The Face of the Fifties

For me, the face of the 1950s is the face of Woman's Weekly in the 1950s.   My Grandma bought the magazine every week, and once I could read, I used to look through it and try to make sense of it.  I was mainly interested in the knitting patterns for twin dolls, and Grandma made some of them for me, but the rest of it - The Man Who Sees, Mary Marryat, the Robin family - was a bit baffling.   I have met 1950s copies again since I started sorting out the publications in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection.  We don't have a complete collection by any means - it would be enormous.  But knitting has been an important component of Woman's Weekly magazine for a long time, and certainly was in the 1950s, so it deserves a place in the collection.

One model appears on the cover of the 1950s Woman's Weekly very frequently, and I think of her as the face of the magazine at that time. She was very slim and elegant, with very neat and carefully arranged hair.
  

Woman's Weekly, November 27, 1954

In fact, I know from the copies in the collection that she started modelling in the 1940s, and appeared on Woman's Weekly covers then, though I think not so often as in the 1950s. She apparently had much longer hair then, and wore it in one of those complicated constructions that remind me of a mediaeval head-dress. (And I do wonder how they managed to make their hair stay put, in the days before sophisticated hair product. Lots of hair-pins, I suppose.)

Woman's Weekly, August 23, 1947

She also did some modelling for Bestway and Weldon's pattern leaflets, which  like Woman's Weekly were published by the Amalgamated Press, Ltd.

Bestway 2071

Weldons 1002

Altogether, hers is a very familiar face.  She appeared in Woman's Weekly throughout the 1950s - I have seen her on a 1959 issue.  But I didn't know her name.  Models appearing in weekly magazines were not usually famous, unlike Kate Moss and other super-models.

Then last year, Woman's Weekly published a series, "A Vintage View", based on their archives. There was one issue for each decade of the 20th century since 1911, when the magazine started, and of course my anonymous model featured significantly in the 1950s issue.  And amazingly, I now know who she was; here's the caption to one of the covers that she appeared on:

"A favourite face  Model Patricia Squires often featured on our covers.  She was married with a son and had a nanny so she could continue working."     

It must have been very unusual for a woman in the 1950s to pay for child-care so that she could continue to work.  I am really pleased to be able to put a name to the face.

Next : the face of the 1930s. Who was this woman?

Cast Away!

Last week, we had the monthly meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch.  The theme this month was casting on and casting off, hence the title: Cast Away!  (It works better in British English than American English, where the theme would be casting on and binding off.)  Angharad taught us some specialised methods, including tubular cast on.  That's a method that I have heard of and wanted to learn, but it sounded far too complicated.  But now I've tried it, and my cast-on edge is very neat - I feel quite proud of myself.

The first photo shows the tubular cast-on still with its provisional few rows of stocking stitch in waste yarn which you use as the foundation - the second row shows the finished edge after the waste yarn is removed.

   

I am sure that I have seen tutorials on tubular cast-on in magazines and totally failed to make head or tail of it, but with Angharad showing us how to do it, it turned out to be very straightforward.  And she directed us to this YouTube tutorial by Eunny Jang as backup:

It makes a very stretchy start for single rib (and that's what my swatch is).   And there is not a definite edge as there is with the usual cast-on methods - it almost looks as though you just leap into knitting single rib with no preamble.

I finished off my swatch with tubular cast-off - Angharad's instructions were based on Montse Stanley's The Hand-Knitters Handbook (which I have).   It's a sewn cast-off, and I found it not so easy to keep the edge even and neat.  Needs more practice.  

Angharad also covered grafting and three-needle cast-off, but I decided that successfully learning one new cast-on and (not so successfully) one new cast-off was quite enough for one evening.  In any case I have done a three needle cast-off before.  I was even wearing an example (the shoulder seams of my Boardwalk pullover) - although I didn't remember that until much later.

Altogether a very productive meeting.  Next month:  Granny squares.  

Fair Isles on Display

Lydia, at Spun Yarn Shop in Huddersfield, has revamped her window display this month.  In July and August, it was filled with summer knitting, but now that the school holidays are over, it didn't look appropriate, and so she has switched to Fair Isles in autumnal colours.

I was thrilled to see that two of the garments in the display are ones that I knitted!  I lent them to Lydia when she started stocking Jamieson's Spindrift wool from Shetland - she wanted to be able to show customers some of the things that you can knit with it.

John's pullover (on the stand on the right in the window) appeared in my very first blog post.

On the left is a sweater I knitted for myself.  I haven't worn it for years, but it does look very good - maybe I should reconsider it when Lydia changes her display again.

The patterns for both came from  Sarah Don's book on Fair Isle Knitting, published in 1979.  And I bought Jamieson's yarn for them, directly from the Shetlands (ordered by post, which seems very quaint now).

