Christmas Presents

I don't usually knit Christmas presents - I know from past experience that it's just creating an extra source of stress in getting them finished in time.  And I have not been much of a sock knitter, either, though for Christmas 2011 I did knit 3 pairs (of which 2 and a half were finished in time).   But this year, I needed a small portable project and decided to try sock knitting again, and to knit a pair for my daughter for Christmas - knitting one pair of socks seemed perfectly manageable.   I bought a skein of lovely Lichen and Lace sock yarn from my friend Sarah Alderson, and her sock pattern, The Chain.   (Sarah designed the thrummed slippers pattern that featured in my previous post.) 

The socks were finished well before Christmas.  They have turned out very well, and the yarn is beautifully soft. 

But meanwhile, my daughter said that what she really needed was a replacement for a scarf that she had lost i.e. she wanted me to knit a plum-coloured infinity scarf, as soon as possible. So I decided that the scarf would have to be for Christmas, too.

It took a while to find some wool of the right colour - King Cole Merino Blend 4-ply in Damson. By this time it was well into December, and we decided that the scarf had to be about 46 in. (117 cm.) in circumference, and quite deep.   I did get it done - I finished it at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve (knitted, ends sewn in, and pressed).  Cutting it a bit fine, I know, but on Christmas Day it was all wrapped up, under the Christmas tree. 

It's designed to loop around the neck twice.   I don't have a photo of my daughter wearing it, but here it is on our newel post. 

I knitted it in the round, with a chevron pattern of eyelets and decreases in the middle and garter stitch borders top and bottom. Basically, a very wide, short tube.

It turned out that she hadn't lost the original scarf after all, but as it's cotton jersey, a hand-knitted wool scarf is much nicer, and much warmer for the winter.  She's very pleased with both the socks and the scarf.  And I'm going to knit more socks - this time for me.  And maybe a Moebius scarf too.

Fluffier on the inside

On Thursday evening, we had the December meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch.  Our theme for 2017 has been Yarn, in all sorts of forms.  To finish the year we had a workshop from one of our members, Sarah Alderson of Aldersign Designs.  The workshop was on thrumming - a traditional technique from Canada for making very warm mittens and such like by knitting extra bits of unspun wool into them to make a fleecy lining.  (Search for 'thrummed mittens' to find some YouTube videos and articles - here's one by the Yarn Harlot.)

Sarah provided us with undyed wool tops to make the thrums - short lengths of roving folded into figure-of-eight loops.  And she had designed a pattern for thrummed slippers / bootees - the design is called 'Fluffier on the Inside'.   The sole of the slipper is thrummed, and there is another band of thrumming around the ankle.  Sarah's prototype was in dark blue, and looks a little bit like Doctor Who's Tardis (which of course is bigger on the inside).

We started with a slipper sole, and I finished mine on Thursday evening.  The photos show the outside, with a neat pattern like the lice in Norwegian knitting:

and the inside, which looks like an explosion in a wool warehouse:

Sarah says that after the slippers have been worn for a while, the thrums felt together into an even, very warm layer.

The next step in making the slippers is to pick up stitches around the edge of the sole to knit the upper (which isn't thrummed).   Before doing that, I think I should knit the sole again - the size needs some adjustment.  And before that,  I need to finish off some Christmas knitting - there's not much time left, but it may just be done by Christmas morning.  But I shall definitely finish the slippers - they will be so cosy.

Shetland Knitting Patterns

A recent donation of knitting patterns to the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection included a pattern for an "All-over Fair Isle Jumper and Beret", which looks to me like a 1930s pattern.

It was by a company called T.P.G. who produced "Pure Shetland Wool" for knitting.  Presumably, the company was based on Shetland, but there is no address on the leaflet.  And I can't guess what "T.P.G." stands for.   

It's good to see an authentic Fair Isle pattern from the 1930s (if that is what it is).  Here's what the design looks like, very approximately - I've chosen the colours based only on their names in the pattern, so they may be a long way from accurate.

I read the instructions to see if the jumper is to be knitted in the round.  It is - but only up to the armholes.  Then the back and front are knitted flat.  The stitches for the sleeves are picked up around the armholes (after the shoulders have been grafted), and the sleeves are knitted in the round. So - no steeks.

I knew that I had seen other T.P.G.patterns in the collection, and today I found them.  The girl's cardigan below is knitted in fawn and dark blue, with peach, white, pale blue, moorit and yellow.

