Spattees and Silk Winders

I bought a copy of the magazine Needlework for All on eBay recently — I'll donate it to the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection after I've written this post.  It's the December 1926 issue (there is no date given in the magazine, but it's clearly a Christmas issue, from the content, and I worked out the year from the information in the British Library catalogue and the other issues that we have in the collection already). 

Needlework for All No. 202, December 1926.  

I bought this issue partly because the eBay listing showed that it includes a pattern for spattees — a garment I have covered in previous posts. 

Spattees in Needlework for All No. 202

There was a brief fashion for spattees (or spats) for women which were launched at an event in the summer of 1926, as I described here and here, so in December 1926 they were still very new and fashionable. The Editor of Needlework for All emphasised this in the introduction to the issue: 

"Needlework for All" is nothing if not up-to-date — a statement which we may safely say is borne out by our current number, with its practical designs for the new Spattees and the fashionable Beret."  

Here's the beret, crocheted, with a tassel:

Beret from Needlework for All no. 202

There was a unexpected bonus for me when the magazine arrived, in an ad for Stratnoid knitting pins, crochet hooks and other needlecraft tools, including Silk Winders. 

As soon as I read the description of Stratnoid Silk Winders, I realised that I have one: "Collapsible. 4½in. long, price 6½d.  Knitting Pin Gauge and Winder combined."  

Stratnoid Silk Winder

And here it is folded up:

Actually, I didn't know until I saw the ad that it was a silk winder.  I bought it as a knitting needle gauge, which it is as well — the holes in the arms measure knitting needles from sizes 5 to 12 (5½mm. to 2¾mm.)  Sheila Williams, in The History of Knitting Pin Gauges describes it as 'a strange propeller-shaped gauge which folds neatly'.  She dates it to 'late 1920s/30s' — I think that probably the 1926 ad in Needlework for All marks its introduction, so 'late 1920s' seems correct.  

Once I thought of it as a silk winder, it is clearly similar to silk winders that we have in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, like the three shown below.  One of them still has silk wound onto it — or rather 'art. silk'. i.e. rayon.  

These gadgets were designed to handle rayon, which was very popular for knitting and crochet in the 1920s.  Like other knitting yarns at the time, rayon was sold in hanks. It is a very slippery yarn, and would be unmanageable if you wound the hanks into a ball as you would with wool, so instead it was wound onto something like one of the winders shown here.   You could make your own winder from a piece of stiff card - we have one in the collection cut from a box which originally had something like perfumed soap in it.  It has survived because it still has the rayon wound onto it, otherwise it would have been thrown out long ago.  Winders that were not home-made were generally made of cheap materials: two of those in the photo above are of plywood, and the one with 6 arms is compressed cardboard.  Many of the winders in the KCG collection have the name of a shop printed on them.  The winder above still with rayon on it was from The Grand Pygmalion, Boar Lane, Leeds, a large department store.  The six-armed winder is printed with "Rowntrees of Scarborough - Artificial Silk Specialists".   I suspect that these cheaply-produced winders were given free with a purchase of rayon, though I have no concrete evident of that. The 'Felix Keeps on Knitting' winder is relatively common, and may have been a free gift with a magazine, or something of that sort.

Back to the Stratnoid collapsible winder.  It obviously seemed like an excellent idea to the manufacturers, and the reverse of the winder says that a provisional patent had been taken out, though I haven't been able to find it.   

It doesn't seem to have sold well, though — very few seem to have survived to now, and none of the other Stratnoid ads that I have seen mention it. It is not too surprising that it didn't catch on when you think that at the end of a knitting or crochet project, it is common to have some yarn left over.  Most knitters have a cache of part-used balls of yarn that we keep because we might find a use for it one day. If that happened with an art silk project, you would want to keep the remaining rayon on its winder (and that's why we have winders in the KCG collection that still have silk wound onto them).  That's OK if the winder was free or home-made, and you could easily get another winder for your next project — not so good if it cost you 6½d.  But I am very pleased to have found out more about my Stratnoid needle gauge, and that it was not primarily a gauge at all, but a silk winder. 

