Washing Socks

Back in February, I went to an exhibition, An English Lady's Wardrobe, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.  It showed the clothes collected by a local woman, Mrs Tinne, between about 1910 and the 1930s.  It was an astonishing collection - she bought a vast number of outfits which she never wore, sometimes the same dress in different colourways, for instance. She had six children (as well as one who died as a baby) and some of their clothes were on display too.

Sadly (from my point of view), Mrs Tinne doesn't seem to have been much interested in buying knitwear, but I found it a fascinating exhibition even so.  And one exhibit did have a knitting connection: a pair of china feet, described as 'child's sock-dryers'.  They are of glazed earthenware, made by Wedgwood, with a factory mark that dates them to some time between 1907 and 1924. 

The catalogue description says 'Damp socks were drawn over them to dry out', so they were a laundry aid. Perhaps they would balance the other way up, to allow the soles of the socks to dry?  They were a bit baffling, and I had never heard of anything like them for drying socks. 

But then recently I found a reference to china feet for drying socks in an 1895 article in the magazine The Young Woman.  The article, by Mrs Elliott Scrivenor, gives instructions for washing knitted wool garments

"I want to give you a few hints with regard to washing any knitted garments or stockings. First, NEVER let woollen stockings or socks be boiled.  Many persist in this, and it shrinks the wool and thickens it.  They must not be worn sufficiently soiled to require such treatment. ..... Stockings must have soap, but the soap must be made into a lather with warm water, not hot; then wash them gently in the lather, after that wash in two or three waters, the chill just taken off the water, and block them to dry.  A block should be used for everything knitted.  You can now procure china feet for small-sized socks and stockings; other blocks are cut out of box or sycamore wood to the shape and size; they are about half an inch thick, with bevelled edges; the stockings are drawn over them, and left upon them to dry, and in the open air if possible."

So there is confirmation that china feet were used for drying children's socks.  I was interested too in the mention of blocks of wood for drying larger socks and stockings.  Mrs Scrivenor goes on to talk about washing other knitted garments, and says "If you have no block, cover a board with several folds of clean linen, and pin the work out upon it, taking care not to stretch it beyond its right size."  We still talk about 'blocking' a newly-knitted garment as part of finishing it, by wetting or dampening it and laying it on flat surface, adjusting it to the right size and shape.   But if the origin of the term 'blocking' is that blocks of wood were once used, that has been forgotten, as far as I am aware.  You can now buy 'sock-blockers', which are flat sock shapes of plastic or thin plywood, but they are called sock-blockers because they are used for blocking, not because they are blocks of wood.

Mrs Scrivenor also wrote a 'Collection of Knitting & Crochet Receipts' for Patons, then John Paton, Son & Co. Ltd. of Alloa (Scotland), already one of the largest knitting wool spinners in the country.  It was a comprehensive collection of patterns in a book of more than 280 pages, about 9½ by 7¼ inches (24.5cm by 18cm).  The 4th edition, which is in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, is dated 1909.  It is well illustrated with photographs, and looking at some of the children's sock patterns, I suspect that Mrs Scrivenor might have used Wedgwood china feet to pose them on, judging by the squared-off toes. 

Bootikin

But I wonder how practical they were for laundry. How many pairs would you need for each child?  Perhaps not many, even in a wealthy household - Mrs Scrivenor's advice that you shouldn't wear socks until they need boiling suggests that most people didn't change their socks very often. (Poor children probably didn't wear socks at all, and the poorest would have gone barefoot, but Mrs Scrivenor's readers would certainly have been able to provide their children with dainty socks and bootikins like the one illustrated.)  The china feet would take up quite a lot of room, especially in use when they would have had to be in an airy place to allow the socks to dry.  And they are breakable. A full list of the items in Mrs Tinne's Collection is given in the exhibition catalogue, and there is only one pair of china feet.  Perhaps the rest broke, or a single pair was tried as an experiment and not judged worthwhile?  I am not really surprised that they don't seem to have been in common use.

Chambers' Bell Gauge

A friend has been collecting knitting needle gauges recently.  She found that she had two examples of Chambers' Bell Gauge, so has generously given one to the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  Here it is:

The gauge has the Royal arms, "G. CHAMBERS & C^O", "BELL GAUGE" and "PATENTED 17 SEP^R 1847".  Sheila Williams, in her book The History of Knitting Pin Gauges, illustrates this gauge and a version that gives the address of George Chambers' business:  Priory Needle Mills, Studley, Warwickshire.

