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A Prize Winning Jumper
When we were in London two weeks ago, I spent a few hours in the British Library (one of my favourite places). I had ordered some periodicals in advance, including Leach's Sixpenny Knitting series...
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Jumpers and Sports Wear in 1931
 Leach's Sixpenny Knitting Series was published from 1920 to 1935, according to the British Library catalogue - I wrote about one of the series in my last post. We have a few of the issues in the...
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Strange Times
Thursday is usually a knitting day for me. In the morning, I meet a group of friends to knit in Cafe Society in Huddersfield. In the evening I meet another group of knitting friends, except that on...
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Made in Abyss Socks
Time seems to be behaving very strangely under lock-down. It seems to be passing very slowly - nothing much is happening, the days blur into one another. And then I find that it's seven weeks since I...
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The Viyella Knitting Recorder
Anyone who follows me on Instagram (@barbaraknitsagain) might have seen that earlier this month, I posted about a Viyella Knitting Recorder and Needle Gauge that had just arrived in the post. I bought...
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Washing Socks
Back in February, I went to an exhibition, An English Lady's Wardrobe, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. It showed the clothes collected by a local woman, Mrs Tinne, between about 1910 and the...
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Golden Eagle
Since last March, and the first UK lockdown, I have written very little on this blog. It's not that I don't have anything to say - the problem is summoning up the mental energy to say it. And writing...
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Beehives
During the past year, while we've been at home doing not very much, I have been adding to my small collection of knitting needle gauges. I now have half a dozen that are in the shape of a beehive, and...
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Leach's Newest Jumpers
 I don't know who Mrs Leach was, or if she actually existed, but a lot of magazine titles were published under her name. A monthly magazine called Mrs Leach's Fancy Work Basket was published from 1886...
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A 1940s Face
If you look at a lot of old knitting patterns and magazines, as I do, some of the models start to become familiar. In a few cases, I can put a name to the face - for instance, Patricia Squires, who...
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Stitchcraft Number 2
Stitchcraft magazine was published every month for 50 years, from 1932 to 1982, except for a few years during the Second World War when paper shortages meant that it was published less often. The...
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Helps to Knitters 101
The spinners J. & J. Baldwin & Partners of Halifax and John Paton, Son & Co. Ltd. of Alloa merged in 1920 to form Patons & Baldwins, probably the largest manufacturer of knitting wool...
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Disneyland Wools
 These six balls of angora knitting wool were added to the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection this week. They were found in a charity shop by one of the volunteers working on the collection. The...
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Spats Revisited
In 2014, the Knitting & Crochet Guild received a donation from Coats plc of an archive of about 60 garments. Coats plc at that time owned the Patons brand, previously Patons & Baldwins. There...
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A 1920s Costume
I wrote about the Coats-Patons donation in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection in my last post, and said there that some of them are knitted from vintage Patons & Baldwins patterns. I have...
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1920s Woolly Jumpers
 In the last post, I wrote about outfits in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection that were knitted in the early 1950s from 1920s patterns. Here's another, based on the same set of Beehive...
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Queen Mary's Petticoat
  Child's Crochet PetticoatThis crocheted petticoat for a little girl was given to the Knitting & Crochet Guild in 2016. The donor had bought a chest of drawers in an Exeter antique centre, and...
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A Novel Wool Winder
 John saw this issue of Hobbies Weekly from September 1940 at a collectors' fleamarket, and bought it for me because of the illustration of a Novel Wool Winder on the front cover (he is not, I'm glad...
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The P&B Family Album
Patons & Baldwins became very good at advertising their wares by the 1930s. They were publishing about 100 'Helps to Knitters' pattern leaflets every year, intended of course to sell their wools,...
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An (Almost) A to Z of Knitting Needle Brands
Back in 2014, the volunteers working on the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection had a week of concentrated work trying to sort out the hundreds (or thousands) of knitting needles that had been...
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An (Almost) A to Z of Knitting Needles, Part 2
In the last post, I showed knitting needle brands with names beginning A to M - here I'll show the second half of the alphabet.You might think that it would be easy to find a needle brand for N, but...
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Little Dorritt wools
I saw a skein of knitting yarn in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection recently - Little Dorritt 100% Nylon.  I remembered that I had also seen a pattern for Little Dorritt wool and nylon sock...
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1920s knickers
 I wrote a couple of posts last year about several knitted garments in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection that were made in the early 1950s using Patons & Baldwins patterns from the 1920s....
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The Wheel of Fortune
I recently acquired a new addition to my collection of knitting needle gauges. An exciting acquisition, as I had never seen one for sale before, though I knew of it from Sheila Williams book 'The...
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Spattees and Silk Winders
I bought a copy of the magazine Needlework for All on eBay recently — I'll donate it to the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection after I've written this post. It's the December 1926 issue (there is...
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