Retro Knit Saturday!

Way back in the olden days, I was a high school home ec teacher for awhile. I kept file folders full of clippings on subjects I might use for lessons, and while most of the files are now gone, I did keep the knitting files. I just opened one up and took pictures of some of the clippings. These date from the mid seventies, I think. I have always liked the hat picture, which I am only showing half of, because it is colorful and creepy with the fake people and the real people looking somber.

I think that this cardigan looks pretty nice for a crochet cardigan. It is a takeoff on the ripple afghans that have always been popular.

This coat reminds me of the Einstein coat, though it looks nothing like it except for the garter stitch. It has raglan sleeves and a ribbed yoke and cuffs.

A crocheted top and a knitted twinset. I remember that redheaded model because I had red hair myself in my youth, and during the seventies red hair came back into fashion. There were articles about it in the magazines as if it were previously something to be ashamed of. Red hair and freckles were supposedly comical.

A fairly attractive crocheted top that resembles the T-shaped sweaters of the time.

This sweater pattern was on a giveaway sheet you could pick up at the craft store. Still a wonderful sweater almost 35 years later.

Even though I saved all those articles, I never actually got the chance to teach knitting to the kids. At the time, knitting was on the downswing, and people thought of it as a grandma kind of activity. Knitting had a long slow decline over the decades and it is only now that it has come back into popularity.

Today I went to the booksale in Lafayette, and I found some good cookbooks and a book on embroidery stitches I had never seen before. It will be a help when I make some Mexican peasant blouses. Tomorrow I have to bake a big cake for the spouse's office party, and knit more pieces for the green cardigan.

Spring Has Sprung

After over a week of sunshine, signs of Spring are now visible. I saw the first almond blossoms a few days ago and now all sorts of things are starting to bloom. Here are a few pictures to cheer up those still knee deep in snow.






I have finally purchased a length of both white and black fleece to take pictures on. Haven't washed them up yet to take out the store creases, but you can see the improvement over my crumpled length of black crepe. I was going to photograph the back of the green sweater all seamed up the middle, but I couldn't find it until I looked in the bag with the rest of the green yarn. There it was, all wrinkled, but you can see the back seam. Sometimes there are too many stitches to fit across the bed of the machine, so I divide the back in half, add extra stitches for the seam, and seam it up later. Once the sweater is washed, the seam is nearly invisible. Today I am going to try to knit both fronts.

Happy Valentines Day to all. I am going to bake some chocolate chip cookies for the spouse and because it is a holiday, they will have no nutritional merit.

First Sweater of 2008

I finished the V-neck sweater finally. This yarn does not photograph in all its beauty, as it is a rich barn red with tan accents, and it will go very well with my camel-colored slacks. I show it laid out on that poor crumpled piece of black fabric and on Betty-the-dressform. I am thinking that a nice length of black fleece would be nice to photograph things on as it would not wrinkle or show fold lines and would absorb the light in a nice matte manner. I think I will go down to Joanne's today and hunt some up.

V-neck sweaters look nice done with a double band - decreases at the V for the first half, a few rows with no decreases, then increases for the second half. This makes a nice, comfortable, stretchy band. I think that next time I will make the V-neck even lower. The sweater has 3/4-length sleeves, which I am finding very practical.

My plans for today are to bake some bread and to hang the next green ribbing onto the machine all the while listening to a very good book-on-tape by Norah Roberts.

Retro Knit Friday!

These lovely retro outfits are from the same Spinnerin Volume 115 that we started looking through last week. The first dress is called 'The Sculptured Knit' because of the crocheted sprays of flowers and leaves that are appliqued to the waist, hem, and neckline. Also knit on size 2 needles at 8 sts/inch, the dress is a one-piece dress with separate belt. I like the look of her shoes, too, because they are flattering and look more comfortable than the spike heel/pointy toe of a decade later.

'Lyrical Lines' is a two-piece suit knit in stripes for the jacket and a ribbed (K6, P8) faux pleated pattern for the skirt. The jacket has a high neckline and small Peter Pan collar. You never see anyone outside of a RenFaire wearing a feather like that anymore, and don't you love the bright red gloves?









This two-piece outfit is knit at 8 sts/inch in a yarn with lots of texture. The ribbed pattern on the skirt is a K12, P6 rib, and the top is knit in stockinette. The top is trimmed at the cuffs, collar, and front opening with contrast bias bands. My grandmother used to make things with this kind of yarn, a dress yarn with the same-colored or contrast-colored slubs.



The three sweaters in this colored picture are knit with the Spinnerin yarn 'Star Time Dressy' which was wool with a metallic thread in it. I don't think a sparkle yarn goes very well with the plaid yoke and cuffs of the middle outfit even if the plaid has sparkle elements in it. I like the evening top on the left where the width of the wide collar drape is held in at center front with two strands of pearls. The vest is very classic with the sparkle in the yarn being picked up by the satin blouse. The vest model is very Joan Crawford don't you think?

I got my new Interweave today, and there are several very interesting designs. I especially like the cardigan on pg. 41 with the patterned upper bodice and low neckline. I have finished redoing the neckband on the V-neck sweater and just have to sew in the second sleeve. It will be my first finished non-sock garment of the new year.