George Chambers was the first to make needle gauges in a bell shape, which became almost the standard for needle gauges for a very long time.  We have around twenty, of different makes, in the Guild collection, including these:

The bright green Emu gauge in the centre is from the late 1940s, so that bell gauges were produced for 100 years, following the 1847 patent.

The main difference between the Chambers gauge and later bell gauges is that it measured much finer needles - the smallest size is a 28.  On the old British scale, the larger the number, the finer the needle.  I can't find a needle size conversion chart that goes below a 14 (2 mm.), but the needle sizes were the same as the old British Standard Wire Gauge, and conversion tables for wire give size 28 as 0.3759mm.   (At the opposite end of the scale, the largest size on the Chambers gauge is size 1, roughly equivalent to 7.5mm, so quite chunky.)

I cannot imagine knitting with anything finer than 1mm. - less than 0.5mm. seems impossible.  What thread could you knit with such a fine needle?  We do have very fine crochet hooks in the Guild collection, where the hook part at the end is barely visible, but I don't know whether the Chambers' Bell Gauge could have been used to measure crochet hooks.  (The sizing of crochet hooks in the 19th century is in any case very mysterious, as far as I'm concerned.)

Sheila Williams says in her book that George Chambers died in 1865 - his company was in financial difficulties before that, and seems to have disappeared shortly after his death.  Well before the end of the 19th century, other companies were making bell-shaped needle gauges. One that became very common was Walker's Bell Gauge, with sizes from 1 to 24 (0.56mm.) - there are still many surviving, and knitting patterns around the end of the 19th century often specified this gauge to measure needle size.   

But evidently for some people, Chambers' Bell Gauge remained the standard long after George Chambers' death.  'Muriel', who wrote a column called 'Feminine Fancies, Foibles and Fashions' in the Sheffield Weekly Telegraph in the 1890s and 1900s, sometimes gave a short knitting or crochet pattern and specified that the size of knitting needles or crochet hooks should be measured using Chambers' gauge.  Here is one of her offerings, from December 1895, appropriate for the approaching cold weather:

COMFORTS FOR YOUNG AND OLD ALIKE. 

A most useful gift at this time of year is a pair of night socks, and the directions that follow are so simple that any child, boy or girl, can carry them out, and produce a most acceptable offering to those they love, for without distinction of age, or sex, night socks add much to the comfort of all who suffer from cold feet. Tiny children's comfort can be provided by diminishing the number of the stitches. The size quoted is a medium size, and the colours named can be substituted by any others that may be preferred. Take steel pins No. 13, Chambers' bell gauge. Two needles only required. 1 oz. red, single Berlin wool, and 2 oz. black ditto, or any good contrasting colours. Cast on 72 stitches; knit 2 plain and 2 purl alternately for about two inches, then commence with red wool, and knit about an inch and three-quarters; then go on with the black wool for three inches. After that knit with red for another inch and three-quarters; then use black wool, knit two inches. Cast off, fold the knitting together, and join the ends.  Run a narrow piece of elastic inside, about an inch from the top of the sock: finally ornament with a bow of ribbon. When the foot is put in it the sock shapes itself.  Among the sick and aged poor gifts of these inexpensive sleeping socks would find ready and grateful acceptance. 

[Muriel evidently didn't have a great repertoire of knitting patterns, for she repeated this one exactly in 1902, and again in 1912, when she called them American overshoes - "a great comfort to travellers by road or rail, and they serve as sleeping socks also."  At the end of the pattern, she says " When finished, this sock looks exactly like a small bag, and as unlike a foot covering as possible, but on inserting that member the bag resolves itself as if by magic into a handsome and shapable shoe; it will keep the feet warm in bed and on the carpet, and drawn over the shoes in car or tram will be found most comfortable.  I have made many pairs of shoes in different colours for friends and for bazaars, where they sell very well.  The shoes contract or expand according to the size of the feet they cover."  She's not convincing me, I'm afraid.]

 

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

Trunk Shows in Harrogate

Last weekend, and the one before, I went to Harrogate with another of the volunteers who work on the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  We had with us a suitcase full of items from the collection to show them to two groups of  knitters who were on a Yorkshire knitting holiday organised by Susan Wolcott of Trips for Knitters.   Julia Marsh, who was with me at the first trunk show, has posted photos of all the items on her Hand Knitted Things blog, here.  So I don't need to do that, but instead I'm just going to write about a few of them in more detail.

We started with some 19th century knitted items.  First, a charming little pence jug (photographed with a scale, so maybe you can see that it is only a few inches high).

Victorian pence jug

For such a small piece, it has a lot of different colours: two greens, two shades of teal, and three reds/pinks.   Presumably it was knitted to a published pattern - there are many patterns for pence jugs in 19th century knitting books and magazines.  But we haven't matched this one to a pattern yet, and if anyone recognises it, I'd love to know.