The materials required include a set of four long needles (15 inch), but I'm not sure how they are to be used.  The instructions imply that the back and front are knitted flat in one piece up to the armholes, and you begin by casting on 235 stitches onto two size 10 (3.25 mm.) needles.  But probably four long needles are needed to knit such a wide piece flat - the instructions don't say.  (Now we would use a circular needle.)  Again, the back and fronts are knitted separately from the armholes upwards, and the sleeves are knitted in the round, working downwards from the armholes. 

Another T.P.G. leaflet is in a different Shetland knitting tradition - it has panels of a pretty lace stitch on a cardigan and jumper. (Click on the image below to enlarge it.)

I found these T.P.G. patterns alongside some other knitting patterns from Shetland.  I think these are later - maybe late 1940s?

The leaflets leave no doubt that these are Shetland patterns "Designed in Shetland by Shetland Knitters" -  the company is called "Shetland Wools", with an address in Lerwick.  Both the lady's jumper and the gent's slipover are knitted flat - back and front separately.  Even the sleeves of the jumper are knitted flat, from the cuff upwards - the only knitting in the round is for the yoke.   And the ribs around the neck and armholes of the slipover are knitted flat, too, with seams in the rib, under the arms and on the shoulders.  (I find that rather shocking).  The company must have decided that knitters outside Shetland just couldn't cope with knitting in the round.

It would be nice to know more about these two companies, and in particular what T.P.G. stands for.  So if you have any information. please let me know. 

P.S. In January, someone emailed me to say that she thought the T.P.G. was the firm of T.P. Gordon (Perth) Ltd.,  who were listed in the Edinburgh Gazette as 'Shetland Goods Specialists' in the 1930s.  They were also, she said, mentioned as the publishers of TPG leaflets in a Broraspun leaflet in the 1970s. I was able to add a bit more information - T.P. Gordon was Thomas Patrick Gordon, who died in 1942 aged 88.  The notice of his death named the business as the Shetland Warehouse in Perth.  So, Perth rather than Shetland, though I suppose the patterns might have been designed there.  

November 1947

This is one of an occasional series in which I look back at a past issue of Stitchcraft.  So here I'm looking back 70 years, to November 1947.

Stitchcraft magazine, November 1947

Although the war had been over for two years, there were still severe shortages of many things, apparently, and clothes rationing was still in force.  But perhaps it was easing up a little - earlier issues of Stitchcraft suggested ways to recycle wool unravelled from old jumpers, but this issue expects you to buy new wool.

Christmas was coming, of course, so the front cover has an angora bolero to wear "For a Winter Party". (I must show the heading for its exuberant use of three different fonts in four words:)

And the back cover of the magazine has a nice twinset in a complicated stitch pattern, knitted in 2-ply.  You only needed 10 oz. (285 gm.) for both the cardigan and the short-sleeved jumper - they weren't being extravagant with their clothing coupons. 

From Stitchcraft magazine, November 1947

 Here's a close-up of the stitch pattern:

There are two more sweaters for women, and a charming little twin-set for a small child.

 For men, there are patterns for gloves and a smart pair of socks.

From Stitchcraft magazine, November 1947

And, with Christmas presents in mind, there are two patterns for soft toys.  They are called, I have no idea why, the Despondent Tiger and the Poetical Bull.  (Each toy requires nearly as much wool as the twinset, so the pattern does suggest using unravelled wool here.)

Earlier issues of Stitchcraft, such as this one from December 1941, had a cookery column.  That seems to have been abandoned by 1947.  And although there was usually quite a lot of sewing, embroidery, and other needlecrafts apart from knitting and crochet, both before and after the war, the November 1947 issue has only one item that isn't knitted - a cushion cover in applique and cross stitch.

But for a knitter, there is a lot to appeal.  I might even try the sock pattern. 

Members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild can download a pdf of this issue of Stitchcraft from the members' section of the Guild website. 

Spending a Day in 1918

When we were in London a week ago, for the Knitting History Forum, I spent a happy day at the British Library, looking at magazines from 1918. I was gathering material for my blog about the First World War, One Hundred Years Ago. It's been through a very thin patch since I broke my wrists last year, and I almost decided not to add any more posts, but then I thought that I should at least post the material I had already collected, and now I'm planning to revive it and keep it going. The war won't last much longer, after all.  (I'm sure that's what people hoped in 1917, too.)