The Wheel of Fortune

I recently acquired a new addition to my collection of knitting needle gauges.  An exciting acquisition, as I had never seen one for sale before, though I knew of it from Sheila Williams book 'The History of Knitting Pin Gauges'.  On one side, it reads 'THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE WIRE GAUGE'. 

It is steel, about 6 cm. in diameter, and it measures needles from size 1 (7.5mm.) to size 24 (0.5mm).  Very roughly, the finer the smallest needle measured, the older the gauge.  Most needle gauges made since the 1950s have not measured needles smaller than size 14 (2mm.), while Chambers' Bell Gauge, patented in 1847, measured needles down to size 28 (0.375mm.).  

  

The Wheel of Fortune gauge dates, I believe, from the early 1900s. The other side of the gauge has the address 'Head & Son, 191A & 192A Sloane St., London S.W.'   W. H. Head & Son was a haberdashery shop - the Knitting & Crochet Guild has a copy of their catalogue and price list for Autumn and Winter, 1918-1919.  (KCG members can download a copy of the catalogue from the KCG website, and see the whole range of needlecraft supplies that the shop stocked.)  

The catalogue has two knitting needle gauges.  One is Walker's Bell Gauge, descended from Chambers' bell gauge, and the other is the shop's own Wheel of Fortune gauge.    

The description says: 'Made in Steel, very hard, exact in measurement will not alter in use, indispensable to all Ladies who Knit or Crochet. THE BEST GAUGE YET PRODUCED.'

The Wheel of Fortune gauge was on sale by at least 1909, when it was mentioned in The Queen magazine. In spite of being the BEST YET PRODUCED, it doesn't seem to have sold well.  

On the other hand, Walker's bell gauge which was also illustrated in W. H. Head's catalogue, with a small figure of an archer drawing a bow, seems to have sold much better, judging by the fact that many have survived - they can be easily found on eBay.  According to Sheila Williams' book, it had been in production for many years before the 1918-19 catalogue.  The bell had become a popular shape for needle gauges, with many different versions made. (My post on Chambers' bell gauge, linked to above, shows more than a dozen variations.)     

The 'Wheel of Fortune' was a phrase often used at the time - newspapers used it for stories of rich people who had lost all their money or people in modest circumstances who had inherited a large legacy from a long-lost relative.  It was also used more literally for roulette wheels.  I don't know why the gauge is called the 'Wheel of Fortune' - maybe just because it is circular?  

It was not in fact the first circular needle gauge: Sheila Williams shows illustrations of circular needle gauges in knitting and crochet books from the 1840s.  One of these books, by Elizabeth Jackson, says that her gauge is based on those used by wire drawers.  The Wheel of Fortune is itself called a wire gauge, because the sizes of knitting needles were the same as wire sizes at that time - metal knitting needles were basically lengths of wire.  It seems that the circular shape has been a standard for wire gauges for a long time.  I don't know anything about the history of wire gauges; I'm looking into it and will report if I find out anything interesting to knitters. 

 

1920s knickers

 I wrote a couple of posts last year about several knitted garments in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection that were made in the early 1950s using Patons & Baldwins patterns from the 1920s.  Here's another:  a pair of lacy knickers.

They don't look very pretty laid out like that, but they were supposed to be worn as part of a set, and would look better with the rest of the set, and on a person.  Though loose knee-length knickers in wool still don't seem an attractive idea, to me. 

I found the pattern in the bound volumes of Beehive Recipe Cards in the British Library, which I wrote about here.  Card No. 61 has a British Museum date stamp for November 1923.  It's called the Princess design, and the set has a camisole and Princess petticoat, as well as the knickers.  

From Beehive Recipe Card 61

('Princess petticoat' was apparently a term for a garment combining a bodice and skirt part, without a waist seam.  The term was current from the late 19th century, and was advocated as a way of avoiding excessive layers of underclothing around the waist.)  I assume that the camisole draped over the model's arm, would have been worn under the petticoat, but would not then have been visible. 

All three garments have the lacy pattern knitted around the legs of the knickers, shown in close-up below. 

