Monday, June 16, 2008

16 June: Socks and patterns

The latest socks to be finished -


Trekking sock yarn, home-dyed with food dyes. They are toe-up, short row toe and heel socks, with vanilla feet, and the stitch pattern on the legs is Lacy Diagonals, from the Harmony Guide Vol 3. And no, I didn't want the spirals going in opposite directions.

A bit surprising to be still needing wool socks in June, but there you are.

On my shelves are a lot of not-very-recent knitting patterns and booklets. These Woolcraft booklets were issued for many years; the one top left is the 25th edition. The oldest one, bottom right, is not dated, but is priced at 9d (yes, old money!), while the top right edition is 2/6 (old money), and the bottom left is 30p (6/- in old money). Many of the items appeared in most of them - the spencer and the knee-warmers. I must be getting old, as both of these patterns are starting to look interesting!


Here are two illustrations from the oldest copy. There are jerseys and men's underwear in this picture.

And in this one, socks, gloves, and the knee-warmers.


My mother had a selection of pattern booklets with items for bazaars (many of them bizarre items). Here's a page with patterns for novelty tea-cosies -


And another page of cosies and a crochet cushion -

There are also some old leaflets very nearly held together with extremely old Sellotape.

The pullover and socks were to be knitted for the troops, and the hat and scarf pattern is probably pre-war.

2 comments:

Lucy said...

The socks are lovely, quite bright colours for vegetable dye, surely?

Fancy knitting your old man's long johns!

tea and cake said...

I love old patterns, of which I have many. Thank you for showing us your stash. cheers, Karen x