann based on some Dutch embroidery. The loop at the top is i-cord, and there's an applied i-cord strip at the base of the cosy. The applied i-cord separates the outer layer (in stranded knitting) from a plain knitted lining - with two layers of wool, it would indeed keep an egg cosy.

Not sure what I'm going to do with it now, because we very rarely eat boiled eggs... But I'm pleased that I finished it successfully, and it looks very pretty.

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The Earliest Pattern Leaflets

May 1, 2014, 2:40 am

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1913 ad for J. & J. Baldwin's pattern leaflets

Because of all the interest this year in the First World War, I have been looking at the knitting and crochet patterns that were current at the start of the war – for the Tell Them of Us film, for one thing. Most of the patterns that I have found are in magazines - only a few pattern leaflets were issued before the war. According to Richard Rutt in A History of Hand Knitting, pattern leaflets were then a new idea in this country, introduced by Frank Mills, managing director of the J. & J. Baldwin company in Halifax. In the section on the career of Marjory Tillotson, he says: “In 1908 Mills visited Germany on business and there saw for the first time knitting pattern leaflets. He asked Muriel Tillotson to undertake a demonstration department for the firm and produce leaflet material. Muriel was not attracted by the idea, and suggested her sister take over the organization. Marjory established the new department with a group of girls recruited from the mill, and soon issued her first leaflet. Although called a 'Beehive Knitting Booklet', it was a pattern for a crochet jacket and cap.”

1912 ad for Paton's pattern leaflets

J. & J. Baldwin may have been the first to introduce pattern leaflets into this country, but others were not far behind. By 1912, two other spinners were also advertising leaflets. Patons of Alloa started issuing their “Helps to Knitters” series, and by 1912 they had issued ten (we have leaflets 9 and 10 from the 1912 ad in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection).

1912 ad for Baldwin & Walker pattern leaflets

Baldwin & Walker of Halifax (surely some relation?) were advertising leaflets for their Ladyship knitting wool by 1912, when they illustrated the first 11. Sadly, there are no Ladyship leaflets in the collection from that date – the earliest that we have are from the 1930s, I think.

1914 ad for a man's "sweater coat" in Ladyship Wools

However, the pattern for a man’s “sweater coat” – “useful for tennis or boating or any outdoor sport” – advertised as a leaflet in 1914, was also published in a Weldon’s Practical Knitting magazine at about the same time, so at least we do have the pattern. Maybe with a bit more research, we could find the patterns illustrated in the 1912 ad too.

By the way, there is a reference to “patterns” in the 1914 Ladyship ad – I think this means yarn samples, not knitting instructions. A common word at that time for what we now call a knitting pattern was recipe.

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The Lee Mills Trunk Show

May 4, 2014, 11:33 am

≫ Next: How to Cheat in Knitting Fair Isle

≪ Previous: The Earliest Pattern Leaflets

Yesterday, Angharad and I went to Sheffield with a selection of things from the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection in two suitcases - a large one with knitted and crocheted items and a smaller (but equally heavy) one with publications and a few tools and gadgets. It was a new venture - we showed the contents to the Sheffield branch of the Guild, as a way of making the collection more accessible. The visit went very well - it is such an amazing collection that it's easy to fill a couple of suitcases with fascinating material.

I'm not going to show very much of what we took, because it would spoil the surprise,
should the trunk show come your way in the future, but here are a couple of crochet doileys that Angharad chose. The butterfly doiley was specially starched for the occasion, so that the butterfly wings stood up as intended.

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How to Cheat in Knitting Fair Isle

May 5, 2014, 3:29 am

≫ Next: 1952 Wool Fashions

≪ Previous: The Lee Mills Trunk Show

A recent post on Ysolda Teague's blog pointed to several British Pathe archive clips on YouTube. One of the clips, from 1931, says on the title slide that it "presents winning specimens from the 20,000 competing articles in the recent 'Daily Sketch' Needlework Competition." (You can view the clip here - there is no soundtrack.)

There are close-ups of three pieces of traditional Fair Isle, and then six or seven jumpers. One of them looks at first glance like another example of Fair Isle knitting, but the close-up shows that the pattern is actually embroidered afterwards, not knitted in.

And I recognised the design! (Yes, I should get out more.) It's from a Paton's & Baldwin's 'Helps to Knitters' leaflet from the 1920s.