In the corner of the window are some of Elizabeth Smith's beautiful cushions, knitted in Spindrift and then felted.

And higher up, Lydia has hung a multi-coloured wheel of Spindrift.

You can see how difficult it was to take good photos - the lights and the rest of the shop are reflected in the window, and through it you can see the opposite side of the arcade.  Or v,v. if you stand outside the shop. But I think you can also see how nice the new shop is - when Spun opened nearly five years ago, it was on the 2nd floor of the Byram Arcade, but Lydia moved down to the ground floor a few months ago - so much more accessible, light and spacious.  

Mrs George Cupples

Recently, I was doing some research for an article for SlipKnot, the magazine of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  The subject was Mrs George Cupples, who wrote two small books on knitting - or booklets, really, of 32 pages each.  They were published in Edinburgh,  apparently in 1871, when the publisher advertised them.  

Mrs Cupples was a prolific author of children's books - the British Library catalogue lists nearly 50, under what we would now consider to be her proper name of Anne Jane Cupples.  So the knitting books were more or less a sideline.  They are not instruction manuals for children, as you might expect, but rather specialised works, one on knitting stockings and the other on  “Counterpanes, Toilet-Covers, Pin-Cushions, &c.”  The Stocking-Knitter’s Manual gives general directions for stockings for all ages and sizes of foot, and finishes with a few open-work patterns, while A Knitting Book of Counterpanes gives stitch patterns for squares and strips that can be made up into counter-panes (not to mention Toilet-Covers, Pin-Cushions, &c.), with some patterns for edgings.

One thing that surprised me in researching her story is that her two knitting books were reviewed in newspapers across the country.  Perhaps that was because she was already known as a children's author. But the writers of the reviews I have seen are all men, who evidently knew nothing at all about knitting.  They took the opportunity to make fun of the abbreviations that she used - here, for instance,  are her own descriptions from The Stocking-Knitter’s Manual:             

O means put over the thread. T is knit two together. A is slip a stitch,  knit 2 together, and take the slipped stitch over.  Ts is slip a stitch,  knit 1 plain, and take the slipped stitch over. P is plain 1.   B is one pearl.

They are not abbreviations that are used nowadays, but any knitter could understand the need for them, and decode her instructions quite easily.

 Here's the Essex Standard reviewer, writing in July 1871: 

A KNITTING BOOK OF COUNTERPANES.
We have been requested in our editorial capacity to notice this little manual, published by Johnstone, Hunter, and Co., of Edinburgh.  We must, however, beg to be excused from vouching practically for the accuracy of the receipts, and must leave it to our lady readers, who no doubt are au fait as every lady should be, at interpreting B 1, S 3 times, O, P 7, T and repeat, &c., contenting ourselves with observing, that judging from the illustrations, we gather that a dexterous fingering of the pins or needles, according to the prescribed rules should produce cockle shells and cowries, coral and cable patterns, stars and diamonds, snowdrops, honeycombs, van-dykes, apple, rose, and olive leaves, finishing up with a fringe; and that in some of the receipts ladies are instructed to take in and in others to take off. 

Ho, ho, very amusing. 

And similarly, the Bath Chronicle reviewer picks on the abbreviations:   

A KNITTING BOOK OF COUNTERPANES. Edinburgh: Johnstone, Hunter, and Co.—A handbook bearing the above title has been sent for review.  Of the merits of such a work we confess ourselves unable to speak, and we can only recommend those who are curious to know its contents to buy the book and judge for themselves.  We were half inclined to give a page or so from the work by way of an extract for our literary column: but we shall be excused from this when we say that line after line is made up in this fashion:— P2 × ⊥, B11, ⊥, repeat from × P2 —and so on. What it means we leave others to guess.

(The ⊥ symbol was printed in those days as an upside-down T - easy to do in those days of movable type, when the printer just took a letter T and turned it upside down.  Fortunately for me, there is a logic symbol that looks about right.)   

The reviewer in the Alnwick Mercury, does not mock the booklet, but acknowledges that he knows nothing about the subject: 

"The art of knitting has become such a favourite and congenial employment for female hands, whether in the drawing room, the workroom, or by the sea side, that the providing of any number of suitable patterns is sure to be warmly received."  Such is a portion of the introduction by Mrs Geo. Cupples to a little manual just issued under the title of  "A Knitting Book of Counterpanes, Toilet Covers, &c.," which seems to contain, as far as our limited knowledge of so recondite a subject enables us to judge, a great variety of very pretty patterns upon which our fair friends might feel inclined to try their skill, and for which the price is a mere trifle compared with the trouble of obtaining only one or two like patterns from their friends. 