So I ordered Woman's Weekly, Home Chat and Home Notes for 1918.  They were all weekly magazines for women, and all survived until the 1950s - Woman's Weekly is still with us, of course.  Woman's Weekly was a good read (though of course I didn't have time to properly read very much of it).  There was lots of interesting material about how to train for some of the new job opportunities available to women.  Mary Marryat, who still nominally wrote the advice column in the 1950s (but I'm sure wasn't the same woman - if indeed she ever existed) was issuing good advice to young women getting into relationships with men in the armed forces.  (Some of it extremely practical - e.g. you can tell from his pay-book if he's already married.)  And Cecile, who I think also survived as the Woman's Weekly cookery writer until the 1950s, provided recipes and meal plans for the meagre rations.

And as I was looking through the issues of the magazine, week by week, I saw a pattern I recognised.

Woman's Weekly magazine, 23rd March 1918

The 23rd March issue has an illustration of a tea cosy on the cover - and I recognised it, because there is a tea cosy made to the same pattern in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.   (Strictly speaking, it's a tea cosy cover, not a tea cosy -  it wouldn't do anything to keep a pot of tea warm by itself.)

The cosy in the collection is identical to the Woman's Weekly illustration, except that our example has a decorative frill around the edge - but the pattern just says that when you have made the two halves of the cosy, you should finish off "with any little edging round the top".

I probably wouldn't recognise all the filet crochet tea cosies in the collection, but I know this one, because of its other side.  I'm sure that the designer intended that both sides of the cosy should be the same, but the maker of ours used different designs.  The other side has a "VICTORIOUS PEACE 1914-1919" design, and it's very familiar because I show an illustration of it in my talk on knitting & crochet in World War I.

It was surprising and exciting to recognise an image from 1918 so unexpectedly.  Next time I visit the British Library, I'll look through Woman's Weekly for 1919, to see if our maker found the 'Victorious Peace' design there too. 

I'm afraid that Home Chat and Home Notes were nowhere near as interesting as Woman's Weekly - Home Notes in particular was very dull.  Clearly, enough readers went on buying them to keep them both going for another 40 years, but personally I'd have bought Woman's Weekly instead.

Knitting History Forum

I was in London last weekend, for the Knitting History Forum conference on Saturday at the London College of Fashion.  Professor Sandy Black organises the programme, and this year's was the 10th anniversary meeting, which is quite an achievement.  I have been to three of the past conferences, and there has always been a fascinating range of talks. I was there this year to talk about Wakefield Greenwood, a Huddersfield yarn company, and what I have found so far about its history.

"Wools for the World" - details from the back of a Wakefield Greenwood pattern leaflet

You can see the programme for the conference here.  I felt that my talk hardly counted as history compared to some of the others, because I was talking about things that happened within living memory - other speakers were going back hundreds of years.

Maj Ringgaard from Copenhagen talked about 17th and 18th century knitted stockings in silk and wool that have been found in waterlogged excavations in Copenhagen.  I was fascinated by the decorative details - many of the stockings had clocks (decoration on the outside of the ankle). Maj showed several fancy clocks in purl stitches on a stocking stitch background.

(There was also a bit of discussion about the correct terminology - apparently knitting historians aren't supposed to talk about stocking stitch, or knit and purl stitches, any more.  But I know what those terms mean, and if you're a knitter, I expect you do too - although if you are American, you might have to translate stocking stitch to stockinette. I can't remember what the alternatives to knit and purl are, but the approved alternative to stocking stitch seems to be 'simple knitting', which I don't find very helpful.)

As well as clocks, the Copenhagen stockings had false seams up the back (in purl stitches, with often a bit of decoration either side).  The seam was imitating the hose made out of cloth cut on the bias that the knitted stockings replaced, but Maj suggested that it might also have had a practical purpose as a marker for the leg shaping.

The following talk was also about 17th century knitwear.  Helena Lundin, from Uppsala, has been looking at knitted fragments of wool and silk found in the remains of the Swedish Navy flagship Kronan that exploded in 1676 with the loss of 800 men.  The fragments (when they can be identified) came from gloves, headgear, silk waistcoats and stockings, and they are mostly stocking stitch, although I was excited to hear that one fragment is in twined knitting. 

Nearer to home, Lesley O'Connell Edwards has been examining 16th century stockings and sleeves knitted in wool, from the Museum of London collection.  The stockings are often in very poor condition as you would expect, but sleeves don't get such hard wear.  There was some discussion of how the sleeves were worn - whether as a warm under-layer, or on top of other clothes, partly to protect them.  But it's astonishing that knitted wool has survived so long.  I remember seeing a 16th century child's vest on display in the Museum of London a few years ago - it was fascinating to examine the stitches through the glass, and try to work out how it was constructed.  (It's knitted in the round.)

