Spiral Socks

Last weekend, I went to London for the Knitting History Forum meeting at the London College of Fashion, on Saturday.  I was talking about Aran sweaters and how they became popular for hand-knitters in this country from the 1930s on (a re-run of my talk at the Knitting & Crochet Guild AGM in July, though without the suitcase full of Aran sweaters).  There were some fascinating talks in the programme, here.   There was plenty of time to knit on the train there and back, and in the meeting itself, and I finished the spiral heelless socks I have been knitting. Since then it has been a busy week, but I have just today found time to sew in the ends and get some photos of me wearing them. 

Trying to match the pattern illustration, but I got my feet the wrong way round.

 
(Apologies for my chubby knees - I don't usually flaunt them.) 

Knitting them was part of a sort of historical experiment, because the pattern  is from World War 2.   I used a Copley's pattern, but there were several others published around the same time.  (You can tell the wartime Copley's patterns, because the cartoon figure is wearing a tin helmet - before and after the war he is wearing a pill-box hat.  I think he is supposed to be a bell-boy.)

Copley's 1304

The claimed advantages are that they spread the wear on the heels so that they last longer before you have to darn them, and that they fit anyone, as well as being easy to knit.    So Angharad and I both decided to knit a pair - hers (in progress) were part of the WW2 display at Baa Ram Ewe in October. 

I chose grey for mine, partly with a feeling that that would be an authentic colour for WW2 (though the yarn is not authentic - it is Wendy Roam sock yarn, which has some nylon in it.)   But I usually wear black socks in the winter, so grey is already a bit exciting.  And I made them knee-length for warmth, though that made them boring to knit - until you get to the toe, you are just knitting a long tube that seems endless, with no heel to add a bit of variety.  They are very easy to knit, though.  

 
So now I am wearing them, and they are very warm.  But they aren't staying up very well, which is disappointing.   I may have to elasticate the tops.  Maybe Angharad's (which I think are planned to be ankle socks) will behave better.   I'll give an update later.

Feather and fan

Last week, we had the November meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild group - this month, a workshop on feather-and-fan given by Ann Kingstone, who is a member. 

Ann talked a little bit about the history of feather-and-fan, and showed photos of hand-knitted Shetland lace shawls in the early 20th century being stretched on frames - knitting lace items for sale was a considerable industry on the Shetlands. She explained that the term feather-and-fan was originally applied to a different stitch pattern than the one it is now usually used for. We knitted a swatch to try out the original feather-and-fan stitch - a 2 row repeat, with 6 increases on every other row, balanced by two 4-into-1 decreases in the same row. 

Old feather-and-fan

'Feather-and-fan' was later applied to a Shetland pattern that had been called Old Shale.  There are many variants, too.  They all have in common that in every pattern repeat, all the increases are grouped  together, as are all the decreases, which gives the characteristic wavy effect.  Ann passed around several swatches showing some of the possible variations - all were very attractive and would make beautiful shawls and scarves.       

Two variations on feather-and-fan

    
We knitted another swatch during the workshop, trying out a garter stitch feather-and-fan, i.e. knitting every row. And since the workshop, I have done a stocking stitch swatch for comparison, keeping the right side rows the same, but purling the wrong side rows.  Both are pretty, but I prefer the stocking stitch variant - the decreases show up better, for one thing.  (I think of the arc of increases as being the 'fan' and the decreases as being the 'feather', though I don't know if that's the origin of the name.)   

Three feather-and-fan swatches

Although the three swatches don't look very alike, each of them has two pattern repeats, and each pattern repeat has 6 yarn-over increases and 6 decreases.  

I took along to the workshop some pattern leaflets from the Guild collection that use feather-and-fan.  The earliest is a Patons & Baldwins shawl pattern, based on a Shetland original, that was reissued several times between the 1920s and the 1950s.   

Patons Helps to Knitters 56P

Feather-and-fan and other lace patterns were also popular for dresses for little girls in the 1930s:  I wrote about the one below here.

Robin No. 12 "Pauline"

 And little lacy tops for women were popular in the 1940s, when knitting wool was scarce, and  in the 1950s. 

Sirdar 1140

    

Greenock 825

Ann is planning to design a sweater with a panel of feather-and-fan running down the front centre - I'm looking forward to knitting it. 
 

Cloth & Memory at Salts Mill

The Spinning Room, Salts Mill

Last weekend, I went to the Cloth & Memory exhibition at Salts Mill - I had been there already in August, but only for a brief visit,  and wanted to have a proper look before it closed on November 3rd.   It was in an immense space at the top of the building, originally the Spinning Room.  It is 168 m. long and 18 m. wide - when I went in August, the staff were wearing bright green t-shirts and one of them told me that they had to wear bright colours, because otherwise they couldn't see each other from one end of the gallery to the other.

