The Wristlet Crochet Ball Holder

The volunteers working on the Knitting & Crochet Guild Collection have selected 100 objects to show the range of the collection — including knitted and crocheted garments, books, pattern leaflets, gadgets, and many other things. Currently, the objects are being posted on social media (the Guild website, the KCG Facebook group here,  and on Instagram, user name @kcguild), one each day.  Today's 'object' (number 10) is a group of holders for knitting wool or crochet cotton, that hang from the wrist on a bracelet, including a crochet ball holder like the one in the photo below; here's some more information about it.

We have several in the collection of the same design, some in their original cardboard box, saying either 'The "Ownlee" Practical Crochet Ball Holder',  or 'The Wristlet Crochet Ball Holder' on the lid. The holders have a patent number (on the base of the flat circular disc) and some of the boxes, like the one on the photo, still contain printed booklets, so it's possible to find out quite a lot about their history.

The "Ownlee" Practical Crochet Ball Holder in its box, with booklet

In case it's not obvious, here's a drawing showing how it's to be used.

The idea was patented in 1912, by George Garratt Kent, who lived in East Finchley (London).  Crochet cotton, then as now, was sold ready wound into balls.  The crochet ball sits on the metal disk, with the bent wire going through centre of the ball.  The holder can swivel freely, hanging from the bangle.  An improvement, patented in 1913, that the disc is not rigidly fixed to the bent wire, but hinged.  George Garrett Kent was born in 1875, and in the 1901 census, he is listed as a wood engraver.  In 1911 and 1939 he is listed as a commercial clerk and then an estimating clerk, but with a mention of illustrating and engraving, so his occupation would have given him the practical skills to design the ball holder and make a prototype.

The crochet ball holder was sold through the Practical Novelty Company of Hatton Garden, London (centre of the UK's diamond trade, though I'm sure the Practical Novelty Company didn't deal in diamonds).  Someone in the company, I imagine, must have written the little booklet in the box, which tells a story of how the holder was invented:

The history of the “Practical" Crochet Ball Holders begins like a fairy tale, with "Once upon a time", but the "time" which this "once" was upon, was only a year or so ago, and this is not a fairy tale, but a true story. A man and his wife went to the seaside for a holiday. "Little drops of water, little grains of sand" got all mixed up with the lady's ball of crochet cotton because, like Humpty Dumpty, it "had a great fall" and rolled about on the beach. Along came Old Mother Hubbard's dog, which had "none" (meaning bones) and playfully attempted to carry the ball home to his empty cupboard. When a big "spider sat down beside her" and frightened the lady away, the man could stand it no longer. He dived into the recesses of his productive British brain, and Jack-Horner-like, pulled out a "plum" which was the original idea of the Practical Wristlet Crochet Ball Holders.
Naturally, the lady was pleased with the clever little contrivance which kept her ball just where she wanted it, and she showed it to her friends. So, like a snowball, which is formed with a handful of snow, and then set rolling down-hill, moving faster and growing bigger every moment, so the "Practical" Crochet Ball Holder started, gaining popularity every day, each sale resulting in the sale of many more, until it has become necessity to everyone who does crochet or knitting work, and is sold in nearly every country on the globe. 

Presumably, it was George Garratt Kent who was at the seaside with his wife, and inspired to invent the crochet ball holder. The booklet goes on to show two related gadgets that were patented jointly by George Garratt Kent and The Practical Novelty Company.

The "Practical Wool" Holder is the result of a demand for something to hold a ball of wool, as wound from the skein. The Table Stand is also an evolution, and appeals to ladies who prefer to keep their ball in place on the table, instead of on the wrist.

I don't think we have either of those in the KCG collection, which suggests that they weren't as successful as the Wristlet Crochet Ball Holder.  The booklet goes on to give prices for the Wristlet Crochet Ball Holder in various materials, from an Electro Plate Bangle with a Nickel Plated Base, at one shilling (5p) — 'quite good enough for ordinary use, at home or at the seaside or country, where one works a great deal out of doors, and the damp air is fatal to ornaments.'   The most expensive is either a Sterling Silver bangle with silver plated base, or Rolled Gold, both at 5 shillings (25p) — for 'those who wish to give a pretty present to those near and dear. Young men find them just the thing for the "dearest girl" and fond parents present one or the other to the young lady daughter who likes all the appointments of her work basket to be dainty and attractive.'   Finally, the booklet mentions the "Ownlee" crochet ball holder, shown in the photo above, which is the cheapest option, at 6½d  (about 3p).  I think that all the ones that we have in the collection are the cheaper ones.  (For comparison with prices of modern gadgets, 5 shillings in 1913 would be worth about £30 today.)