Matteo Molinari talked about the crochet traditions in his home village in Italy, near the Austrian border.  The older generation of women still make beautiful crocheted items for their homes - mats, curtains tablecloths, and so on.  There has been a tradition, too, that teenage girls should crochet a bedspread for when they get married.  Matteo said he found that the value of a crochet piece was judged by the fineness of the thread and hook, and the amount of work involved in making it.

The final talk of the afternoon was from Ruth Gilbert who showed photos of some ancient pieces of textile from Egypt, which look like knitting but aren't - they were made by some kind of sewing technique, I gathered.  She also presented some later pieces which she thinks might have been made by a technique something like French knitting, i.e. with something like a knitting nancy).  But unless an Egyptian knitting nancy is found from the right date,  it's hard to see how you could get beyond saying that a fabric like that could have been made that way.

It was a fascinating set of talks, covering a wide spread of knitting history.  And afterwards, there was a drinks reception,  to celebrate the 10th anniversary, which rounded off a very good day.

Teazle Wool Again

I have been wondering how similar Felted Tweed is to the Teazle Wool specified for the tam pattern I adapted, as I described in my last post. 

Here's a photo of a Teazle Brush being used, and a description, taken from J. &  J. Baldwin's Woolcraft, published before 1920:

BRUSHING (or RAISING).—The full beauty of garments made from certain materials,—and especially those from TEAZLE WOOL, is only developed by raising the surface of the fabric by means of the special Teazle Brush, so as to produce the effect of fur. 

The process should not be applied promiscuously to knitted and crocheted fabrics, but only where recommended in the particular recipe, certain precautions—such as stitch, firmness of fabric and avoidance of knots on its surface—requiring to be observed, as well as the suitability of the material from which the garment is made. TEAZLE WOOL is specially intended for finishing off with a "raised" surface, and gives most beautiful results when used according to directions. 

The procedure is as follows :—Holding the Brush in the right and the fabric in the left hand, treat the material to a series of light dabs (Fig. 2A), with a very gentle lifting or pulling action at each (Fig. 2B), until a fluffy surface has been produced equally all over the garment. Heavy or careless raising may easily cause a tear, in which case the fabric will require to be darned on the inside. If the Brush be made to just lightly grip the surface, however, and the action be a gentle one and steadily applied, a beautiful effect can easily be obtained on plain fabric made from TEAZLE Wool. It is a wise precaution to make sure that the Brush is clean by using it first on a piece of waste fabric. 

The TEAZLE Brush can be obtained (in the United Kingdom), at a cost of 2/- [2 shillings], wherever TEAZLE WOOL is on sale. As it may be employed, with discretion, for renewing the nap on any woven fabrics (such as Blankets and Tweeds), it is a handy tool to have available, apart from its special use in connection with TEAZLE WOOL. 

I tried brushing my Felted Tweed swatch with a wire brush, and the result is just slightly furry.

I'm sure it's not as furry as brushed Teazle wool should be - but the brush I used is one I usually use for brushing suede.  It is not equivalent to a Teazle brush, which was also a wire brush, but each wire had a hooked end.  What's more, brushing with a wire brush, even one without hooks, didn't seem a proper way to treat Felted Tweed - the fabric did not feel robust enough to stand up to such treatment. So perhaps Teazle Wool produced a thicker fabric, or perhaps the Teazle brush did a better job of raising the nap, or perhaps I was being too tender-hearted.  It's hard to tell without a sample of the original Teazle wool and a proper Teazle brush. But I suspect that getting the effect evenly applied over a sizeable garment would be difficult, even with the proper wool and brush.  

A Teazle Wool Tam

In April, I wrote about a secret project that I was knitting in three colours of Rowan Felted Tweed. The pattern has now been published, in the November/December issue of Piecework magazine.  It's a special issue on collections, and Angharad and I wrote an article about the Knitting & Crochet Guild's collection for it.  The project was to accompany the article, and now that the magazine has appeared, I can show it to you.

Tam for Piecework November/December 2017

It is a tam, with two bands of stranded knitting, and a tassel.  (The magazine has a nicer photo of it - it was photographed on a model, who is much more attractive than my polystyrene head.)

Choosing a project to represent all the publications in the Guild's collection was quite tricky - I wanted something unusual, not too big or difficult to knit, and something that would look good now.  Just as I was wondering what to choose, a donation arrived for the collection, of booklets and patterns from the early 1920s, including a booklet of Hats, Caps & Tams, which was just what I was looking for.