I took along the pence jug I knitted from an 1840s pattern, that I wrote about here, and also some Victorian pennies (so much larger than modern pennies).

I could demonstrate on my little jug that it's perfectly possible to get even Victorian pennies through its neck, because it's ribbed and stretches.  I guess that's true of our original jug too,  but we don't want to try.

Next, I showed a lacy doiley that I think is also 19th century (though I haven't really any evidence for that.)  At the second Harrogate show, I had another doiley for comparison, in a very similar pattern, but knitted in a thicker cotton.
 

Victorian knitted doileys

The thicker cotton makes the doiley a bit larger and of course a lot thicker, and I suppose that's more practical if you want it to protect a surface, but it does not show the lace pattern well.  Both doileys have a central roundel knitted working outwards from the middle.  The roundel is the same design in both doileys, but the edgings are different.  Each edging is knitted separately, as a strip to fit the circumference of the roundel, and then sewn on and the ends joined together.

I'm not a big fan of doileys, in general, but I like the lacier version of this one. Here's a larger photo.

  
The central spiral star is a motif I have seen before in knitted doileys.  In this one, the triangular gaps between the points of the star are filled with my favourite Leaf and Trellis pattern (aka Print o' the Wave).

Again, if you know the pattern for these doileys, please let me know.

Moving on chronologically, we showed some Irish crochet and the First World War 'Welcome Home' tablecloth. And then we reached the 1920s, and what Richard Rutt  (in his History of Hand Knitting) called 'the jumper craze'.  Artificial silk, or 'art. silk', i.e. rayon, was very popular and we have several knitted and/or crocheted jumpers in rayon in the collection.  As well as being a favourite yarn at the time, it doesn't get moth-eaten and doesn't shrink, so has lasted very well.

 At Harrogate, I showed a jumper in apricot rayon that is partly knitted and partly crocheted.

1920s jumper in 'artificial silk' 

I think it dates from the early 1920s. It has the typical straight up and down lines of a 20s jumper - although there is a drawstring belt, it probably wasn't at waist level, and the waist would not have been emphasised.  One of the knitters in Harrogate loved this jumper so much that she would like to make one.  We have many patterns for rayon jumpers from the 1920s, in magazines like Fancy Needlework Illustrated, but I have not yet found this one - I'm on the look-out for it. 

And from the 1920s, we went on to the 1930s, represented by a child's Fair Isle cardigan, a child's gansey from around 1948, some 1950s knitting and 1960s crochet, and eventually a Kaffe Fassett piece from the 1990s.   I'll say more about one of the 1950s knits in another post, but for now you can see photos of all of them in Julia's blog.

A Crimean Sleeping Helmet

One of the things that Joyce Meader showed at the Knitting in Wartime study day was a "Crimean Sleeping Helmet".  The pattern was published in a booklet published in 1900, "Women and War!  How to Knit and Crochet Articles necessary to the Health and Comfort of our Soldiers and Sailors" which Joyce also brought along for us to look at.  (1900 was in the middle of the South African (or Boer) War.)

The introduction to the sleeping helmet pattern says "These helmets are much prized by soldiers in time of war, as well as by many other men whose business or pleasure exposes them to much severe weather, or to night air."  The accompanying illustration has the caption: "Crimean Sleeping Helmet. With long neck, which, turned up, forms a warm wrap and comfortable support when sleeping."  The pattern specifies grey with crimson stripes, which is how Joyce has knitted it (though why would you want stripes on your sleeping helmet?  I don't know.)

The helmet is knitted in double rib, and I was interested to see that the trick of getting an even colour change when you knit stripes in rib was already known in 1900.  The pattern says "N.B. All through this pattern at each change of colour  the first round or row must be knitted plain; also the first stitch of the row must be knitted with both colours to avoid a break where the stripes begin and end."   I previously wrote here about a pattern published in 1919 that gave the same advice to knit the first row of each stripe, so that the colour change in the purl ribs is even - that seemed surprisingly early, but evidently it was known even earlier.

In the sleeping helmet pattern, the striped sections have just two rows in each stripe, i.e. two rows crimson, two rows grey, two rows crimson, and so on.  That means that alternate rows in these sections are all knit stitches ("knitted plain"), and only alternate rows are ribbed. So I think it's remarkable that this is not evident on the right side of the helmet - it just looks like ordinary double rib.  The wrong side does look less like double rib, but it is still corrugated as it should be.

Striped section, wrong side.

     
Thanks very much to Joyce Meader for her generosity in sharing these things.