The gadgets were widely advertised in needlecraft magazines, with a warning to beware of inferior imitations.  But I don't think it was advertised after the First World War — a pity, because it's an ingenious idea which would still be useful now for anyone who uses crochet cotton.

Finally, we have a photo in the KCG collection which shows someone using a Wristlet Crochet Ball Holder, or something very like it.  It's a charming portrait.

The Guild collection at In the Loop

I'm told that work is still in progress on the recordings of the talks at the In the Loop conference in July, so in the meantime, I will write a post based on my talk.

It was a short talk (20 minutes) on a huge collection, so I could only give an outline of what there is. Brief summary: knitted and crocheted items, tools and gadgets, yarn samples and shade cards, publications of all kinds (books, magazines, pattern leaflets and booklets).  Lots of everything.  At the conference, after outlining what's in the collection I talked about how we choose what to present in a trunk show - a suitcase full of selected highlights.  We have been doing trunk shows for a few years as a way of making the collection accessible to groups around the country - the first one was at Sheffield in 2014.  (I wrote about it here.)

When we choose a piece for a trunk show, we have to be able to say something interesting about it.  Ideally, we would like to be able to tell its story: who made it, when, what pattern did they use, who was it made for, and so on.  We no longer accept new donations of knitted or crocheted items unless they come with a story like this, but many of the items already in the collection have no story of that kind.

Sometimes, lack of a story doesn't matter - some of the pieces in the collection are such fine examples of craft that they speak for themselves.

Leaf-and-trellis pincushion cover 

Here is a Victorian pincushion cover that I have shown before on this blog, because it's an example of my favourite leaf and trellis pattern (aka print o' the wave) - I showed it here. Like many of the older items in the collection, it was bought at an antique textiles fair, and had no provenance.  We have no idea who made it and no way of finding out.  But it's a beautiful piece of work.  We don't know when it was made, but I'm sure it's Victorian.   It's possible that it was made to a specific pattern for a pincushion, in which case we might find the pattern one day, but the knitter might equally well have put together the leaf and trellis stitch pattern, and a pattern for a knitted edging (of which there were lots).   Either way, it's a very fine piece of work.

A theme of my talk was that we can sometimes identify the pattern that was used to make a piece, and that this can either provide a 'story' for it, or add to the story that we already have.  And the fact that the collection has so many publications alongside all the knitted and crocheted items helps us match pieces with patterns.

Occasionally, finding the pattern that was used to make an item casts some doubt on its story.  A piece that has often featured in a trunk show is a tea-cloth with a filet crochet edging, which has 'Welcome Home' worked into each side.

As the collection got more organised, it eventually turned out that there are three 'Welcome Home' tea-cloths, one of them with a detailed story.  It had been donated, along with a note of its history, by the daughter of the woman who made it.  The maker, Ethel Booth, was born in 1897, learnt to crochet at the age of 12, and made the tea-cloth for her father who was in the Army during the Boer War, "little knowing there would be the Great War".  That implied that the tea-cloth was made before the First World War (i.e. the Great War), but when I first saw it, before knowing this story, I was sure that it was a First World War design.  And in fact the story doesn't really hang together - the Boer War, or South African War, ended in 1902, before Ethel learnt to crochet.  And the First World War origin was confirmed when we found the pattern for the edging, in a magazine published in 1915.

Fancy Needlework Illustrated no. 33, March 1915.

 The design is called 'L'Entente', and was presumably intended to celebrate the alliance between Britain and France, shown by the British and French flags in the corners.  (Though I must say that filet crochet in white cotton is really not ideal for representing red, white and blue flags.)  The design was evidently a popular one, and I'm sure that the appeal was nothing to do with the alliance, but rather the 'Welcome Home' message.  Someone at home could make it in the hope that their father, brother, sweetheart,.... would come home from the war.

After we had identified the pattern for the 'Welcome Home' tea-cloth, we assumed that Ethel Booth's father had still been in the Army during the First World War, and she made it for him then.  But I've recently managed to trace Ethel Booth's family in census records and so on, and in fact her father had died by 1911.  So the story that she made it for her father is wrong, and I think that probably she made it for her future husband - they married in 1919.