Beehive Booklet 23: Hats, Caps & Tams

I had never seen a copy of the booklet before, and I think that not many have survived. It was published in the early 1920s - after J. & J. Baldwin of Halifax had merged with Paton's of Alloa in 1920, but while they were still acting as separate companies.

The booklet has an introduction which describes the teazle wool specified for the patterns in the booklet:

TEAZLE WOOL HATS, CAPS and TAMS, in Knitting and Crochet, are a need of the times for wear with the woollen Jumper, Scarf, or Sports Coat which form part of practically every Woman's wardrobe. They can be made at home to match the other garments and at but a quarter of the cost, or less, of the ready-made article. 

Moreover, at the taste of the individual, a Colour Scheme may be deliberately put together and an air of distinction given to the finished article, such as would be very difficult to obtain through Millinery channels. TEAZLE WOOL, from which the whole of the articles illustrated in this book were made, is supplied in a lovely range of shades from which to choose such a Colour Scheme.....

The facility with which the surface of fabric made from TEAZLE WOOL can be "raised," by means of the special "TEAZLE" Brush, makes it peculiarly suitable for Hats, Caps, and Tams. The process softens the colours and gives a very pleasant touch to the fabric, the freshness of which can be restored at any time, and even after washing, by a gentle application of the "Brush." 

(Teazle wool was named for the heads of the teasel plant, shown in the trademark, that were used in the woollen industry to raise the nap on woven cloth.)

I didn't want to choose a pattern that was designed to be brushed, but fortunately many of the patterns in the booklet were not, and I chose this design from the front cover, which isn't brushed:

   
Even though I didn't intend the finished tam to be brushed, in order to imitate Teazle wool I couldn't choose a smooth yarn  - it would have to be a wool that could conceivably be brushed.  The pattern specified the colours, too, so I wanted to be able to match them if possible.  And of course I needed to be able to match the stated gauge.

My friend Ann Kingstone suggested using Rowan Felted Tweed, which she used for her Stranded Knits book, and assured me that it would knit to the right gauge.  And Rowan very kindly supplied me with Felted Tweed in Bilberry, Watery and Ginger, to stand in for Violet Blue, Jade Green and Orange Teazle Wool.  The result looks very close to the illustration in the booklet, and has the 'jewelled effect' described in the pattern - I am very pleased with how it turned out. 

Having chosen the pattern and the yarn, I still had to modify the pattern quite a lot.  The knitted tams in the booklet were intended to be made in four or five separate sections and then sewn together.  Here's a chart for one of the sections in a similar tam from the booklet - each section in the tam pattern I chose is the same shape, apart from the final decreases. 

Chart for a 4-section tam

The booklet has a preamble that suggests knitting in the round as an alternative - I thought that most knitters now would prefer that.

The tam I chose was intended to be knitted in 4 sections, and I knit a trial tam (in other colours of Felted Tweed) following the pattern closely, apart from knitting it in the round.

I didn't like it - it was too square.  And the decreasing in the centre of the crown didn't work well (for me anyway) - it didn't lie flat.  So I changed to five sections and changed the decreasing in the middle.  I also had to re-jig the bands of stranded knitting, so that they sat symmetrically within each section, and carried on smoothly from one section to the next - not a consideration in the 1920s, it seems.

The final hurdle was the tassel.  All the pattern says about that is "sew together neatly, finishing with a length of chain and tassel from the centre of the crown."  Some instructions would have been nice, but in the absence of any help, I had to make it up, and fortunately, I could see roughly how long the chain and tassel should be from the illustrations in the booklet.     Here's the finished tam, showing the crown with the five converging sets of decreases, and the chain and tassel.  I am very proud of it - my first published pattern.

Donation from Scotland

A friend sent me a package of pattern booklets and leaflets this week, a donation for the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  She lives in Scotland and had found them in her local charity shop - several of them do in fact have a Scottish flavour.  There are several 1950s pattern booklets that were given away free with The People's Friend magazine (published in Dundee).

There were several late 1940s pattern leaflets in the package too, including this lacy blouse pattern with crocheted buttons. (I'd call it a blouse, or else a short-sleeved cardigan.  The leaflet calls it a 'jackette'.)

The most intriguing item was a copy of the Scotch Wool & Hosiery Stores' Hand Book of Knitting and Crocheting. which was similar to Patons & Baldwins' Woolcraft.  It gave a lot of useful basic patterns, with an emphasis on underwear.