Patons & Baldwins Helps to Knitters 147

There is a very battered copy of the leaflet in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection. When I first saw it, I assumed that it was done using stranded knitting, in the traditional Fair Isle way - Fair Isles were very popular in the 1920s. But in fact you knit a plain sweater and then follow the colour chart in the leaflet to add the patterned bands in cross stitch afterwards. The leaflet specifies embroidery wool for the cross stitch, but from the film, it looks as though the knitter has used something with a sheen to it.

Evidently the 'Daily Sketch' competition was looking for excellence in execution, not necessarily original designs. And so it might be possible to identify some of the other winning designs too - there's a particularly elegant jumper below that looks very striking even in low-resolution black-and-white.

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1952 Wool Fashions

May 13, 2014, 1:55 pm

≫ Next: Lee Mills open day

≪ Previous: How to Cheat in Knitting Fair Isle

Another of the British Pathe films mentioned in my last post is Wool Fashions, from 1952:

It features a series of knitting patterns issued by Sirdar that were inspired by historic items (though the company is not mentioned in the film).

One of the patterns in the same series that is not featured in the film is a man's pullover modelled by Roger Moore (shame he's not in the film). And I wrote about another of the patterns here - a Lady's Lacy Jumper inspired by a knitted doily. Here's its back view from the film, showing the interesting construction.

Sirdar 1401 - back

Another (no. 1403) has a lacy (and very see-through) top using a lace pattern from a Shetland shawl.

Sirdar 1404

The connection between the original item and the 1950s design is a bit tenuous sometimes. There are two beaded evening tops (one with a matching cap) - allegedly the inspiration was a beaded pincushion, though the only link is that they all have beads. I'm not even sure that the pincushion is knitted - it's hard to tell from the photo.

Sirdar 1410

Beaded pincushion - source for Sirdar 1410

The 1952 designs are sometimes based on just a small detail of the original piece. The jumper in Sirdar 1405 has horizontal bands of a stitch pattern from a bedspread - only a minor element of the bedspread design and hardly visible in the photo.

Sirdar 1405

So these designs are unlike modern vintage knits, which aim at something close to the original, but updated. Instead, they take a stitch detail or a technique from the original, and incorporate it into a completely new design. I kind of like them, although the models have such tiny waists they don't seem like real women, but if you can persuade yourself to look at them with a 1950s eye they look elegant. And the doily-jumper is such an off-the-wall idea - I like designs that abandon the usual back, front, sleeves construction. I'm not sure I would actually want to knit any of them, though.

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Lee Mills open day

May 16, 2014, 2:21 am

≫ Next: Double Knitting Workshop

≪ Previous: 1952 Wool Fashions

We had an open day this week at Lee Mills, to show off some of the collection to a small group of Knitting & Crochet Guild members and volunteers. We had picked out some of the knitted and crocheted items, and handed out white gloves so that people could handle them. One of the items was the huge bedspread knitted by Hannah Smith in 1837 (according to the name & date worked into it) - it's an impressive piece of work, but not easy to display because of its size. But with a small group of people, it can be spread out between them and examined closely.

Angharad showed a pair of her favourite Sanquhar gloves from the collection.

Some of the pieces in the collection are interesting for their faults. We looked at a gansey, constructed in the traditional fashion but with a stitch pattern that doesn't really work. It's a design of interlocking arrow heads, but the alternating stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch has caused the fabric to pucker up - an object lesson in how stitch patterns can behave differently in practice to the way they look on graph paper. (Blocking might fix it I suppose - I might try a sample some time.)

I showed a sample of publications, including some of my favourite knitting patterns (most of those have already featured in this blog). And we had a small selection of tools and gadgets - at the moment we have to make exploratory expeditions into the glory hole known as Knitting Needle Alley to see what we can find, but we are going to sort them all out during "Hook and Needle Week" in June.

Bone knitting needles and early circulars

It was a wonderful day - visitors are always really enthusiastic when they see the collection, and spending the day with half a dozen people who are fascinated and excited by what we can show them is a great experience for us too. Several hours of non-stop talk about knitting and crochet - what could be better?

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Double Knitting Workshop

May 18, 2014, 2:22 am

≫ Next: Yorkshire Sculpture Park

≪ Previous: Lee Mills open day

We had the May meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild on Thursday - a workshop on double knitting by Sarah of Wessenden Woollies, who is one of our members. Double knitting, as in the technique for producing a double-sided stocking stitch fabric, rather than double knitting yarn. (Although in fact the recommended yarn was DK, so it was double knitting in double knitting. (Double double knitting?))

