Do you remember the times, when learning to knit, finding that your rows were ever widening no matter how you tried to keep your stitch numbers the same? Not much has changed in 80 years 🙂
A poem from the Sunday Times (Perth), October 27th 1935.
KNITTING.
Hush! You mustn’t speak to them,
Marigold and Joan.
Tip-toe past the nursery door,
Leave them quite alone.
They are, oh, so busy now,
For they’ve learnt to knit.
Perched before the glowing fire,
Solemnly they sit.
They are counting all the time,
“Purl, plain, purl – two plain; Purl once more – oh bother it!
Dropped a stitch again!”
Then the ball of wool gets lost,
Till at last it’s found
Twisted by bad Kitty-Cat All the chair-legs round!
I really want to make these. My stitches are always falling off the ends of my needles when I’m knitting socks. Probably because they sit in my work bag for several years at a time 😉
From Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, December 30th 1899.
Knitting.
Most people who knit have experienced at one time or another the annoyance of stitches dropping off the needles when the work is put down for a few minutes. Knitting-needle holders prevent this, and are extremely easy to make. Bore a hole, quarter of an inch in circumference, in the bottom of two hazel nuts. Remove the kernels, and with a red-hot knitting needle bore two small holes at each side of each empty shell. Run together (at both edges) two pieces of narrow ribbon, not quite half an-inch wide and three-quarters of a yard long. Then draw through the casing a narrow black elastic, two inches shorter than your knitting needles, and stitch each end of elastic to the small holes in nut, drawing the ribbon over the ends of elastic to hide the stitching. Tie a small bow at each end to cover fasten- ing, and the needle-holder is complete.
From the Goulburn Evening Penny Post, July 8th 1936
Knitting
When knitting pullovers for several children, use wool of one colour. When the jumpers are partly worn and shabby, unravel, and wind the wool from the strong parts, and use again. Children’s jumpers can be unravelled and knitted into a fresh-looking pullover for a boy of twelve, a pullover for a boy of five, and perhaps two smart berets for school for miss nine and miss eleven. There is usually enough wool left for darning these articles later on.
Many years ago, when the internet was mostly made of text and your website host complained if your site went over a megabyte in size, I paid a rather exhorbitant price for a lift-out from a 1968 Australian Women’s Weekly in an out of the way antique shop in rural Victoria. Alas, when I went to knit the toys, the front page had been torn in half and was nowhere to be found. To say I was miffed would be a massive understatement.
Groovy knitted toys from the October 2nd Australian Women’s Weekly, 1968
(Re)Introducing: The Mod Menagerie of Beasts and Birds including, The King of the Beasts, Carrot-Power Cottontail, Cat of Super Colors, Mopsy Bird, Hippie-Potamus, Wiggy Bird, Flower Bearing Bruin and Bangle Bell Bossy. They’re all knit at 3sts to the inch to make them super groovy and super fast.
My first two finished projects for 2015! One made from knitting and one a complete travesty. Er, I mean sewn.
These were finished last Friday (January 2nd) after a mad dash to Spotlight for a bag of stuffing. I accidentally came home with a bag of stuffing, a seam roll, an ironing mitt and a new hook for Charlie’s Rainbow loom. Oops. My truly awesome daughter also bought me a copy of “Gertie Sews Vintage Casual”. I’ll review that in a future post when I’ve had time to have a look at it). Here are some links to it on Amazon and Book Depository, in case you’d like to take a look. (For the sake of transparency, those are affiliate links).
So, what have I made?
All sixteen colours of sheep in MinecraftThe Minecraft Wool stash. Obviously the most important part of playing Minecraft.
Um, not that. Yes, I have a herd of every colour of sheep in Minecraft and a chest full of stash. Shut up.
Speaking of Minecraft ~cough~ I knit a Creeper for my son Charlie.
Hand knit Minecraft creeper and his friend, Hopper the pig.
Now I want one. Except the damn things keep blowing up my house. Heaven forbid they should ever let the sheep out.
I used the creeper pattern from Angel’s Knitting Blog, sadly now defunct. I figured out how to do the face by looking at other people’s projects on Ravelry.
There are quite a few comments about the foot section of the pattern being incomprehensible but it’s actually a very clever way to eliminate a few of the seams that toys need to keep their shape. The trick is to not read the pattern first. Knit, trust that it will make sense when you get to that part and it does. Or at least it did for me and seemingly the other people that finished it 🙂
I’ve made many toys over the years and developed my own techniques for stuffing without lumps. I made this video about it a few years ago, in case anyone would like any tips.
Charlie and I also finished this monstrosity charming fellow made from an unfinished (unstarted?) and incomplete teddy bear I found at the op shop.
Meet Mr. Bread WoodenHead.
Mr Bread WoodenHead the bear
Charlie arranged all the pieces but the fabric was pretty tough to sew so I had the honour of stitching him together. Charlie finished him off by sticking on a range of sparkly plastic thingies for his face, ears and paws. Truly, um, unique. It’s staring at me right now from the seat next to me. I’m pretty sure it’s planning to eat my face.
O.O
My next project is already in the works, in fact I started it on the Tuesday before Christmas and have been stitching away on it every time the Xbox gets too hot in our Summer heat.
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