I think this edition dates from the First World War - it has several patterns for balaclava helmets, steering gloves, puttees, and similar garments that would be useful for soldiers and sailors. But the intriguing thing is not the booklet itself, but its cover - the original cover (above) is falling apart, and a new cover has been made from the outside of a school exercise book.  (To confirm that, it has the address on the back:  Corporation Printing and Stationery Department, 197 Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow, S.1. )

And on the front is advice to children on how to cross the road safely.

DANGER ! DANGER ! DANGER ! 

Do your best to avoid street accidents by observing the following rules:-

1. ALWAYS stop at the kerb, before crossing the street. 

2. ALWAYS look right and left before stepping into the street. 

3. ALWAYS keep looking RIGHT till you come to the middle, then keep looking LEFT. 

4. ALWAYS look out from behind a car or bus before stepping out into the street. 

5. NEVER climb upon a moving vehicle, or hang on to it. 

6. NEVER follow a ball, hoop or playmate into the street while there is traffic about. 

7. NEVER play games on the street. 

BETTER A MOMENT AT THE KERB
THAN A MONTH IN HOSPITAL 

What I want to know is: when did children last play with hoops?  (i.e. hoops for rolling along the street, not new-fangled things like hula-hoops).  Long before my time, I'm sure.  There's a long article on hoop rolling in Wikipedia, which shows that it has a very long history, but it doesn't say when it stopped being a common street activity for children.

The cover should clearly stay with the booklet - even though  it's nothing to do with knitting or crochet, it's now part of the booklet's history.

Summer Time Ends

The clocks went back an hour this morning and many of the 'clocks' around the house updated themselves automatically - radios, computers, mobile phones.  But a hundred years ago, when 'daylight saving' was a very new idea, putting the clocks back was a cumbersome business, and one that had to be explained to the public.  I just today came across this timely article warning the people of Leeds about the end of Summer Time in 1917.   It appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post on the 10th September (summer time ended earlier in 1917 than it does now).

 SUMMER TIME ENDS THIS WEEK.

CHANGING CLOCKS IN LEEDS.

Daylight saving, at all events for this year, comes to an end this week. The Home Secretary gives notice that summer time will cease and normal time will be restored at 3 a.m. (summer time) on the morning of Monday next, Sept. 17, when the clock will be put back to 2 a.m.  The hour 2-3 a.m. summer time will thus be followed by the hour 2-3 a.m. Greenwich time.

The act of putting back the clock will, in the average household, be performed by paterfamilias before retiring to bed on Sunday night.  None but the most particular stickler for order will sit up till 3 o'clock for the purpose of restoring clocks and watches to Greenwich mean time.

Even in regard to the Leeds Town Hall clock, which gives the accepted time to all the work-shops and factories of the city, not to mention the public houses, there will be no need to go to all the trouble of setting back the clock at the hour named.  It might have been necessary if the clock had continued to give forth its chimes and show its face at nights, but as the possibilities of air raids have stopped all that, the demands of the times are such that the clock man need only stop the 4 cwt. pendulum for an hour.  He may do that precisely at 3 o'clock, or he may study his own convenience in stopping the clock any time during the hours of darkness and nobody will be the wiser.

Actually the putting back of the clock will impose no hardship on anyone. On the contrary, those who retire on Sunday night at the usual time will have the comfortable feeling that they are granted an hour's extra sleep for the sixty minutes which the Government took from the people in April last. The only people who will need to "get busy'' through the change are those who have to do with the regulation of clocks in public places, railway stations, post offices and Government establishments.

 One Leeds firm, besides holding up the "works" of the Town Hall clock, has to restore Greenwich time to nearly a score of tramway traffic clocks, to a dozen churches in Leeds and to sixty or seventy other clocks in public places, including those on hotels and in the arcades.

In regard to the ways of manipulating the clock, the public are cautioned that the hands of ordinary striking clocks should not be moved backwards; the change of time should be made by putting forward the hands eleven hours and allowing the clock to strike fully at each hour, half hour, and quarter hour, as the case may be.  The hands should not be moved while the clock is striking.  An alternative method in the case of pendulum clocks, is to stop the pendulum for an hour.

So if you had a striking clock with no pendulum (the sort my grandparents had on their mantelpiece) that chimed every quarter hour, you had to let it chime 44 times in order to put the clock back an hour. I think I would rather have had it an hour wrong until the following April.