All this happened before Ethel's daughter was born, and family stories often get slightly garbled in transmission, but she knew the final part of the story at first-hand, and I'm sure it's true: the last time the cloth was used was for Ethel's 90th birthday. 

Another item I talked about at In The Loop came with no story at all - it was bought from a charity shop.

It is a remarkably short crocheted dress.  When I first saw it, I mentally labelled it as a beach dress, on the grounds that a beach would be the only possible place to wear it.  But then we found the pattern:

Patons leaflet 6249

And it is not a beach dress at all.  The leaflets describes it thus: "Swingy little discotheque dress which longs to go dancing.  Prettily crocheted in a trendy yarn, with a short flirty skirt and a mini top."  (Did you know that 'disco' was originally short for 'discotheque'?  It's true.)

Because it’s a Patons pattern, and we have the Patons pattern leaflet archive in the collection, we have the master copy of this leaflet, that gives the original date of publication: October 1969.  The one I have shown is a later reissue from the early 1970s.

I'm not sure what you were supposed to wear underneath the dress.  The pattern calls for a pair of 'bra cups' to sew into the dress as a final stage in making up.  (Our dress doesn't have them.)  So you wouldn't need a separate bra.  But as the skirt is see-through (as well as very short) you would need underwear of some kind.  In fact, our dress is even shorter than the one shown in the leaflet - it has 5 fewer pattern repeats in the skirt.  Hopefully, the person who wore it was much shorter than the model.  Or else extremely daring.

Finding the published pattern to match our dress allows us to say a lot more about it than we could just from looking at it - we now have a story to go with it.  I finished my 'In the Loop' talk by showing a piece from the collection that is still in need of a story.

Like the pink disco dress, it was bought for the collection in a charity shop.  It is beautifully made in fine cotton.  But we don't know any more about it - it's difficult even to estimate when it was made.  If pushed, I would guess 1930s, but it seems too long for that date, or for the 1940s or 1950s.  And the work seems too fine for the 1960s or later.  It was very probably made to a published pattern and if so, we can hope to find the pattern one day - and then we will be able to give it an approximate date, and maybe say what it was intended for (a tennis shirt, I would guess).  So if you see a pattern for a shirt like this, please let us know - we would love to be able to include it in a trunk show and tell a story about it.

I'll say more about the Guild collection in future posts. 

A New Yarn Shop in 1919

I was browsing some online newspapers today, looking for something else, when I found an account from May 1919 of someone opening a wool shop. The woman concerned had been in uniform during the war, and wanted to carry on being financially independent.  Employment for women was scarce, with all the men returning from the war, so setting up her own business was a way round that.

It seems from the article below that wool shops had not been flourishing before the war, though the huge effort in knitting comforts for the troops must have helped the trade.  In 1919 a new 'knitting craze' was foreseen - correctly, as it turned out, with knitwear becoming very fashionable in the 1920s. So it must have seemed an auspicious time to start a wool shop.

I was particularly interested in this account, because the Wakefield Greenwood company started out in  just the same way:  in June 1919, Clara Greenwood and Harold Wakefield (who were engaged to be married at the time) set up a shop in Huddersfield, selling knitting and crochet yarns, and all kinds of needlework supplies.  This could almost have been their story too:

MY WOOL SHOP. 

A BIT OUT OF CRANFORD SUCCESSFULLY REVISED. 

Somehow talking about wool shops seems to suggest "Cranford" and Jane Austen, and those early Victorian days of terrible gentility when one of the few things that a poor woman could do for a living was to keep a shop for the sale of Berlin wools and crewel silks. Those times have changed, however.  At the outbreak of war period it required some searching to find a shop where such commodities were the principal feature.  Wool and fancy workshops "went out" at the beginning of the century, but the war has helped to bring them back again.
At least, they are on the way.  There is, I think, a decided opening for them in many parts of the country.  I happen to know, because I have just received the experience of a woman who has established one.  Her home is in a little country market town not very far from London, a fairly busy place and popular with holiday makers.

 The Business Rest Cure. 

