Retro Knit Friday!

The cafe cardigan is very nearly done. I have to sew in the ends, block it, and sew on the buttons. The next cardigan will be royal blue, but first I have to start knitting some hats for the rescue mission.

This week's vintage offering is a needlework catalog from, I think, the late 40's. This mailorder company carried supplies for all kinds of needlework, including embroidery, knitting, crochet, rugmaking, and quilting. It is fun to see what kinds of things ladies were working on 60 years ago and what they paid for their supplies. The cover shows a jacket that was available in several fabrics such as linen, linene, and wool felt, which could be purchased with a collar or without. The jackets were plain and were meant to be decorated with applique and/or embroidery. They came in several colors, and the prices ranged from $1.98 to $4.50.

Here's the page that shows the yarn selections available then. The knitting yarns offered were Infants' Wool, Cotton Yarn, firm (for slippers, potholders, toys, etc.), Germantown knitting worsted, and Baby Pompadour. There are listings for crochet hooks, but no knitting needles. The yarn sold for about 39 cents an ounce.

The next two photos show some of the kits the knitter could buy. The baby shrug and bonnet only cost 85 cents for the pattern and the yarn.

Well, time to go knit on the lace sock for awhile. I only knit on this sock in the morning when the light comes brightly through the side window. If I try to knit on it while watching TV at night I goof up the pattern. I have had to rip it back a little but have the pattern back on track now.

Retro Knit Sunday!

It was beastly hot yesterday and today (108 degrees), but the fog is coming in tonight, so I am staying up late to keep the doors and windows opened to let the cool in. I am hoping for a nice cool morning tomorrow because we picked the apples over the weekend, and I have a lot of applesauce to put up. The spouse has a huge ladder that stands at least 10 feet tall, and I think climbing up high to pick the apples is fun. We start out with the spouse holding the ladder while I pick, and then I hold the ladder while he picks. Our patience wore thin, though, and the spouse took to shaking the tree so that the apples that were way too high for us would fall down. They did fall, on my head mostly. The picture above shows the first apples to be picked.

The retro fashions I am showing today are still from the Spinnerin Volume 132 from 1955.

This fitted, one-piece dress with the flared skirt has striped ribbing on the skirt and yoke. It is knit of dress yarn on Size 2 needles at 7 sts/inch.

The next fashion is a two-piece dress that is knit on Size 1 needles at 8 sts/inch, and it features a sparkle yarn that is used to make the yoke and fringe. The fringe is knitted into the yoke, not applied afterwards. The skirt appears to be slightly A-line, and starts off with a cast on of 544 sts for the largest size. It would take you days just to cast on for the skirt. Most skirts were started at the bottom and knitted up, decreasing at intervals.

Here's what the booklet has to say about the next two-piece garment: 'Round-the-clock knitted dress has a ribbed skirt and a two-toned top with an excellent neckline.' The top is knit in a slip stitch pattern in two colors.

The next dress is crocheted in filet crochet, and after the sections are completed, strands of yarn are woven through the lattice to create the plaid pattern. It looks as if the fabric created was on the heavy side, but the yarn used for the weaving was silk organdy ribbon.

I just checked the thermometer in the living room, and the temperature in the house has dropped at least 10 degrees, so time to go shut everything up. If it is cool enough in the morning, I am going to bake an applesauce cake for the spouse.

Vintage Book Saturday!

The cafe cardigan is now half assembled. I have one sleeve in and the neckband done. I worked on this while watching the new show, Warehouse 13, which I liked. It is very X-Filesy, but the male lead is a humorous and interesting character.

The spouse had to make a business day trip to the Monterey area again, so I rode along. After dropping him off at the office, I went to Cannery Row to visit the antique mall there. Some of the vendors there do have old knitting and crochet pamphlets available, but the prices are the highest I have ever seen anywhere so I had to pass them up. I did find the book shown below, though, at a surprisingly low price. This book is a real gem, a volume on tatting and netting from 1895.

It is a large book that measures about 8" x 11". It has clear instructions on tatting and on netting, the lost art that my grandmother taught me when I was about 10 (and which I promptly forgot). Tatting can be used to make very pretty laces to trim just about anything.

My grandmother used to use the netting technique to make net shopping bags. I remember it being easy to do, so I will have to use this book to replenish my memory of how to do this old craft. Netting was used for large items like fishnets and bags, but was also done with fine threads to make the base for needlewoven lace. I can't remember what netting tool my grandmother taught me to use, because I certainly did not have the double-eyed needle shown on the page below.

Out in the garden, we are picking so many cucumbers now that I have already made the pickle relish for next year and have given away dozens of them. It looks like we should have green beans in a week or two. It is amazing how much produce you can get out of a small backyard.

The Slow Green Sock

I am discovering that following a chart is not my favorite way to knit, but this sock is so pretty that I keep working at it. The book is Knitting On The Road, and I decided to put ribbing at the top of the sock instead of the edging shown in the photo.

In garden news, here's how the center garden bed looked a week ago. The beans have since reached the top of the trellis, and we are picking dozens of cucumbers, beets, and sugar snap peas. This week we are picking the apples, hoping to save most of them from the squirrels. These apples ripen in the summer instead of in the fall, so it looks like I will be putting up applesauce this week.