Greenwoods Wools

I've been researching the history of Wakefield Greenwood, a knitting yarn business based in Huddersfield in the 1950s and 1960s - I'm giving a talk on the company at the Knitting History Forum meeting next month. The Wakefield Greenwood company grew out of Greenwoods, a needlework shop in Huddersfield that advertised in Vogue Knitting in the 1930s and 1940s. 

I'm still finding bits of information about the company and the shop.  This week, I found some Bestway patterns from the late 1940s for Greenwoods Wools.

Bestway 1416

Bestway patterns often specified generic yarn, such as 3-ply wool, but otherwise, they had a company logo on the front and the pattern was written for that company's yarns.  So for instance, in the late 1940s,  many Bestway patterns had Sirdar or Emu logos on the front.  It must have been good for the yarn company, as an extra way of advertising their yarns. I think, too, that Bestway patterns were sold more widely than other knitting patterns, in newsagents as well as yarn shops.

During World War 2, Greenwoods shop started to sell their own brand of knitting and crochet yarns - the shop had had a mail-order service for several years, supplying knitting wools and other needlework supplies all over the country, and advertised the service in Vogue Knitting.  But they hadn't yet started producing their own knitting pattern leaflets to support their yarns.  The Bestway leaflets would have been a way to test the market, and also to get the name known more widely.

In fact I recognised one of the Bestway designs straightway.

Bestway 1446

I had already seen an illustration of the jumper in a Greenwoods ad in a 1946 Vogue Knitting magazine..

Ad in Vogue Knitting 28

The ad says "Write to-day for LEAFLET 1446, 4d post free from us or from any Wool Shop."  I did wonder how Greenwoods managed to have a leaflet numbered 1446, without any previous leaflets, but now I know - it was Bestway 1446.

I don't recall any other yarn company advertising a Bestway leaflet, but Greenwoods (and later Wakefield Greenwood) were very good at seizing any advertising opportunity.

I have found two other leaflets for Greenwoods Wools.  One is an underwear set - a (very long) vest and (very long) knickers.

Bestway 1448

The yarn is Silbro, described as Underwear Silk, and it may indeed have been real silk.

And finally, there's a little jumper knitted in mercerised cotton yarn, "knitted in stocking stitch with lacy yoke and front panel".  It has a neat little collar and a buttoned opening at the back neck - very pretty, if you like 1940s vintage knitwear.

Bestway 1449

I haven't found any other Greenwoods Wools leaflets published by Bestway in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, though  there may have been some.  But shortly after these were published, Greenwoods started to produce their own pattern leaflets, so perhaps they didn't need the Bestway support any more.

Vulcanite Knitting Needles

Before other plastics were developed and came into common use, one of the materials used for knitting needles was vulcanite, a hardened rubber.  A haberdashery catalogue from 1918-19 lists steel, wood, bone, ivory and vulcanite knitting needles.  So I've known about vulcanite knitting needles for several years, but I didn't think that we had any in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.

But then recently I saw that we had some black double-pointed needles, that I thought might be vulcanite.  Another name for vulcanite is ebonite, and it was used to make jewellery and other decorative pieces in imitation of ebony or jet - black is its 'natural' colour.

The needles that I thought might be vulcanite are size 14 (2mm.) and some are in a set of four with a paper band around them, though it's not very informative - it just says 14 W.G. (presumably for 'Wire Gauge') and Made in England.

You can test whether a knitting needle is vulcanite by rubbing it gently to warm it - it should smell of rubber. I've done that and they do smell of rubber - at least to me. I've asked several other people to test them, without mentioning rubber.  No-one else said that they smelt of rubber, and you would be amazed at the range of things that various people thought they could smell.   (Strawberries?!!)

So I'm relying on  my own nose.  Also, they are surprisingly sharp, which makes me think that they are not made of one of the usual plastics.

And this week we have been given some more knitting needles, including a pair of black straight needles, 12 in. (30.5 cm.) long and size 7 (4.5 mm.)   They don't have any label or markings on them, not even the size.

Again, they are sharper than most plastic needles.  And to me, they smell of rubber.  So I'm convinced they are vulcanite, and I'm not asking anyone else to smell them for me. 

It seems that vulcanite was not used for knitting needles after the start of the Second World War.  So if I'm right, these really are vintage knitting needles. 

Dating Fancy Needlework Illustrated

Over 150 numbers of the Fancy Needlework Illustrated magazine were published before the Second World War.  The Knitting & Crochet Guild collection has about 75% of them, including the very first number (though it's a bit tatty).

Fancy Needlework Illustrated no. 1

I've been assigning a date to each number - they don't have publication dates on them, but fortunately there is enough other evidence to work out when they were published. (And if you want to get straight to the dates, there's a table at the bottom of this post.)