"When I came out of khaki,"  she told me, "my doctor advised me to stay at home and take things quietly for a while, and in answer to my protests at enforced idleness, he said jokingly: 'You'd better take that empty shop in the High-street and turn it into a wool repository, like it used to be when I was a boy!  The papers say that there is a wool craze ahead, and that women will soon be knitting all their own clothes, so you ought to do well!'
"It was meant as a joke, but it seemed to supply just what I had been trying  to find—an idea for 'something different' from my pre-war work, something that would give me some independence and which would not demand a terrifically large initial outlay.  So I did it.
"The empty shop which had been a Berlin wool shop in my grandmother's young days became mine for a moderate rental: it was painted and cleaned and made to look pretty, and one bright morning it was opened with some wools and fancy work goods arranged artistically in the window and myself behind the counter.  Since then it has been opened continually, and now there are two 'young ladies' in the shop as well as myself, and things are more promising and prosperous than I ever dreamed.

On the Wave  of Fashion. 

"No doubt the recent and present craze for woollen garments and trimmings has had something to do with it; all sorts of wools can be bought at my shop.  Embroidery silks, too, either for working cushions or frocks, besides all sorts of fringes, bead trimmings, braided work, and various made-up passementeries, for which there is a greater demand now than there has been for a quarter of a century or so.  Lately I have added some pillow and various English cottage laces to my stock, also lace-making equipment, and the results already have been very encouraging.
"One of my assistants is a good embroideress, and I have some 'outside workers,' who will do work to order, so that it is possible for me to take orders for work to be done—in particular, I find many women are glad to give orders for special dress trimmings of an everyday order, also for hat bands, children's clothes, and such like.

Lessons in Knitting. 

"To a lesser extent, too, unfinished work is completed; some orders are taken for knitted garments in special colourings, etc.; while the demand for lessons in knitting, lace-making, and embroidery of all sorts, is far greater than the outsider would imagine. It is so great. indeed, that I am seriously thinking of taking a clever friend into my business who will confine herself to teaching.
"It is an old idea which was dead and has been resuscitated, but it is worth reviving.  My wool shop is a flourishing concern: so is one on exactly similar lines which is run by another woman friend in a London suburb. And one hears people who drop in saying: 'How I wish someone would open a shop like this where I live.' "

The popularity of hand knitting lasted until after World War 2, and beyond.  When I learned to knit as a child, there seemed to be little wool shops everywhere.  In Huddersfield, Greenwoods closed long ago, when Miss Greenwood (aka Mrs Wakefield) retired in the 1960s - until then it flourished and expanded into the wholesale yarn business, run by Mr Wakefield.  It would be good to think that the woman in the article did well with her shop, too. 

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.

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.  

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

Weldon's Practical Needlework

I was going to write a PS to my last post, but then I thought. "Who reads a PS?"  Probably no-one who's already read the original post.   So I'll write a new post.

Weldon's Practical Crochet, 15th Series, No. 77 in the Practical Needlework series.

 In my last post, I was speculating about the date of this Weldon's Practical Needlework magazine,  recently donated to the Knitting & Crochet Guild, which had ads from the First World War inside, but I thought was much earlier.  I suggested that it might have been originally published about 1895, but kept in print for much longer - and obviously the ads could be updated for every reprint. Hence, 1890s patterns, but WW1 ads.

Then I remembered that Richard Rutt wrote an appendix to his History of Hand Knitting giving publications dates for Weldon's Practical Needlework issues, up to July 1915, when they started to be dated.  Actually, he only gives dates for issues in the Practical Knitting sub-series (he's writing about hand-knitting, after all, and not crochet or macrame or millinery or any of the other things covered in Practical Needlework).  But all the issues were numbered consecutively, and then given another number within their sub-series - so the issue illustrated above was the 77th Practical Needlework issue, and the 15th in the Practical Crochet sub-series.  (Confusingly, this is expressed as "Fifteenth Series" on the cover.)  So we can use the appendix to date all the Practical Needlework issues, not just the knitting ones.  

It's quite simple actually - each volume of 12 issues corresponded to a year, and Rutt dates volume 1 to 1886, so volume 7 is 1892.  And if we want to be precise, No. 77 was first published in May 1892 (because 77 = 12 x 6 + 5).

I don't know whether Rutt counted backwards from the dated issues. or whether he had other evidence too.  But it certainly works by counting backwards.  Here's No. 395, in volume 33.

Weldon's Practical Crochet, 180th Series, No. 395 in the Practical Needlework series.

