By boogaj on needlework
Sometimes your are surfing around and similar things come to you from different sources. This morning I somehow ended up at Project Gutenberg, a great site with over 17,000 free books online, and started looking around for craft books. I came across this gem — The Ladies’ Work-Book, which contains knitting, crochet and other needle work patterns as well as some nice old illustrations.
A little more searching found Beeton’s Book of Needlework, which includes 600 engravings! And I’m sure there are more books like this hidden in this site. Days can be wasted with this kind of web surfing.
So I finally pulled myself away from Project Gutenberg, only to be sucked into the beauty that is Illuminated Books (found via meggiecat.) They have taken beautifully illustrated and illuminated books from private collections and scanned them into the website for your viewing pleasure. Some of the children’s books are especially nice.
I love my dear husband and don’t want to leave him out of being blessed with a beautiful new sweater. I purchased way to many cones of derby grey cashmere (I think 5, 150g cones!) which is his favorite color. I’m going to make him this 1939 sweater from a Lux pattern magazine. The styling is completely modern. In fact my husband had a sweater pretty close to this one in grey made by “Triple Five Soul”, a trendy NYC hip hop design brand. We mistakenly stored that sweater in the trunk of our biggest purchase mistake ever, a red 1969 Alfa Romero which was my dream Bridgette Bardot car. The car smelled like exhaust and ended up making the sweater smell disgusting. Many washes later it was still stinky and useless, just like the car which broke down every six months. Well, despite that I hope to make a sweater for my husband that will be his favorite sweater again. I might update the style a little by adding a thicker more industrial size zipper. I’m also going to keep testing length because my husband despises sweaters that are too short on him. I’m working on the ribbing now. I figured his measurements and think that the given size should work. I find it very interesting that my husband and I match vintage size statures so well.
Yarn Used: 3 ply cashmere, approx. 3.5 (50g) balls, on size 1 & 3 needles.
Time Spent Knitting: Started 1/16/06, Ended 2/22/06
New Skills Learned: This is the first time in a pattern I have been asked to increase stitches along the last rib row. It’s a great skill to learn since so many sweaters ask you to increase stitches after the rib row.
Another first was seaming up sleeves that are not raglan but seam up cast off areas or decreases to each other as well as shoulder area having knit rows being sewn to knit columns. I actually was a little gusty and started into it with out directions. Intuition in knitting is a great thing because I figured out I was doing it right all with my own inclination.
Frusterations or changes / clarification made to pattern: Pattern again is very vague about decreases made in the sleeve and shoulder areas. The patterned wanted me to decrease by “k2tog at begining of every row”. I found it much better to make paired decreases on the knit rows then do purl rows even. It came out to the same amount of decreases in the same amount of rows, just neater looking.
I’m pretty amazed all in all this sweater came out and fit me exactly. Some things I notice about vintage patterns from this cardigan is that the waistline falls higher than we’re used to with modern fitting clothes. Also the sleeves are a little snug, though comfortable. I streached them out on a toilet paper roll and they are comfortable now. I have heard that women of old days have very little arms due to little excersize.
I am so thrilled with the buttons I ended up with. They are 1/2 inch dark silver with a geometric flower design. The beige oatmeal cashmere really called for a muted color button. Even black seemed to bold when testing around buttons.
All I can say now is, Marc Jacobs, Rebecca Taylor & Nanette Lepore; eat your heart out!
To see close up photos of this sweater, click here and here.
I’m back from a three day weekend trip from visiting the relatives in 90210 as well as a drama filled week of quiting my job due to a psychotic delusional boss. Amoung job hunting, I have been trying to finish up my oatmeal and sapphire blue sweaters completely before I start any other projects. With the oatmeal sweater I am on the second sleeve. After that, neckline and seaming. It sounds so simple but as you guys know it is still time consuming.
In other news, by the magic of eBay saved searches I finally came across an ellusive stock of “Columbia Silk Ice” yarn from the 1930’s. Some of my pattern books called for this yarn but told me little about guage. I had an idea what I wanted to substitute it for but still was weary to buy anything to discover it’s all wrong. The eBay seller was kind enough to send me a little inch swatch of this yarn in return for some of the patterns copied from my vintage pattern books.
The yarn was just as I thought, 2 ply silk wool blend. It is pretty much dead on to the yarn I want to use for all these patterns which is JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool & Silk. JaggerSpun is 2/18th and has a luxurious silk sheen to it coming in many vintagey colors like jadite, rose, peach, pale pink as well as some copper and warm beigey honey colors I saw required in some vintage patterns. In the picture on the left is a peachy gold vintage yarn swatch next to a greyish JaggerSpun swatch. Though the vintage looks a little loftier, I think its because it has been handled more. When twisted a little it seems to be the thickness of the new.
Ode to Lana Turner, the babe with notorious sexual prowess who’s beauty stuns us all. Ode to the original “Sweater Girl”, dubbed so after her apearance in the 1937 movie “They Won’t Forget” where her busoms bounced with great temptation to the movie-goers of the era. Ode to her knowing how to catch a good man, seven in fact. Ode to her unfortunately not knowing how to keep one though, or two, or three, or four. Ode to her highly regarded performance in film noir “The Postman Always Rings Twice”.
To learn more about this one of a kind lady visit Lana Turner Online website. For a few more “sweater girl” photos of Lana, click (more…)