Mosaic Knitting

At one time there was a style of sweater called the "T" sweater. I was very interested in the design because it was based on old peasant styles of using straight pieces of different sizes put together to make a garment. When I was at Berkeley way way back in the day, I used to go to the library back in the stacks (I had a stack pass, much envied at the time). I loved to look at a very old volume on dressmaking that was published in the early 1800's. It was a large volume with little diagrams on every page showing the retangles to cut out of the narrow lengths of cloth available at the time to make all kinds of garments. I later used the diagrams to make my husband a shirt which he wore to craft fairs to sell his photographs around the time of the Bicentennial, and I made myself a sunbonnet based on an 1830 or so model. I liked the idea of making garments from simple rectangular and square shapes. I didn't think of applying this to knitwear until later, when the style of "T" sweaters started to show up in magazines. Then I realized that I could whip them right out on the knitting machine. They are easy to sew together because there are no curved areas at the armholes.

Keep in mind that this was the hippie era, and clothes had a definite peasant look to them. I decided to make some "T" sweaters with bands of mosaic knitting. Barbara Walker's books were new at the time, and I bought every one of them as soon as I could find them. Of course, they didn't cost much then. I loved the idea of mosaic knitting because you got the same effect as fairisle without having to carry more than one yarn across the back of the work. You knit two rows of each color and use slipped stitches to bring the previous color up into the row you are working on. There are a lot of mosaic designs in the book, some lovely and some kind of creepy like the Imp one shown here. Mosaic knitting is very easy to do on the knitting machine. The yarn I used for these sweaters was a sport yarn available at a VIP yarn outlet in Fairfax Virginia. Oh yarn outlet, how I missed you when you closed. The yarn washes beautifully and came in many colors.

The first sweater I tried was knit in 4 pieces. There is a rectangle for the bottom front, one for the bottom back, and the sleeves and upper bodice are knit in two pieces from cuff to neck, then kirchnered up the middle back. The closeup of the strawberry pattern shows how nice this kind of color work looks when done on the machine.

Here is the mosaic pattern as it appears in the book:

The second sweater is knit more like a regular set-in-sleeve sweater with a front, back, and two sleeves. The armholes are square and indented about 3". The sleeves are picked up from the armhole and knit straight, but there is no reason why you couldn't taper the sleeves or shape them however you wanted. These sweaters are certainly easy to sew together.

I have been thinking of trying mosaic knitting again. I think that a plain cardigan would look nice with mosaic bands, and mosaic also looks good in garter stitch. Maybe I will try this idea out on a vest first.

Another sunny day today, and I have to remember to go vote in the primary.

Retro Knit Saturday!

Time to jaunt back to 1950 to see what the fashionable knitter was making. This is Spinnerin Volume 115, containing mostly fine-gauge knitted dresses and suits. The cover dress is called 'For Sentimental Reasons', is knit at 8 sts/inch on size 2 needles, and has a stripe pattern. The yarn used for the stripes looks like it has a metallic strand in it to give the dress a little sparkle. It is a two-piece dress with an overblouse. The belt is made of the same yarn used for the stripes, and is braided.

The next dress, called 'Check-mate' is a one-piece dress with checkerboard trim. This dress is made of the same yarn as the cover dress, at 8 sts/inch on size 2 needles. The trim at the neck, sleeves, and hem is crocheted. The dress has shoulder pads and a belt that is made by knitting a long piece in the round on d.p.n.'s. This is attached to a buckle that has been covered with crochet in the dress yarn.






'Modern Motif' has its major focus on the pockets. It is also a one-piece dress knit at 8 sts/inch on size 2 needles. This time, the belt is knit as a flat piece in stockinete stitch. The instructions don't call for any belt interfacing, so I guess it was up to the knitter to figure this out. The motifs on the pockets are intarsia knit.



The suit is called 'Tailored Elegance, also knit at 8 sts/inch on size 2 needles. It also has shoulder pads and buttons covered with knitting in the contrast color. A long bias band is knit to go around the fronts and collar. The instructions call for the knitting of an 'arrowhead' in the contrast color to trim the back. On reading the assembly instructions, I see that this arrowhead was to trim the top of a back pleat that goes from center back hip to waist.


Two icons of the 50's - a shrug and the boxy jacket! The shrug is called 'Tiny Tippet', and is knit in two pieces using a yarn called Spinnerin Topper at 5 sts/inch. The two halves seem to be knitted flat, seamed, then the two pieces are seamed up the back. The coat is reversible, also knit of Spinnerin Topper only this time at 7 sts/inch. The pattern seems to be a form of double knitting so that the colors are knit at the same time but appear on different sides of the fabric. Very chic!

Today I am still seaming the V-neck sweater, but I decided to rip off the neck band and redo it, as it pulled a little. Hopefully, I will hang another green ribbing on the machine, since I can't go outside unless I want to dodge raindrops.

Busy Friday

I decided to clean out the closet in my room today, and this took several morning hours. I cleaned up some dust, threw away some things, donated some things (why was I saving those boots from the late 70's that are a whole size too small now?) then I went out and bought a curtain panel for the closet opening that looks a heck of a lot better than the old sheet that was hanging there as a temporary measure. After that, I walked all the way to the library and back, which took over an hour, and finally, I could rest and knit, and get started on a new pair of socks.

I have had this yarn for awhile, but the first time I tried knitting with it, I hated it. It stuck to the needles and was just horrible. I decided to give it another chance, and cast on using my Knitpicks needles. What a difference! It knits up easily and smoothly, and I am liking it much better. The yarn, Sockotta, is made of cotton, wool, and nylon.

Still sewing together the V-neck sweater, but I hope to finish that this weekend.