It's dated November 1918 - that's the '11/18' in the bottom left corner.  (Click on the image to enlarge it.)  And extending Rutt's list of volumes and years, volume 33 does correspond to 1918.  And No. 395 would be the November issue (395 = 32 x 12 + 11).

The magazine continued with only a change of title font into the 1920s.

Weldon's Practical Needlework, No. 478.  

 This issue on Tea Cosies is dated October 1925. (You'll have to trust me on that - the pages are bigger than A4 and when I scanned the cover the date got missed off.)  And again the arithmetic works out - it's volume 40 (so 1925) and issue No. 478 (= 12 x 39 + 10).  In spite of the change of font, the cover design must have been looking very old-fashioned by 1925.  There was a redesign shortly afterwards, and the series then continued - in fact, it was still being published after the Second World War, though then as a Practical Knitting series only.

There's one problem with Richard Rutt's list of dates:  the British Library catalogue says that the Weldon's Practical Needlework series started in 1888.   Hmmm.   One possible explanation for the difference is that I think the British library has the bound annual volumes, not the monthly separate issues.  (Weldon's sold both - and if you can sell it as a monthly magazine and a yearly volume as well, why not?)   You can't produce an annual volume until you have all 12 separate numbers, and maybe volume 1 didn't appear until 1888.  And it has been known for the British Library catalogue to assign the wrong date to undated 19th century publications.  So I'm putting my money on the dates given by Richard Rutt.

Donations

It's been an exciting week at the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  I had accepted two donations of publications and they arrived though the post.  One is a wonderful collection of booklets and leaflets, published around 1920 - most of them I have never seen before.  Here is a selection:

We already have copies of that edition of Woolcraft, but not in such good condition - the other booklets are entirely new.  But this donation deserves a post to itself (later).

The other donation consisted mainly of collections of crochet samples, bound into notebooks.  I will perhaps write more about those in another post as well  (although crochet is not my thing, especially fine cotton crochet of the kind in the notebooks.)  An unexpected bonus with this donation were some very old magazines, including copies of Fancy Needlework Illustrated and Weldon's Practical Needlework.

Fancy Needlework Illustrated is awkward to scan - the printed area is larger than A4.  So the ilustration below is just part of the front cover.  Evidently it was also an awkward size for readers, too - this copy has been kept folded across the middle for a long time. Issue No. 64 is from the early 1920s, I guess.  (They aren't dated.)  Knitted or crocheted dresses often featured in the needlecraft magazines of that time - like the one on the left, with the model soulfully examining a rose. The dresses are so shapeless and droopy - not at all attractive to my mind.  It's amazing that only ten years previously, women were tightly corseted into the very structured Edwardian gowns - now they appear not to be wearing any corsets at all (although I'm sure they must have been).  

Fancy Needlework lllustrated No. 64 (detail of cover)

We think of 20s fashion as a very straight slim silhouette - but I think that's more typical of the later 20s.  At the time of this magazine, dresses seem to have been quite roomy on the hips (it looks as though the models might have been wearing quite bulky petticoats).   I don't think it works - if you're going to have no bust and no waist, you have to have slim hips too.

But as well as dresses, there were jumpers, and these are more successful, I think - they often have a belt, for one thing.  Here are two from the same magazine.

The "Clovelly" Jumper in Knitting and Crochet

 

The "Wingrove" Knitted and Crocheted Jumper

The Clovelly jumper is a T-shape,  in stocking stitch with panels of filet crochet.  The Wingrove jumper also has knitted sections, in stocking stitch with a regular pattern of eyelets.  The crochet pieces are done in a sort of large-scale Irish crochet, in a design of leaves and bunches of grapes.  The drawstring waist was very common in jumpers of that time - and at least it did give you a waist.

In the same parcel was an issue of Weldon's Practical Crochet - no. 77 in the Practical Needlework series.  Our copy has several ads for knitting comforts for the troops, and so must have been printed during the First World War, but Weldon's kept these magazines in print for a long time, and I think it may have been originally published earlier than that.  (A note on the first page of the magazine says "Over 360 Numbers now ready, and always in print.")

Weldon's Practical Crochet, 15th Series, No. 77 in the Practical Needlework series.

 
   It is subtitled "How to Crochet Useful Garments and Articles for Ladies and Children."  It has patterns for babies' and children's clothes, including 'bootikins'  (which made me smile, because that's Mary Beard's translation of Caligula).  There are a couple of household items - antimacassars and coverlets - but no women's clothes except underclothes. And there are patterns for toys, including the very charming elephant on the front cover.