There are two other sets of women's underwear in the 86 cards in the British Library, both consisting of a camisole, petticoat and knickers.  The images from the cards are shown below.  

From Beehive Recipe Card No. 71

The photo from Card No. 85 shows that the legs of the knickers in this outfit are extremely wide, and also that the model is wearing what seem to be quite thick stockings .  The stockings would have been held up by either a suspender belt or garters - I'm not sure which method was current in the 1920s.  And possibly she would be wearing a corset, too.  

From Beehive Recipe Card No. 85

I suppose that these garments were quite practical, especially in winter - houses were generally not well heated at that time.  And the lace is quite pretty.  But really, I am very glad that I don't have to wear underwear like this.  We don't think of 1920s women as wearing bulky underwear, but we're too influenced by fashion drawings showing sleek silhouettes, and by modern dramas like Downton Abbey, where I doubt that the actors are wearing woolly underwear.  Most women, I'm sure, didn't look anything like fashion drawings - though that has always been true.   

Little Dorritt wools

I saw a skein of knitting yarn in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection recently - Little Dorritt 100% Nylon.   I remembered that I had also seen a pattern for Little Dorritt wool and nylon sock yarn among all the patterns in the collection, so I brought the two together and tried to do some research on the maker. 

Little Dorritt 100% Nylon and leaflet No. 156

The company that published the pattern and manufactured the yarn is named as George Raw Ltd., of Bingley (West Yorkshire), 'Spinners of Top Quality Hand Knitting Yarns", and the address on the pattern leaflet is Harden Beck Mills.  The valley of Harden Beck is now a pleasant wooded area of countryside, but at one time there were several textile mills along the valley, originally water powered.

I haven't managed to find out much about George Raw Ltd.  The company was certainly at Harden Beck Mills in the later 1930s.  Little Dorritt wools were advertised by a shop in Hartlepool in the early 1920s - presumably made by George Raw Ltd., and definitely wool at that point, long before nylon was introduced.  Little Dorritt wool and nylon sock yarn was more widely advertised starting in 1953 (when I think the pattern was published), and George Raw Ltd. was still at Bingley in 1958.  And then in the 1980s, Little Dorritt yarns were advertised by a completely different company - Sejeant Textiles. with the address Tobits, Werneth Low, Hyde, Cheshire.  Then it gets more mysterious:  Ravelry lists Little Dorritt 3-ply and 4-ply sock wool, both discontinued.   There are several illustrations of the 4-ply, one which is clearly the 1950s George Raw version, with "Little Dorritt" printed on the ball band in the font used on the ball of 100% nylon above, and the others the later Sejeant version. But Ravelry says that they are both King Cole yarns, (though some of the ball bands give the Sejeant name as well/instead). I guess that at some point, Sejeant took over the Little Dorritt name  and later still Sejeant started making Little Dorritt for King Cole. All very hard to disentangle.  

But the Little Dorritt 100% Nylon is worth looking at.  In the early 1950s, nylon for knitting was a revolutionary innovation. It was mothproof, didn't shrink, and washed easily.  Pure nylon knitting yarn fell out of favour fairly quickly - it is often not at all nice to knit with, and catches on the minutest irregularity in your fingers.  Wool sock yarn with nylon was also introduced in the early 1950s, like the Little Dorritt sock yarn in the pattern leaflet, and sock yarn still usually has a proportion of nylon for durability (75% wool and 25% nylon, commonly). 

Little Dorritt 100% nylon actually feels quite woolly, at least in the skein, and it might be quite pleasant to knit with (though I don't propose to try).  And although I first thought it was a small skein or hank, it is actually ready wound.  (Can you call it a ball when it's that shape?  I don't know.)  

The yarn advertises its virtues on the back of the ball band: 

A Knitting Luxury

"Little Dorritt" 100% Nylon Knitting Wool is made specially for Knitters who prefer something different.

Here is an exquisite 3-ply knitting yarn made from Nylon which is lovely to handle and extremely hard wearing though soft to the touch.

Garments made from this yarn dry quickly after washing, they do not shrink and the colours do not run.