It seems extraordinary to me that a newspaper should publish a book review by a reviewer who clearly knows nothing at all about the subject, rather than asking a woman who could knit to write it.  Perhaps it wasn't thought suitable for a lady to write for a newspaper (even though all the reviews above were anonymous), though I can't imagine why not, when by then there were many magazines being published that were written for women and by women.   I hope that the women readers of these ignorant reviews found them infuriating.   

All Time Greats

I am, you may have noticed, interested in old knitting patterns.  A sub-category of vintage patterns that I find particularly fascinating are those that are based on still earlier patterns.  Sometimes spinners just revise and reissue an earlier pattern, without mentioning that it has been previously published - that's noteworthy, because it suggests that the first pattern must have sold very well (the Sirdar pattern based on a doiley, for instance, that was revised at least twice - I showed the reissued patterns here.)

But sometimes spinners explicitly say that the patterns are updated from an earlier decade, and  use the 'vintage' idea to sell the new patterns - an example is the Patons All Time Greats booklet from 1974.

Patons booklet 186: All Time Greats

As the subtitle says, the booklet has 11 designs from the 30s to the 50s that first appeared in Patons publications or in Stitchcraft magazine (which was published by Patons).  The booklet has small black-and-white photos of the original designs, and on the whole, the updated designs follow the originals faithfully.  An obvious exception is that a couple of the 1940s designs had the very gathered sleeve tops that were typical of the time, and these are not copied in 1974.   For instance in the 1940s version of the very pretty "Just a Bunch of Cherries" sweater, the tops of the sleeves stick up well above the shoulder line - a smoother profile was favoured in 1974, and indeed would be today.  

Just a Bunch of Cherries

In a few cases, I can recognise the original design (and in theory I could identify them all - they will be in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, but  I haven't had time to search yet).  One is the Fair Isle pullover from the Stitchcraft Men's Book published in the late 1940s.

           
The 1974 version is a close copy of the original, though the colours are more muted - the main difference between the two models is in the hairstyles (which both now look very dated).  Fair Isle knits were very popular in the late 1940s, and had a revival in the 1970s, as I remember. I knitted several Fair Isles myself then, including a pullover for my husband (though by then it was the early 80s) that I showed here.

One of the designs in All Time Greats, for a twinset, is not in fact based on an earlier design.  The introduction says: "This lively presentation brings up-to-date the many designs that have appeared in Patons leaflets over the years.  Today the twinset branches out into the separates story - sweater goes sleeveless to wear sometimes on its own or to wear over a blouse . . . or matching raglan cardigan is there when required . . . texture is ribbed and clingy".  To me, the result looks unmistakeably 1970s rather than any earlier - twinsets with sleeveless sweaters were very new and popular then.  Often the sweater would be waist-length and the cardigan much longer.  I had one like that (bought, not hand-knitted) that I thought I looked very smart in, that I wore with a midi-skirt in about 1972.    

The twinset shows one of the things I find fascinating about 'vintage vintage' - sometimes a design that is trying to evoke an earlier time ends up looking very much of its own time. Or sometimes, a few details have to be changed to make a vintage design fit into mainstream fashion - the bright colours of the 1940s Fair Isle, for instance.  Spotting the difference tells you something about what "Fair Isle" meant in the 1940s and 1970s:  in the 1940s, it was about bright colours after years of war-time drabness, in the 1970s it was about tradition, nature and the countryside.  And of course, simply by selecting just a few of the huge number of designs open to them from the 1930s to 1950s, the Patons designers in 1974 were choosing what would fit in with 1970s fashion.

I think many of the designs look equally good today - the lacy sweater below is I think my favourite.  Members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild can download All Time Greats from the members' section of the Guild website, for personal use, along with many other publications from the collection that I am gradually uploading - you'll also find the Stitchcraft Men's Book there.    

What I'm Knitting

I have knitted two designs by Heidi Kirrmaier so far:  Boardwalk and Vitamin D.  They are two of my favourite knits.  Last month I saw another of her designs - Lydia at the Spun yarn shop in Huddersfield was knitting a Quick Sand cardigan.  Quick Sand is knitted in an Aran-weight yarn, and there is a version, Fine Sand, knitted in a lighter, DK-weight yarn.   I was very taken with Lydia's cardigan, and I'm now knitting Fine Sand for myself.

Fine Sand appears at first glance to be a very simple cardigan knitted in stocking stitch - there aren't even any buttons.  It isn't quite as simple as it looks - like most of her designs, it is knitted all in one piece, without seams, so there is a lot of shaping to achieve that.  It is knitted top-down, with radiating increases in the yoke.  That is sort of similar to Vitamin D, except in that case, the increases are emphasised, while in Fine Sand they are not so obvious.

