Blast from the Past

It’s funny how quickly things add up. I began to realize last night that I was being overrun by books. There are knitting books and then there are other books. While one can’t have too many knitting books, it is possible to become overrun by other books. So this morning I began going through stacks and piles and bookcases and ended up with more than 11 carrier bags full of books to take to the used book store for trade in!

About a year ago I came across an old magazine series called “Needlecraft.” I’m sure others have come across it as well since I’ve been able to find them in a variety of places. I've been collecting them ever since. I found a whole load of them today (although I only got one) and found this recipe in it:

Potato Chocolate Cake
“This cake does not get dry right away like the usual dark chocolate cake, but will keep deliciously moist for a week at least. Cream together two cupfuls of sugar and one cupful of butter, or other shortening. Then add two-thirds of a cupful of melted unsweetened chocolate and one cupful of warm mashed potatoes. Beat until smooth. Now add two well beaten eggs, one cupful of milk and two and one half cupfuls of pastry-flour sifted with two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. If you want this cake extra rich add one cupful of chopped nut-meats.”

Am I crazy but does this not sound good? I’m thinking that for the pastry-flour I could use the flour designed for bread machines. Something on one of Alton Brown’s programs the other day makes me think this would be the right element. I’m less confident about the potatoes but stranger things have worked.

If I can make it to the store to get the chocolate tomorrow I’m going to try it out.

Apart from the knit and crochet patterns, I love the ads in these magazines – I have issues from 1911 through to about 1939, not all but some – as well as some of the articles. For instance, I have one issue from July of 1930 with an article about the new rise of Germany with a focus of the hand crafts. It had been 12 years since the “war to end wars” had ended. I’m sure even at this point a positive article about Germany was not very popular. Everything sounds so innocuous but they had no way of knowing that in just 3 short years Hitler would come to power and the new “Germany at work” would once again attack Europe. I found this entire issue very poignant.

Here are a few samples from this issue and one from the March 1921 issue (click on the image to see it larger):

I love this ad! Sorry some of it’s cut off but my scanner couldn’t accommodate the size of the magazine. The headline reads, “Not one out of ten escapes this social fault.” What social fault, you ask? Have a look at the top right hand corner of the picture. “Jimmy’s Dad has halitosis,” evidently. Them there’s fightin’ words, if I ever heard them!! I just love the expressions on the boys’ faces!

Here are some Armenian crochet edgings from the 1930 issue:


Here’s the cover of the 1930 issue:

And a pattern from the March 1921 issue:

part1:

part 2:


And a view of the height of 1921 fashion!

Millenium hit!

Wow, I just noticed the blog has had more than 1,000 hits! Glad to have you all!!
Just a quick new bracelet view - lapis & silver:

Watching for the Knitting

I was just reading some posts on a Ravelry group about watching for the knitting. Have you ever watched a movie just to see the knitting in it? There are a number of lists of movies that show people knitting (such as this one) but there are some great movies where the characters wear the most amazing knitwear.

I had the experience with the British television series MI-5 (Spooks in its real life) where I fell in love with the sweater the character Adam Carter wears. He wears it in several different episodes so the actor obviously really liked it, too. It’s a dark green chunky sweater that I’ve decided (after quite a lot of freezing frame and sitting directly in front of the screen!) is a fisherman’s or brioche stitch. The stitch and needle size gave it lots of texture and it had nice cables running up the raglan sleeves. I even made my version of it although I never was quite happy with the starting of the cables.

One of the posters talked about the sweater and matching socks that Gene Kelly wore in “Singing in the Rain”. You know I never even clued into that but I’m off to watch the movie again tonight (“Whadya think I am? Dumb or something?” “I make more money than…Calvin Coolidge…put together!” I could go on all day!)

Wouldn't it be fun to have a design-along to work out the patterns for these?

Have you noticed any other movie or tv knits that intrigue you?

Grab Bag

I’ve kind of let things go since the big push to finish the Danish sweater. But I haven’t been idle. Here’s a pair of socks that I started quite a while ago and just picked up again. For some reason, I thought I’d made the sock too small and was going to have to rip out and start over. After a little investigation, however, I discovered that applied to a pair I was making with the Brown Sheep Wildfoote yarn, not these. These are made using Regia Silk – the first time I’ve ever used it. It’s been pretty nice to work with and is definitely very soft. I’m using solid yellow (color 022) and the variegated “Earth” colorway (color 0190), making stripes of 7 rounds alternating the colors (using my basic sock recipe). This is using size 1 needles (I think) and casting on 64 stitches. I’m carrying the yarn between each color, though I’m not sure I’d do that again. It was, I’m sure, an attempt to save working in the ends of the yarn but I’ll have to wait and see if it’s successful.

On the first one, I didn’t have the jogless jog down too well on the cuff but I think I started getting the hang of it once I got to the foot. In case you’ve never seen the jogless jog, it’s a way of changing colors when working in the round where the new color doesn’t ‘jump’ at the beginning of the round. It’s fairly simple, really, which is why it only took me most of a sock to master! When you knit the first round in the new color, go all the way around until you are back to the first stitch of the round. Instead of knitting the first stitch as it is, pull the stitch from the round below (the old color) up onto the needle. Now knit both the old color and first stitch of the new color together. This will draw the stitch down so that that jog is almost invisible.