The ball band also refers to the way the yarn is packed: 

A NEW & NOVEL PACK THAT CAN BE USED FROM THE HANDBAG OR THE POCKET

NO RAVELLING - NO WASTE, USE FROM OUTSIDE

I'm not sure how keeping it in your pocket and using it from the outside would work - a centre pull ball is more amenable to being used in a yarn holder (or pocket) in my experience, but again, I'm not going to try it with the Little Dorritt yarn - it deserves to be kept as it is. 

Although this is a very minor, forgotten byway in the history of knitting yarns, I think it's interesting that so many yarn companies were active in the mid 20th century.  They have mostly disappeared, but they evidently survived for some time - Little Dorritt yarns, apparently under the ownership of George Raw Ltd., were in production from the early 1920s (and possibly much earlier) to  at least the early 1960s.  But small companies had to compete with some very big brands (Patons & Baldwins, Ladyship, Lister and Sirdar, and later Robin, Emu and Wendy, amongst others).  The big brands had big advertising budgets and published pattern leaflets prolifically - at least 200 designs a year, in some cases.  But the little brands somehow kept going and kept introducing new yarns and new ideas, even if eventually they failed.  Well done, George Raw, whoever you were.    

An (Almost) A to Z of Knitting Needles, Part 2

In the last post, I showed knitting needle brands with names beginning A to M - here I'll show the second half of the alphabet.

You might think that it would be easy to find a needle brand for N, but the only ones we could find in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection are a pair of Novi needles, stamped 'Novi Norway' on the head. I assume that they were made to be sold in the UK, because the word 'Norway' is in English not Norwegian.  They are the only needles in this alphabet in a metric size, and so I think they were sold here after we adopted metric needle sizes in the 1970s. Otherwise, I don't know anything about them.  

Novi Norway needles, size 3mm, 35 cm.

O is for Ostrich. 

Ostrich needles, size 9, 12 inch

Ostrich needles were advertised in Pins and Needles magazine in 1951.  The ad says they 'are ideal in every way being made of specially finished light alloy which gives strength and lightness.'  It goes on to say that 'their grey finish is restful to the eyes'.  That might be a reason why grey knitting needles became so common in the 1950s and later, though I suspect that it was as much to do with some advantage in manufacturing.  

Ostrich needles were made by James Smith & Sons of Redditch, who had also made Double Century needles from the 1920s until the start of WW2.  Double Century needles had a steel core coated in cream plastic (always cream), and I wrote about them here.   Steel for knitting needles wasn't available during WW2, but ads in the late 1940s showed that the company was trying to start production again.  It appears that the company switched to making Ostrich needles instead - and maybe stopped making knitting needles altogether some time in the 1950s.  

  

Ad for Ostrich pins & crochet hooks, 1951

Pelican needles, size 3, 10 inch

Pelican needles - no idea about these. 

Queen Bee needles, size 7, 14 inch 

For Q, we have Queen Bee needles, made for Patons & Baldwins. They are the usual metal needles - an aluminium alloy with a grey coating.   In the 1930s, P&B advertised Beehive needles, which were plastic, in bright colours, and they were often mentioned in P&B knitting patterns.  I think that Queen Bee needles were introduced in the early 1950s, and knitting patterns often recommended both Beehive and Queen Bee needles - e.g. 'Two No. 12 and two no. 10 Beehive or Queen Bee needles, measured by the Beehive gauge', in a pattern for Patons & Baldwins wool that appeared in a newspaper in 1956.  (In fact, size 12 needles (2.75 mm.) in plastic would be quite bendy, and metal needles would be much better, though also inclined to bend. I wrote about the Patons & Baldwins beehive trademark here.

Robinoid needles were made for Robert Glew & Co. of Robin Mills, Queensbury, near Bradford, a spinning company which made Robin Brand knitting yarns.  The company first published patterns in the 1930s, and specified Robinoid knitting needles and crochet hooks.  The paper label on this pair of Robinoid needles have a 1930s look, though the needles continued to be mentioned in Robin pattern leaflets into the 1960s. The needles themselves have 'ROBINOID' and the size stamped into them, with a white filling, barely visible on the turquoise needles. 

