Today, with my stolen half hours between working on Excel sheets and invoices, I pondered what to knit next. I stared at all my vintage knitting patterns stored on my online database, yarn options in both color and fabric content and I even a had a little ruby red swatch I knit up last night on my work clipboard. The color combinations, seasonal guidelines and endless styles leave for an unnumberable amount of combinations that I just can’t fathom. When I think I have the sweater I want, I can’t find the color yarn or one that is the right weight. When I find a perfect yarn, nothing I can think of suits it. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the quest for The Perfect Sweater. It might be a delightful perfect jewel color or maybe a unique vintage color mix like rose and green, honey and copper or nile green and ecru. It would have some ruffle here, laciness, or perfectly placed cables. Vintage patterns are often titled by female names. Is my perfect sweater matched to a name personality? Do I see myself as an Antoinette or a Natalie? Bernadette or Marilyn? Well, I may never find that Holy Grail of sweaters but here are some condentors from recent purchases.

 
This may not be knitting, but it is knitting related! This is my attempt at being crafty and thrifty at the same time. I took an old 1960’s knitting basket and refurbished it. I didn’t like the thick smelly ugly pattern fabric so I took it off and sewed a new basket. The contruction of the old some how was sewn around the frame. I couldn’t do this so with the help of my husband, we added chain to make the legs not collapse. We painted the wood a matte black to better match my craft room. The fabric was from Sis Boom’s by Jennifer Paganelli’s “Girlfriends” collection. I love this updated elegant brocade in cotton. For now it houses my vintage knitting magazine collection as opposed to yarn. I have a feeling the naughty little kitty who is pictured might find it too edible.

Flickr is a good thing if your an image pack rat like me. If you haven’t noticed on the right column on this blog I have a flickr photo stream of vintage knitting images. Flickr is great in that you don’t have to clutter your hard drive up with images that are hard to find or search for when you want to come back to them. Flickr accounts are free unless you want to store 1000+ images or create a mountain of sets like myself. Then it’s only $25 a year!

Since I’ve had suggestions of starting a vintage knit-along, (and that I’m flickr obsessed) I got to thinking. For now why not just post any items knit from vintage patterns on flickr! I made a group for it so everyone join in and post. Flickr is so lovely that you can comment to your hearts content about your knit item. Post pictures of works in progress, finished projects & patterns you want to knit.

Check it out:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintageknitting/

Now, I’m reserving pictures of antique and vintage knitters for another group started by someone else. I’ve been pooling all my images there too, so take a look. The collection consists of illustrated postcards, images of stars knitting, photos of regular ladies and men knitting and more. It leaves you to be inspired when you see people like Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Deitrich, Betty Davis, Rita Hayworth along side normal vintage ladies (and gents too!) knitting just like you or I.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/55958510@N00/

Yarn Used: 3 ply sapphire blue 100% cashmere hand twisted from 1 ply cashmere from ColormartUK for me. I believe I used about 100g but don’t quote me on this. I had two large balls of cashmere either 50g each or a little over.

Gauge & Needle Size: Ribbing on size 3 needles, lace on size 5.

Time Spent Knitting: Though I procrastinated the finishing of picking up stitches for the kneck and sleeves, I doubt this was more than 3-4 weeks work. Lace knits up really fast when it is a simple pattern like this.

New Skills Learned: The sweater was knit basically in one piece. You start with the back ribbing, work up the back, cast off for the neck, add some for sleeves, cast those off, add more stitches around the neck again and down the front you go. One weekend day I really got going and finished the whole front in one day! Pattern was pretty easy that I think someone who wanted to make this larger could keep the proportions and just add repeats of the pattern tot he width and height after swatching.

Frusterations or changes / clarification made to pattern: Lace pattern selvage edge was incorrect in instructions. Luckily earlier in this pattern book there is instructions for this lace pattern. Another problem was once you cast off for the neck you are left with no selvage edge on the lace. (The selvage edge is garter stitch.) Now that could be fine but there is yo’s at the end of the pattern. Basically I improvised with a odd way of increasing by putting yarn forward as if I were to yo at the end of a row but knitting into it on the next row right away. It made a long string of knitting but was fine to pick up stitches into for the neckline.

Another improvisation was doing the sleeve ribbing by picking up stitches on double pointed needles, though the pattern did not specify to do so. Unfortunately I only had alluminum needles around in the size needed. I quickly noticed though the same size, I knit tighter on alluminum. I adjusted by knitting a bit looser and everything came out a’ok. The sleeves maybe took an hour each side. It really made me less fearful of circular knitting on dpn’s. I’m almost ready for my first pair of socks!

