vintage finds on the homefront

This week sees me back in the UK for a few days. I had to go to London on Monday to renew my visa at the US consulate. I flew into London on Sunday, and made my way to Grosvenor Square on Monday morning feeling the worse for wear from jetlag. I must say that the US consulate in London really is the kitschiest building ever... it has a giant golden eagle on the roof! It made me a chuckle as I queued outside for what seemed like forever before I was finally granted admission. I won't bother describing the process because it is boring, stressful, uncomfortable and unpleasant all at the same time. Needless to say, my application was accepted and I'll be back in Boston sometime next week, the cats have not been made orphans. Having got the unpleasant purpose of the trip out of the way, I can now enjoy some quality time in the UK visiting my family and recharging my Brit-batteries.

Now, the real idea behind this post was to talk about one of my long-term obsessions: collecting vintage knitting patterns. I got my start about 12 years ago when I went on a charity shop foraging expedition on the eastern end of the Central line. I stumbled across a huge pile of old knitting patterns in a charity shop in Epping and bought the lot for the princely sum of £1! I've been collecting vintage patterns ever since (although I took a break during the "diving years"). Recently I have been concentrating on getting hold of as many back issues of Stitchraft as possible, mostly from the 1940s and 1950s.

I arrived in London to find these two back issues of Stitchcraft waiting for me on the doormat, June 1951 and May 1968. What a wonderful start to my trip! I had bought them on Ebay about a week before I left Boston hoping that they would arrive in time. Reading them is like ferreting through the contents of a time capsule. The 1951 issue, in particular, is a treasure trove of recent post-war British history. The cover shot was taken in a wool mill and more photos from the series accompany the patterns inside. The process of turning fleece into balls of wool is described with photos of the wool-mill at work.

Thanks to my jetlag, I have been staying up late most nights since I arrived and trolling Ebay for more  back issues of Stitchcraft. I have at least 3 more in the post to me! Sometime soon I plan to sit down and catalog my collection and I'll post more pictures and maybe some patterns (copyright-permitting). Maybe one of these days I'll actually finish knitting one of the several vintage projects I have started and subsequently abandoned! Do any of you collect vintage patterns too? What are your favourite time periods? Hope you're all having a great week.

a fun Sunday afternoon: playing with yarn and food dye

I've been wanting to play with the naked yarn and Wilton's dyes I claimed in a couple of yarn swaps weeks ago, and today I finally had the time to do it. Having never really dyed anything before (except for bedsheets years ago), I opted to start with a simple process to get my going. Armed with my copy of Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece (which by the way is a great resource for dyeing novices like myself), I turned to page 54 and decided to experiment with one of the simple hand-painted methods outlined in the book.

I started out by soaking my yarn, 200 yds of sport weight BFL hand-spun by fellow rav-er SpinFusion, in a 3:1 solution of water and vinegar. I tried to squeeze out all the air and then let it sit for a couple of hours. Wilton's food dyes aren't acidic at all, so you need to treat the yarn to some acidity before/during/after to open up the fibres so that they happily soak up the dye.

In the meantime, I prepared my dye mixtures. I didn't do anything too fancy to begin with, I simply mixed up 3/4 tsp of Wilton's with 1 cup warm tap water. Since I love blue and turquoise, I mixed up two sets of dye, "teal" and "royal blue". This is about the time I started dyeing my fingers too.

Next step, drain the yarn of the water/vinegar mixture, I squeezed out the excess by hand so that it was just damp to the touch. So, armed with my naked yarn and my yummy blue dyes I set to work. Following the handy hints in the book, I lined a casserole dish with a trash bag to accommodate my yarn, put on my rubber gloves and started painting. Gorgeous!

Once the yarn was all painted and pretty, I microwaved it! Yeah, sounds odd, and I must admit to being unsure whether it was a good idea to microwave a rubbish bag, but nothing exploded or melted. Phew! I rinsed the yarn with tepid water and added some conditioner, spun out excess water with  my salad spinner and hung it up to dry on the back porch. And, here, ta-da! is the finished product, I'm really rather pleased with it. I'm thinking that it might make a great pair of gloves. Wonderful!