And a toy lamb, too - though I don't think that's as successful.  Perhaps better in reality, in white wool, than in the engraving.

Some of the clothes for babies and children seem needlessly complicated.  Here's a child's dress in tricot (Tunisian crochet?) and crochet.  Not a garment to encourage active play - more suitable to sitting quietly to read an improving book.  

 
This dress and other patterns in the magazine make me think it's much earlier than the First World War.  The Practical Needlework series started in 1888, it was published monthly, and No. 77 is part of Volume 7, so I think it might have been first published in 1895 or thereabouts.  (Which is very inconsiderate to someone like me who is trying to assign a date to a publication and might be seriously misled by the ads.)

More later on the other publications that arrived this week.

Dressing Shetland Shawls

I have just bought a copy of Kate Davies' The Book of Haps, a luscious book.  It has essays on the history of Shetland haps, and new shawl patterns from 13 designers (if I can count).  I'll write more about it later - not this week, as we have a handling day at Lee Mills on Friday, for Guild members attending the annual Convention in Sheffield, and then I'll be at the Convention myself.  But for now,  I'll write about the image of women dressing Shetland shawls, stretching them out on the special frames.  It's used in the book to head Roslyn Chapman's Documenting Haps and the image credit says that it's from a postcard.

We have a similar postcard in the Guild collection, which was sent from Lerwick on 10th May 1911. It was sent to Mr David Thomson, West High Street, Buckhaven, Fifeshire, and the message is also signed D. Thomson, so it might have been from a son to his father.  The message is in pencil, and not very easy to read, but says something like:

Just a PC to let you know that we have not been off yet and i don't think we will be off this week.... (2 words illegible)  Buyers are hanging back the herrings are only 4/- the (to?) 7/- per cran so it does not pay to catch them  we might shift from here at any time for 2 or 3 weeks but we don't (know?) where. the most of the boats are all lying here waiting for the month off June the herring they have been getting ... (3 words illegible) herring so they are no good for curing  You might send the (illegible)  From D Thomson.   

I knew that 'cran' is a quantity of herring from the line "With a hundred cran of the silver darlings" from Ewan McColl's song Shoals of Herring, though I had to look up what it means exactly: "A measure of fresh herrings, equivalent to 37½ gallons".  A lot of fish.  4/- means 4 shillings, and there were 20 shillings to a pound:  it doesn't sound much for such a quantity of fish, and evidently wasn't enough, from the postcard.

D Thomson, the sender of the postcard must have been a fisherman, presumably based in Buckhaven, but temporarily waiting in Lerwick for fishing conditions to improve.  His postcard home is a wonderful piece of history, linking fishing and knitting - traditional ways of earning money in Shetland.      

Flame Knit

At the "Chanel to Westwood" exhibition in Barnsley, there was a wonderful shawl in a fine silky knit,  worn over a dress with Art Nouveau-style embroidery, in a display of garments from the 1910s.

The label said this about the shawl:

"The shawl in fine knit rayon is knitted in a 'flame knit' pattern which is a traditional design.  This stole is the oldest example we have of this pattern but the flame knit remains popular up to the present day having a particular association with the Italian knitwear company Missoni where it became one of their signature designs." 

It was hard to see the stitch pattern on the shawl very well - the close-up below is the best I could do.

I would love to know how the stitch is done - I assume that at that date, it would have to be hand-knitted.  There were knitting machine in the 1910s, but not I think sophisticated enough to knit such a complex stitch pattern.  So if it's traditional hand-knitting stitch pattern, you would think it would be documented in stitch dictionaries - but I haven't been able to find it.

The nearest thing to a flame-like stitch pattern that I could find, searching on Ravelry, were some patterns by Xandy Peters - she has a pattern called the Petal Cowl, which you can buy through Ravelry.  (The image is taken from her blog post about it.)  I have bought the pattern and have started knitting - I'll write about it later.  It's quite a tricky knit, though doable.  She has an even more complicated-looking pattern called Fox Paws, which looks wonderful and more like the shawl, but she says it's "recommended for the adventurous" and slightly more complex than the Petal Cowl, so I'll leave that one for later.  But these stitches are her own invention, so not the 'traditional design' used in the rayon shawl.

If anyone can put me on the trail of the traditional 'flame knit' pattern, I should be very grateful.