The room seems to have been left as it was, apart from the removal of the machinery, with the paint peeling and flaking off - the room is in many ways part of the exhibition.  There are no windows in the side walls, just ventilation openings, but it is lit by the skylights all the way along.  So the weather outside also plays a part - I was told that on a sunny day, the exhibits look very different.  But both days I was there were very dull (in fact, it was raining last Saturday).  

Built into the walls are a series of bins for storing the spools for yarn (I think).  A couple of the artists had used the bins for their pieces.  Caren Garfen based her piece on the women recorded in Saltaire in  the 1891 census.  Many of the single women were working in the mill, while the married women were just listed as 'Wife'.

 

Hannah Leighton-Boyce  had fitted  a camera obscura into several of the ventilators.  (I don't know the plural of camera obscura - can you tell?)

Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Camera Obscura

There were several large installations by Japanese artists that I particularly liked.  The one by Koji Takaki looks as though the cubes are gently floating out of the the rest of the piece.

Koji Takaki

Koji Takaki - detail

But the most stunning piece was by Yoriko Yoneyama.  A fine web of cotton threads, each with an individual grain of rice stuck to it every few inches (by the natural stickiness of cooked rice before it dries out).  

Yoriko Yoneyama

It's beautiful, and astonishing to think of the effort required to construct it.

Altogether the exhibition was well worth seeing. And if you didn't see it, now you have an idea of what you missed.

  

Knitting in World War 2

Last week Angharad and I went to Harrogate to talk to the Wednesday evening knit-and-natter group at  Baa Ram Ewe in Harrogate, as part of Yorkshire Wool Week, which was organised by Baa Ram Ewe.  The original Baa Ram Ewe yarn shop in Headingley (Leeds) has been established for some years, but the Harrogate branch is new and I hadn't been there before.   The shop is spacious and light (well, it would be during the day when it isn't pouring with rain) and sells some very tempting yarns.  

We had lent some things from the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection for Yorkshire Wool Week, and the very talented Katherine, who is based in the Harrogate shop,  constructed four splendid window displays in successive weeks during October, on doilies, tea cosies, World War 2 knitting & crochet, and Kaffe Fassett's knitwear designs.  (For this purpose, Yorkshire Wool Week lasted 4 weeks.)  My favourite was the display of doilies - Angharad had selected a range of colours that went well together, and they looked splendid hanging up in the window.  Much better, I think, than laid flat on a table or plate in the traditional way. 

 

When we were in Harrogate, the window display was on World War 2, and featured a small crocheted blanket made out of small oddments of leftover wool, a knitted balaclava helmet, and several socks, including a spiral heelless one knitted by Angharad to a wartime pattern.  Katherine also used enlargements of several wartime knitting patterns from the collection.

 On the Wednesday evening at Baa Ram Ewe, I gave a talk about wartime knitting, covering knitting for the services (including all the many women's services),  the Home Front (air raid shelters and gas masks), and coping with shortages and rationing. 

Lister 802

Sirdar 887

  

Cronit 301

 After my talk, Angharad showed the spiral socks that she is making, and demonstrated knitting in the round with two circular needles.  Knitting heelless socks in a spiral rib was one way of trying to make socks last longer in wartime.   The idea was that whenever you put them on, your heel would go in a different place, and so the sock would wear evenly, rather than going into a hole at the heel.   That's the claim.  Angharad and I aren't sure how well they will work in practice, so we are both knitting a pair to try them for ourselves.  I'll write more about mine later - we are both onto the second sock of our pair.  Here is the extremely worn, torn and creased pattern that Angharad is knitting from - the one I'm using is a slight variation on the same idea, from a different spinner. 

The leaflet claims "The HEEL forms itself when the Sock is pulled on.  MUCH QUICKER TO KNIT THAN ORDINARY SOCKS AND WEARS THREE TIMES LONGER BECAUSE THE HEEL WEAR SELDOM OCCURS IN THE SAME PLACE TWICE. The photograph shows how snugly the Heel forms itself and the close, comfortable fitting round the legs and ankles."   So we'll test whether this is all true when we have finished our respective pairs.   