One helpful clue is that the magazine ran regular needlework competitions, and many of our copies still have an entry coupon inside.  The closing date for entries to the competition gives a rough idea of when the coupon (and so the magazine) was printed.  That was all the information I had for a long time.  But then I noticed that the early numbers have a "To Our Readers" introductory piece that sometimes said when the next number would be published.   (Yes, I do occasionally read some of the publications in the collection, as well as sorting and listing them.)

From these introductions, I found that no. 3 was published on  February 1st 1907 and no. 5 on February 1st 1908.  I don't know definitely when numbers 1 and 2 were published, but I guess that they both appeared in 1906.

From June 1908, the magazine was published quarterly, on February March 1st, June 1st, September 1st and December 1st.   It seems that the first few numbers were published less frequently, to test the market, but they must have sold well enough to commit to publishing more often. 

Although the first number listed knitting as one of the crafts covered by Fancy Needlework Illustrated, the early numbers focus mainly on embroidery and crochet, with very little knitting. But fashions were changing, with sports coats for women becoming popular around 1910.  Fancy Needlework Illustrated followed the trend, and showed a sports coat on the cover of number 24 in December 1912.

Fancy Needlework lllustrated no. 24

In the 1920s, jumpers for women became very fashionable, and the covers of the magazine often showed several jumper designs, like number 59, published in September 1921.

Fancy Needlework Illustrated no. 59

One of the cover jumpers from no. 59 appeared in a newspaper ad the following month (so confirming the date).  The ad promoted the competition run by the magazine: "Every needlewoman in the country should put her skill to the test by entering for this Great Competition. It is open to all, and has appeal for those practically minded as well as for those of more artistic ideas. For your Jumper, or for your Embroidery, you may receive a prize of £20."  The ad was apparently placed by Ardern's, a cotton spinning company that seems to have been one of the backers of Fancy Needlework Illustrated.

In 1923, colour was introduced for the cover of the magazine.  The first colour number was either 65 (which we don't have) or 66.

The colour covers are very attractive - they show an idealised view of some of the designs featured inside. The patterns themselves are illustrated with black-and-white photographs, so the models are real women and not the attenuated creatures on the cover.  (As with the Bexhill jumper from no. 75.)

From 1929, the magazine was published 6 times a year, in January, March, May, July, September and November.  The new dates in fact began with no. 88, which was published on 1st November 1928, rather than 1st December. 

In the 1930s, the magazine focused much more on embroidery, with little crochet and less knitting, so the contents are less interesting for the Guild, and quite a few of the numbers are missing from the collection.  No. 134 (from July 1936) is unusual for that period in having knitted and crocheted garments pictured on the cover, below.  Fancy Needlework Illustrated was still backed by cotton spinning companies, and so the 1930s fashion for knitted woollies was passing it by.  No. 134 is headed "Smart Designs for Knitted & Crocheted Summer Garments" - clearly cotton is more suited to summer than winter clothes.

Fancy Needlework Illustrated No. 134

The restriction to cotton changed shortly afterwards when Weldon's took over the magazine.  They changed the design of the cover and started to include designs for other fibres, particularly wool.  No. 139 (below) is a Weldon's number, published in May 1937 at the time of George VI's coronation.

Fancy Needlework Illustrated no. 139

After the end of 1939, the title of the magazine changed to Needlework Illustrated. Numbers continued to appear 6 times a year, and the numbering continued too: no. 154 of Fancy Needlework Illustrated appeared in November 1939, and no. 155 of Needlework Illustrated in January 1940.  I've found another blogger who has dated the issues of Needlework Illustrated here, so I don't need to do that.

So now, if you have a copy of Fancy Needlework Illustrated, you can date it exactly - except for numbers 1, 2 and 4 where I'm sure of the year of publication but not the month.  The table below lists the numbers published in each year.  You're welcome.

1906	1,2		1923	65-68
1907	3,4		1924	69-72
1908	5-8		1925	73-76
1909	9-12		1926	77-80
1910	13-16		1927	81-84
1911	17-20		1928	85-88
1912	21-24		1929	89-94
1913	25-28		1930	95-100
1914	29-32		1931	101-106
1915	33-36		1932	107-112
1916	37-40		1933	113-118
1917	41-44		1934	119-124
1918	45-48		1935	125-130
1919	49-52		1936	131-136
1920	53-56		1937	137-142
1921	57-60		1938	143-148
1922	61-64		1939	149-154