Miss Ellaline Terriss in a Cardigan

We went to an antiques & collectables fair at Doncaster Race Course yesterday, and I bought a few knitting-related things, including a postcard of an actress, Miss Ellaline Terriss, wearing a knitted garment of some sort.

I think the postcard dates from around 1900-1910.   Miss Terriss was born in 1871, lived to be 100, and was "best known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies", according to Wikipedia.  In this postcard, she is shown in casual dress, I'd say - the hat is rather simple and understated by Edwardian standards, and a knitted jacket at that date tends to signify sports wear.

If you're more interested in knitting than Edwardian musical comedy actresses, the postcard is worth examining for the stitch pattern and the details of the construction of the cardigan.   It seems to be shaped to the waist, and is possibly double-breasted, from the position of the button.  It has a garter stitch belt and collar, and I'd guess is quite long, with buttoned cuffs.  I'm sure it's hand-knitted, but probably not by Miss Terriss.

I have attempted to recreate the stitch pattern - the swatch is as near as I have got.  It's a 2-row pattern, over a multiple of 8 stitches, plus 1:
Row 1:  (K1, P2, K3, P2) to last stitch, K1.
Row 2:  (P1, K7) to last stitch, P1.  

(I have omitted the 2 edge stitches either side that are in the swatch.)  

 Much more interesting than the frilly dresses that Edwardian actresses were usually portrayed in.

Pantomime Knitting

George Graves as Widow Twankey

It's the pantomime season (Oh yes, it is!) and so here is a postcard showing a pantomime character, knitting.   It was post-marked 1905, and shows George Graves, an English comic actor who often did music hall and pantomime (says Wikipedia). 

I assume that he is dressed as Widow Twankey in the pantomime of Aladdin.   Again according to Wikipedia, Widow Twankey is Aladdin's mother and runs a Chinese laundry, in China - in  spite of Aladdin being based on a tale in the Arabian Nights.   It makes no sense, of course.  And it's one of the comic pantomime roles that is always played by a man in drag.   George Graves appears to be wearing a very splendid Chinese costume, with an embroidered panel down the front of the skirt, and a patchwork silk coat over it.  And he is portrayed knitting - a simple piece of garter stitch, but it looks he might actually be working on it.  Though having said that, there is no sign of a ball of wool, and there appears to be a big gap between the stitches on the two needles.  So maybe it is all for show.  You can't expect realism in pantomime.        

1909 Knitting Yarns

I  have been looking through some magazines that date from about 1907 to the early 1920s, covering mostly crochet, with some knitting.  It is fascinating to see the ads, especially for knitting wools.  Three companies in particular advertised regularly in the earliest of the magazines:  Baldwin's, Paton's and Faudel's.   Paton's & Baldwin's merged in 1920, and still exist (although now the name is just Patons) - Faudel's disappeared in the 1930s, I think. 

The Faudel's ad is useful because it gives a long list of all the wools that they produced at that time (1909).  It doesn't describe the yarns that they were producing in terms that we would use now, because there was no standardised way of referring to different yarn thicknesses then - 4-ply describes how the yarn was spun, not how thick it was.  (Although 4-ply Peacock Fingering was presumably twice as thick as a 2-ply Peacock Fingering.)  Even so, the list of possible uses of each yarn gives some idea of thickness.

It's interesting that they were producing a yarn described as double knitting, to be used for jerseys, sweaters and jackets.  They describe it as combining the qualities of fingering and worsted.  Nowadays, double knitting yarn is between fingering (aka 4-ply) and worsted (aka Aran) in thickness.  But I don't think we can assume that there's an exact match between what we now call double knitting and what Faudel's meant by it - I guess that they were at least close, though. 

Some of the uses are slightly odd, like Homespun: "A yarn for Deep Sea Mission and Charity purposes."    The Deep Sea Mission is presumably the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, that I wrote about in a post on knitting in the First World War.  Here, I suppose that the Peacock Homespun is a cheap hard-wearing wool that you wouldn't knit for yourself or your family, and it's nothing to do with being waterproof. 

Another nice list of uses is for Ice Wool:  "Now used for Fascinators, Motor Wraps, Scarves, Shawls and Clouds."  (I think that someone at the In the Loop conference, who is researching into Shetland lace knitting, was trying to find out exactly what a knitted cloud was,  but I haven't found a pattern for one yet.)   A Fascinator, by the way, was nothing like what we call a fascinator (except that it goes on your head). Below is an illustration from a pattern for one, knitted in Ice Wool and Faudel's Glace Chenille  (not mentioned in the list above, so in spite of all the varieties named, it was not complete).  

A Fascinator, 1908