  

Poodle Bottle Covers

Poodle bottle covers featured in the recent TV programme on BBC4, "Knitting's Golden Age".  They were said to represent something like a yearning for exoticism in the British public in the 1950s - Jo Turney, one of the programme's experts,  said "The knitted poodle cover is one of the icons of the 1950s".   That didn't seem plausible to me, from what I remember of the 1950s - I don't think that poodle bottle covers were something that many people wanted, or were even aware of, in the 1950s or any other time.  So after I had seen the programme, I started a search for patterns for poodle bottle covers.

One - Coats leaflet 931 - was easy to find, because the cover appeared on screen during the programme.   These particular poodle bottle covers could not have been 1950s icons - the leaflet appears to have been issued in 1963 or 1964.  (And they are crocheted, not knitted.)

Coats 931

Another pattern for poodle bottle covers (and knitted this time) appears in 3 Emu booklets, all undated.  The first, "Knitted Novelties - Ideas for odd ounces" could perhaps have been issued in the late 1950s.  But one of the other patterns in the booklet is for a narrow knitted tie, which I associate with the early 1960s (e.g. the Beatles on their World Tour in 1964). 

Emu 8127 - Knitted Novelties

As in the Coats leaflet, the poodles appear as a black and white pair.  The pattern is titled "Poodle Bottle Cover or Toy" - which suggests a lack of conviction that poodle bottle covers are a good idea.  The pattern was re-issued in a later Odd Ounce Book, which dates from about 1971 (the price is given both in shillings and in decimal) - the white poodle is promoted to the front cover this time.

Emu 6359 - Odd Ounce Book

And again, an Emu Knitted Novelties booklet was issued still later, and was sold at four times the price of the Odd Ounce Book, so possibly late 1970s?

Emu B.23 - Knitted Novelties

Judging by these patterns, poodle bottle covers were presented as novelties for using up oddments of yarn, and they date from the 60s and 70s rather than the 50s. Many spinners issued similar booklets to the Emu ones, sometimes with a title like "The Bazaar Book". The patterns include a few small items to wear like scarves, hats and gloves, and things that might be considered useful, like tea cosies, egg cosies, pan holders and soft toys.  And there are also similar "novelties" to the poodle bottle cover  - toilet roll covers, golf club covers, novelty draught excluders, coat hanger covers. None of these were style icons.  I suspect that people often knitted such novelties for charity bazaars because they were quick and cheap to make, and people bought them as gifts when they weren't particularly concerned whether they would be appreciated by the recipient.

I think too that poodle bottle covers would be worse than useless in practice.  If you're filling a glass from a bottle, you need to be able to grip the bottle firmly, and the cover doesn't allow that.  The Emu cover in particular seems very insecure - the top is elasticated, so that you can get the bottle into it, and it seems to me that the bottle could start to slide out while you were pouring from it.  But I am not going to make one in order to find out.

As Seen on TV

It's a bit late to write about this (in fact, very late), but I am going to anyway.  Last month, BBC4 broadcast Knitting's Golden Age,  a documentary about knitting from around 1920 to the 1980s, which the programme makers decided was the golden age of knitting, although there was a brief acknowledgement at the end that knitting is once again very popular.  

Angharad, who works alongside me on the Knitting & Crochet Guild's collection, appeared on the programme.  She showed some of the 1950s knitted baby clothes that we have in the collection, mainly matinee coats and cardigans.  The little matinee jacket that she presented is very pretty, with lacy knitted hearts that are embroidered afterwards in blue.

 

 It was knitted from a Patons & Baldwins pattern,  evidently a best seller, judging by the number of copies that I have found.   Perhaps its popularity was because if you wanted to follow the "blue for a boy, pink for a girl" rule, you could hastily embroider the hearts in the right colour after the baby had arrived.

Patons 382

Another baby cardigan was shown in the programme too - in very fine yarn, with the skirt, collar and cuffs in feather-and-fan stitch.  It's beautifully made. We haven't yet identified the pattern (if there was one) - let me know if you recognise it.

Angharad  also showed some soft toys knitted in oddments of yarn, and a very small doll with a complete outfit of knitted clothes.

The poodle (?) has evidently had a hard life and been much loved.   Mr and Mrs Panda are a favourite with the KCG volunteers (because they look perpetually surprised).  We speculate whether they are actually married, or perhaps brother and sister, or just good friends.

And here's the little doll.  

The World is your Sweater

Copley 376

 I found this pattern leaflet recently.  It's dated 1983, when picture sweaters were popular, and  I suppose you could think of it as educational.  You can decide which bit of the world you want on the front - Europe/Africa/Asia, or North and South America.   (Not much good if you live in Australia or New Zealand, though - they don't appear at all.)   Personally, I think it needs a "You are here" sign with an arrow, as well.