Robinoid needles, size 6, 12 inch

I wrote about Stratnoid knitting needles in 2017 here. They were patented (you can see the patent number in the second photo below) and are made of an aluminium alloy, according to the patent.  They are shiny, rustproof and light, and are some of  my favourite needles to knit with.  In spite of those advantages, which made Stratnoid needles almost unique, in the early 1960s, the company that made them (Stratton) changed the design and made them of the same grey enamelled aluminium as many other knitting needle brands.  But you can still find the original Stratnoid needles in charity shops - they were made to last. 

Stratnoid needles, size 6, 15 inch

Tightgrip needles are made of brightly coloured plastic with a black plastic head.  It was evidently quite difficult to ensure that the head would stay on a plastic needle. 'Tightgrip' says it all.  

Tightgrip needles, size 3, 12 inch

I could not find any knitting needle brand for U, but for V we have Viyella.  Viyella was originally a wool and cotton blend woven fabric, and eventually developed into a fashion chain, but in the 1930s, the company started to produce knitting yarns, with supporting pattern leaflets. Viyella knitting needles are not common, but I suppose were intended as an additional way of advertising the brand. 

Viyella needles, size 6, 12 inch

Wimberdar is, I think, one of my favourite knitting needle names. (Stratnoid is my least favourite.)  They were made by Critchley Brothers, of Stroud, who originally made pins, but diversified into all kinds of small items made of plastic (probably casein) in the 1930s.  They had two mills near Stroud, Wimberley Mill and Dark Mill, and the names were combined to give Wimberdar.  All the Wimberdar knitting needles I have seen are plastic, in many different colours, but the company did also make metal needles under the 'Quaker Girl' brand - the usual grey enamelled aluminium.  According to Grace's Guide, the company moved into making plastic fittings for the electrical industry after WW2, and later plastic pipes for land drainage. In the 1970s, manufacture of aluminium knitting needles was abandoned (again according to Grace's Guide) - presumably this was the Quaker Girl brand, and they had already stopped making the Wimberdar plastic needles. 

No X or Y, but for Z we have Zephyr needles. There are two pairs of Zephyr needles, still with their paper wrappers, in the KCG collection.  But the name Zephyr is not marked on the needles - they only have 'GAUGE 5'  engraved into the plastic.    Plastic needles marked in that way are quite common, and usually knitting needles lose their paper wrappers.  Perhaps all plastic needles marked just 'GAUGE n' are Zephyr, or perhaps there are other makes marked in the same way - who knows? 

Zephyr needles, size 5, 12 inch

So there we have 23 needle brands, from A to Z (except U, X and Y).  Only the Novi needles are marked with a size in mm., so the others pre-date the introduction of metric sizes in the UK in the 1970s.  And I think most of these needles are much earlier, from the 1930s to 1950s.  

Some of them were made by the needle and pin manufacturers based around Redditch, the traditional centre of the trade - Duralite (Alfred Shrimpton & Son), Flora Mac||Donald (Abel Morrall Ltd.), Ladybird and Milward Disc (Milward's), Ostrich (James Smith & Sons).  I would also include Stratnoid, made by Stratton & Co. of Birmingham. 

When plastics were introduced and became a common material for knitting needles and crochet hooks in the 1920s and 1930s, many companies were set up to make them.  I know that Wimberdar needles were made by Critchley brothers of Stroud, but often it is very difficult to find out anything about the makers of plastic needles. The names Bonette, Ezeenit, Ivoree, Tightgrip suggest that these needles were made by manufacturers who claimed some particular advantage to their needles, reflected in the name, but I don't know who made them, or where.  

Other brands were made for manufacturers of knitting yarns, presumably as an additional way of advertising - Anlaby, Cronit, Jaeger, Queen Bee, Robinoid, Viyella - or in one case (Golden Spinning Wheel) the needles were made for a shop  

And as I have said, some brands in my alphabet I know nothing at all about  - Hella, Kirven, .Pelican and Zephyr.  If you have any information about any of these brands, please let me know via the comments.