Sarah had created a pattern for us - a "Love Owl" coaster. I started mine again after the workshop, because I had made a mistake right at the beginning and had an extra stitch, so the first few rows of the owl were off by one. I also wanted to try a different cast on - Sarah had shown us a two-colour version of long tail cast on, but a two-colour version of alternate cable cast on also works quite well. The two colour cast-off that Sarah showed us is extremely neat - a very nice braided effect. But my tension isn't very even - it's hard to keep all the stitches the same size when you're switching yarns from the back to the front of the fabric all the time.

The other side of a double knit fabric is the same design with the colours reversed. A light motif on a dark background looks much less like an owl I think - more like some kind of weird monster.

Thanks to Sarah for a great workshop. She has blogged about it here - you can see that her coaster is much more even than mine.

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Yorkshire Sculpture Park

May 22, 2014, 2:03 am

≫ Next: Will the real James Norbury please stand up?

≪ Previous: Double Knitting Workshop

Yesterday was a beautiful day - the forecasters have been saying for several days that rain is imminent, but it didn't in the end arrive until last night, so we seized the opportunity to go to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park - one of my favourite places. We had coffee in the cafe, overlooking the slope down to the river and lake, then a gentle stroll around the lake, and back for lunch. (M takes refreshments very seriously.) Here are some of the photos I took.

Ursula von Rydingsvard - Bronze bowl with lace

Julian Opie - Galloping horse

Horse chestnut flowers

No idea - a bird village?

Greylag geese and goslings

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Will the real James Norbury please stand up?

May 27, 2014, 2:53 pm

≫ Next: A Kit for French Knitting

≪ Previous: Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Richard Rutt, in his History of Knitting, described James Norbury as "the strongest single influence in British knitting during the 25 years after the Second World War". He was the chief designer for Patons and Baldwins from 1946 until he retired in 1969, and wrote several books on knitting. In the 1950s, James Norbury had a series of programmes on knitting on BBC television, and I would really like to see one - I can't imagine what the programmes were like. So I searched online in case any of them were archived, but didn't find any. However, I did find a TV programme on which he made an appearance - it was an American panel show called "To Tell the Truth". The show ran for more than ten years, and he appeared on the last prime-time broadcast in 1967, which is archived here.

The format of the show was that there was a resident panel of two men and two women, plus a presenter, and in each round, three people would come on, all claiming to be the same person. The panel had to decide which of the three was genuine. In the last round of the final show, three men came on stage, all claiming to be James Norbury. (You'll find this round starting at 19min. 19sec. - unless you want to start slightly earlier and watch the ads for Pepto-Bismol and Unguentine )

The presenter read a short piece about the real James Norbury: "I, James Norbury, am an expert in the art of hand-knitting. For seven years I taught knitting on British television. I have written ten books on the subject, including the authoritative Encyclopaedia of Knitting. I am also chief designer for the world's largest firm of wool spinners.... I am an accomplished knitter myself. As a matter of fact, in cable-stitch circles I am known as the Dior of the knitting needles." In the middle of this, two models appeared, wearing outfits designed by Norbury. One was a "knitted playsuit. It features a crew neck with diamond motifs and little-boy shorts." The other was truly atrocious: a "marine blue at-home ensemble with a crochet-accented button-front tunic over knee-length bloomers." It had a waisted tunic with flared skirt, mid-thigh length, revealing the bloomers and their deep lacy edging. I think that's "at-home" in the sense that you wouldn't want to be seen in public in it.

James Norbury on "To Tell the truth"

Then the panel had about half a minute each to put questions to the three James Norburys. The answers didn't seem very informative, except that one panellist asked the real James Norbury "What is the difference between knit and purl?" and got the reply "Knitting is done with the wool at the front of the work and purling with the wool at the back of the work," which must have been a slip of the tongue, because it's clearly the wrong way round. So when the panel came to vote on who they thought was the real James Norbury, two picked the right man, but two picked a man who turned out to be an "expert in the art of yoga". The yoga expert seemed very outgoing, just the sort of person to present a TV series, and also managed to get in a mention of Patons and Baldwins.

And finally the presenter asked the question which has become a very well-known formula, even over here in Britain where no-one ever saw the show that started it: "Will the real James Norbury please stand up?"

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