My approach was pretty slap-dash, and as a result I now have slightly blue fingertips. I really don't mind because I had so much fun. Yes, there is a big grin on my face right now. Hope you all had as much fun as I did this weekend!

cabled delights for the cold front

I rarely buy new clothes anymore, but last weekend I let myself wander around the stores on Newbury Street, Boston's premiere shopping street, and was surprised to find inspiration. Cables, it seems, along with chunky sweaters, are very much IN this season. Madewell, J Crew and Zara all had at least a couple of chunky cabled sweaters on their racks. Now, I'm not allowed to buy any new sweaters, and I'm not allowed to buy any new yarn, we all know that, so... as soon as I got home I rummaged through my stash of yarn and patterns and struck gold! I get to have a new cabled sweater this season after all.

Almost a year ago, I got my hands on Cirilia Rose's Vashon pattern (it's in Berroco book 302). I fell for this sweater on sight, but somehow never got around to making it, then I forgot about it. I love the 1950s styling with the short waist and high neckline, but I know that those style elements are not going to work so well for me. Another pattern that I drool over, also from the Berroco design stable, is Norah Gaughan's Beatnik (free in Knitty deep fall 2010). Beatnik is much more of a nod to 1960s mod style, with the boat neck and 3/4 sleeves. It's right up my alley, you might say. Alas, Beatnik is another pattern that I bought the yarn for and was dead set on making until I let it sit for too long, and, you guessed it, forgot about completely. However, with my new found cable obsession, it dawned on that I should take the bits I love from both patterns and make my own Frankenstein sweater, and so idea for the Vashnik was born!

Indeed, it's time for some major mods: I'm following the Vashon cable charts, but making the sweater to the size specifications of Beatnik, with a boatneck and moss stitch 3/4 sleeves. Like the original Vashon, I'm using a bulky weight yarn, Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky in silver, which is lovely and soft and has pretty nice stitch definition. I wonder how fuzzy it will get with wear? Here is a progress pic, I'm almost done with the back panel!

It really is a fun, quick knit. So far I've only made minor modifications, like increasing the body length, and making an in-between size, but I'm working on the major mods needed for the boatneck. It's fun! I plan to write up all the modifications properly once the sweater is finished, in case anyone else wants a Vashnik too!

In other news, I signed up for a colour photography class (analogue) that I'm really excited about! I'm going to go pick up some camera equipment later today. In fact, I'm going to be picking up my dream 35mm SLR kit: Olympus OM-1N in black, 28mm f2, 50mm f1.4 and 90mm f2.5 macro. Yummy. Expect to see some more of my proper photography making it's way into the blog over the next few months.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

knitting ADHD

It seems that as soon as I commit myself to a particular project, my mind wanders all over the place. Lately this has been true in most of my endeavours, but most acutely in my "year of projects" knitting endeavour. Apologies to my fellow YOP bloggers... I've been very bad at updating, and very bad at staying on my self-appointed YOP wagon. Oh well, so it goes.

But now that I'm here, here is an update! Despite my woolly ADHD, I have made some progress and completed some some side-projects. You may remember that project #1 for me is Hannah Fettig's lightweight pullover. Last time I posted about it I had knit to just below the armpits, I have since completed the body. Wa-hey!

I had some issues with the length of the body. As written, it was just too short for me (I'm 5'8" after all), so I ended up having to rip out 4" of ribbing, which was slightly painful, and adding more stockinette before starting the ribbing again. I'm still not entirely happy with the ribbing and may rip it out again and knit it in 1x1 rather than 2x2. I'm convinced that the 2x2 ribbing accentuates my lightly round tummy. M swears that it looks fine. We'll see.

In more knitterly news, I have managed to knit a pair of socks and some fingerless gloves. Here they are!

These are the infidelity socks I mentioned a few weeks ago. I knit them in Knit Picks Stroll Solids following the Purl Bee's fishnet anklet pattern. I made a couple of changes, like knitting the sole in stockinette, and lengthening the heel flap to accommodate my high arches. All in all, I'm really happy with them! I just wish I had some sock blockers to block them properly. All in good time.

The fingerless gloves were knit with Queensland Collection Rustic Tweed... I LOVE this stuff! I only wish that I had bought a sweater's worth from an online yarn store while they had it on sale for half price. Oh well, I am on a yarn diet after all!! Back to the gloves, I followed to absolutely wonderful Knucks pattern in Knitty (summer 2006). I can't recommend this pattern enough, if you've never knit any gloves before, this is a really wonderful place to start. All I have left to do on my knucks is to embroider a couple of things on the fingers. I'm thinking that a little chain stitch anchor on each ring finger would do the trick. 

Even M loves these and made me promise I'd make him a pair... yup, there's another project to add to the list!

Well, that's it for today. Next time I'll update you all on my latest new knitting projects, and possibly some forays into the world of sewing! Hope you're having a great week.