One other note. If anyone ever knits this up and finished off the sleeves, when they say “cast off loosely” , they sure mean it! I cast off with size 8 needles and no pulling at all. The sleeves just fit and worked better after blocking. I learned this after casting off once with size 5 needles. I had arm holes the size of baguette! Live and learn!

In the future: I learned I hate aluminum needles. I did the lace on aluminum. They seemed so slippery, heavy and the paint finish was chipping off on a new set of needles. In the future I will try to stick to bamboo needles for knitting.

Also, I think for this airy of lace with so many yo’s I won’t use such a softly twisted cashmere. I’m not disapointed with the finished product though. It’s soft as a babies butt and the color is royal.

I’m a firm believer in freedom of information. Maybe it is due to being born into the age of the internet when anything you’d like to know is at your fingertips. In some ways the internet has probably made turned the library into a forgotten resource. I love libraries, especially ones smart enough to keep history in the form of old periodicals and books. When I lived in Ithaca, NY I spent endless hours at Cornell University flipping through actual pages of “Ladies Home Journal” from the early 1900’s into the 1930’s. When I moved back to the California Bay Area I spent more countless hours in front of a microfilm viewer to look at 1920’s “Vogue” magazine.

I was delighted to learn that the largest library; The Library of Congress, offers inter-library loans thanks to the American Library Association. You can fill out a book request and it will be sent to your local library. I browsed their online library catalog and found the best search results by looking up the keyword “knitting” and setting search limits of 1900-1950 (or any years that suit you) and English language items. What results is numerous wonderful knitting magazines and books from our favorite eras. They have holdings of Columbia Yarn pattern books mainly from the Edwardian period as well as Utopia yarns, Bear Brand yarn from 1902-1915 & Priscilla knitting books. Also noteworthy is their holding of “the Hanicrafter” from the late 20’s which have knitting patterns. I also see there also are patterns from Worth.

So far I have had success getting items loaned to be from the LOC. Now, the New York Public Library hasn’t been as easy. They tell me anything in their research library can not be loaned but can be photocopied for a charge. I’ve also submitted “Electronic Data” requests where they are supposed to scan the book but they came back with empty scans! Who would have thought that the government library has been more helpful than local public libraries?

NYPL has holdings of Minerva pattern books from 1933-49 as well as some Edwardian Fleishers books and 1928-1937 issues of Bernat’s Handicrafter. Remember to use the NYPL CATNYP directory to search older titles.

Maybe someone who lives in NY will have better success gaining scans of these books. I’m by no means giving up! Our tax dollars pay to keep these libraries. We should be able to have access to information we technically own.

Los Angeles Public Library has one 1931 Columbia pattern book. If you’re in the area maybe you can review this book. They also are hesitant at this point to loan out this item.

Yale University has a Minerva, Fleisher’s and a Columbia knitting book if you go to this school. I believe they do inter-library loans but for a hefty charge.

University of SouthAmpton has 1930-1939 issues of “Good needlework and knitting magazine”.

Toronto Public Library has 1933-1948 issues of Minerva Style Books as well as 1936-1940 issues of Needlecraft magazine that have both knitting and crochet patterns.

It is hard to come across libraries that still have holdings of vintage pattern books. At one time women burned their bras and said good bye to feminine hobbies. With resurgence in knitting, antiques and crafts these books become a very valuable resource for us. Not only do you get patterns printed exactly how people in the time wanted these knit items to be, you get ideas of color schemes of the era from yarn descriptions, your shown all the latest hair styles as well as seeing women’s life style needs from landscapes in the photographs.

Please keep in mind Section 108 of the Copyright Act provides specific exceptions for libraries and archives in which they may make reproductions without obtaining permission from, or providing compensation to, the copyright holder. Libraries will try to first deny you any reproduction rights due to copyright. (Honestly I think it’s due to laziness on some librarians’ part.) Hold your ground and refer to section 108. As researchers we have a right to gain copies of these old books. Short of sitting in the library with knitting needles, how will these books ever get use if they sit in library archives unread?

“Library user requests for entire works. If certain conditions are met, your library may make one reproduction of an entire book or periodical at the request of either a library user or another library on behalf of a user. The library must first determine after reasonable investigation that a reproduction cannot be obtained at a reasonable price. The reproduction must become the property of the library user. The library must have no reason to believe that the reproduction will be used for purposes other than private study, scholarship and research.”

Stay tuned and soon I will tell you how you can access hundreds and soon to be thousands of vintage patterns online that I will be sharing with you from my personal collection free! With one catch