The other thing I’ve been working on is something harking back to a blog entry before I went on my UK trip talking about elements of designing a purse around an object. I found a nice piece of coral in my local bead shop and then I found some linen yarn in a celery color and a red color that matched the coral. At that time, I was thinking about the shape of the purse and how to use the piece of coral.

Here’s a big tip. Sometimes you can sit and work out something that pleases you but often, starting with an idea and then letting it marinate in the background can throw up some interesting things you never thought of to begin with. I’ve had the stuff for this purse laying around since the end of January when I started on this quest. I would notice it from time to time and just let my mind play over both the task and the characteristics of the yarn, the needles, the various things that I could do and then I would go on with what I was doing. The advantage, when you have the luxury of time to do this, is that sometimes it will just end up telling you what it wants to be.

The shape of the purse is going to be a basic shape I’ve used before (see the linen and beaded purse on the right hand bar here) and I’m going to use this same sort of technique of making the body out of the linen with knitted bead flap and the bracelet handle. This is much smaller than the one shown but I think it will work great as a little bag to carry the basics. I will probably just use the linen for the beaded section as it’s a very small gauge and will probably take the beads with no problem. I have some 10/0 beads that I think will work fine. They are an olive color but translucent so I think they’ll be fine with this color scheme. The only concern is whether I will need to line the purse part so it’s rigid enough to handle the weight of the coral. I’ll have to try that out later.

I’m also starting a new knitted doily from the books I got the other day from Schoolhouse Press. This one is knit using size 0 needles and size 30 crochet cotton. It has a tulip sort of pattern on it that I’m really digging. The tulip pattern looks like the art nouveau that you see on glass work and furniture.

To fill up my spare time, I’ve started doing some work with polymer clay, playing with the milifiore type of beads and buttons. I am fascinated by the play of colors in some of these and I would like to see how they would stand up worked into a shawl pin of some sort.

I will be starting back into the watercolor class for the spring session at the Hogeland Center for the Arts. I took the class a couple of times last year but life stepped in and I’m just now getting ready to go back at it. This will mean, for eight weeks, focusing a little more on the painting than the knitting (yea, right – ha!). I loved this class last year and I’m looking forward to stepping into this again. We’ll see how I get on!

Photos, photos, photos

OK, Jennifer, here are the photos!

Here are some photos of my finished Skrå-Trøyer sweater. Yeah! I’m finished!


Also, the knitted doily called Azalea which I love as much as I hoped I would is finished. As I mentioned, I had some 2.25mm needle challenges and ended up using a total of 12 needles! Again, not the recommended path but I’ve found that most double pointed needles are 2.25mm and most circs are 2.5mm (both US size 1, of course). I did find a Crystal Palace circular at 2.25 but it was the most horrible needle I’ve ever used. Maybe it’s just this particular one but where the cable is joined to the needle, the metal part is bigger than the cable and I couldn’t get the stitches off the cable onto the needle. I thought I was going to have to cut the needle to get my doily off of it. I’m definitely going to return it and try to get a refund.



Regardless, however, I got them off and got it finished. This was one of the easiest knitted lace projects I’ve ever done.

The Doily

Just a quick post to show how the doily is working up. I’m loving this pattern out of the “First Book of Modern

Lace Knitting” by Marianne Kinzel. It just keeps branching out to more leaves and more leaves. I have 20 rows to go but it has knitted up so quickly. Can't believe it's actually pulled me away from my sleeve but I was always a sucker for a pretty doily. Got about 8 more rows done on the sleeve so I only have 3 more pattern repeats to go! (That sounds better than 48 rounds!!)

In case you're interested, I'm knitting the doily with DMC Baroque crochet cotton which I love and have used extensively.

Life after sweater

I wasn’t feeling too well this weekend so the whole long list of things I needed to get done, needless to say, didn’t get done – except cleaning the kitchen. I did do that. And I cooked a chicken/rice/mushroom casserole. That was pretty good and I happened to get mushrooms at the store before I decided I was going to do the dish. Those made it all the more yummy.

But I did finish the neck of my sweater and started the second sleeve which is almost halfway done. Now I’m just obsessed, no other word for it. I’m so ready to have it done and move on to the next thing(s).

Speaking of next things, as we were, I have been getting such a yin for doily work and was planning to get some crochet time in. But I got some books from Schoolhouse Press the other day with old lacy knitting including said doilies and I got hooked on one. It has whipped up really fast. It’s one of those that you can make as a centerpiece, a place setting, a plate setting or a glass setting. I think it’s going to be very pretty but I’m going to have to add some needles to the process. There are 6 sections around and since it called for a UK size 13 needle, my handy-dandy needle size converter tells me this is a US size 1. Sound familiar? Yes, well, in this case, it was supposed to be a 2.25mm US size 1, not a 2.5mm US size 1. Now, I could transfer it to a circular needle except that they’re working on a sleeve at the moment and can’t be interrupted and they are 2.5mm, not 2.25 as called for. Sigh… At the moment, I have 76 stitches on each of 3 needles. But I know that I have 2 sets of 2.25mm double points so I’m just going to draft in 3 more needles (making 6 – 1 for each section) and keep going, being very careful not to let stitches jump off the end of the needle (as they tried to do yesterday). If I need more needles, I’ll just use more needles. I don’t remember anyone saying the knitting police will do me for having too many needles.

If you see me by the side of the road begging, don’t throw money. Just throw US size 1 needles.