I have just finished the body of the cardigan.  The next step is to pick up the stitches left on waste yarn and knit the sleeves.   It doesn't look much at the moment - being knitted in stocking stitch, it curls on all the edges.  But there will be a garter stitch band around the neck and front edges, and I hope that that, along with a good pressing, will stop it curling.

The yarn is Thomas B. Ramsden's  Wendy Ramsdale, and the web page says "Ramsdale is born, bred and made in Yorkshire, it is 100% Wool using a blend of Masham fleece from the Yorkshire dales. It is then dyed, spun and balled all in Yorkshire!!"  It's unusual for a commercially-produced yarn to be spun in the U.K. these days, and if you live in Yorkshire as I do, it's even more local.  And it is very nice yarn, soft and good to knit with.  The colour is lovely too.  The blue is not completely solid, but has quite a lot of grey in it.

Here's one of Heidi Kirrmaier's photos of Fine Sand.  My cardigan will look something like this soon, although the yarn is probably not as drapey as she recommends - I'm aiming for cosy more than drapey.

Shetland Lace Shawls

I was looking for something else entirely when  I found this article about Shetland lace knitting in the Dundee Evening Telegraph from February 1893.  It is a fascinating account of the quality of the knitting then being done in the Shetlands.  (I have kept the original layout of the article, with random phrases capitalised as sub-headings, just because it looks so odd.)

Shetland lace work occupies a position all its own. There are not many people nowadays who are not acquainted with the dainty lace shawls made in Shetland, which are so suitable and so much sought after for evening wear. Some of them are indeed so fine that one would think a fairy's mantle had been found rather than an article that could be touched and worn. These

FINE LACE SHAWLS

are made all over the islands, but the island of Unst and Lerwick may be said to do the finest specimens. As a rule the knitters doing this fine work do little else, their hands requiring to be kept very smooth for working the delicate threads. The best wool only is used, and the carding and spinning are done by women, who make this work their chief employment.  Among all the varied specimens, however, one has just been made which is credited with being the

FINEST PIECE OF SHETLAND WOOL WORK

produced. This is a fine lace shawl, which presently on exhibition at Messrs Laurenson & Co.'s establishment, Lerwick, and which is valued at £40.  This shawl is made of white wool, of uniform colour and texture. It measures 2½  yards square, yet it only weighs 2¼ ounces, and can be easily passed through the smallest-sized lady's finger ring.  The prime cost of the wool used in it would scarcely be 3d, yet that has been made into

11,000 YARDS OF THREAD,

and as that is two-ply the actual length of the thread spun and used is 22,000 yards, or over twelve miles single yarn.  The number of stitches in it is estimated at 1,740,000. The patterns used are designed by the knitter, and come out well in this delicate piece of work, the two-ply thread of which is no thicker than the hair of the human head. The knitter of this gossamer-like fabric is a peasant girl belonging to the island of Unst, and to her must be given the credit of producing the finest piece a. knitted work ever manufactured. To her sister, who

CARDS AND SPINS THE WOOL, 

no small amount of the credit must be given. The wool is very carefully picked, the quality being the best obtainable. This is taken and carefully carded with a common dressing-comb, and then spun with the greatest care on an ordinary spinning-wheel, and thus before the knitter gets the delicate yarn in her hand the 2¼ ounces of wool goes through a hand-wrought process which turns it into twelve miles of thread—a truly wonderful feat, and, unless seen in the finished state, can scarcely be credited.  This fine shawl is about

TO BE SENT TO THE CHICAGO EXHIBITION, 

and it is to be hoped that it may be the means of opening up a demand for fine Shetland lace work. The patterns with which these fine lace shawls are embellished are various, and besides the usual stock with which every knitter is familiar, and which embraces the "wave," the "pearl," the "shell," the "branch," the "bell," the "diamond," the "puzzle," and later the " Jubilee Crown," &c., the better class of knitters fall on their own ingenuity in the production of patterns and designs. These patterns are varied, and in many cases do great credit to the designers. Plain crepe work, however, is now much wanted, and fetches good prices. Nearly all the knitted work done in Shetland is produced in the country districts. Different districts are noted for their

PARTICULAR CLASS OF WORK. 

Thus lace shawls principally come from Unst, Fetlar, Dunrossness, and Lerwick.  Yell produces the finest stockings; finest underclothing from Northmaven; and wraps coming from the west side—the finest shading wraps being done in Lerwick.  It may be generally said that all Shetland women can knit.  From their earliest infancy girls are begun and practised in the use of the knitting-pins, and it is with pride that the beginner will, on completion, show the first pair of stockings or the first little shawl knitted all by herself. And

PROFICIENCY IN THEIR "ART" 

grows with the knitter until it is astonishing with what speed and beauty the work is produced. Knitting, however, is little practised in Shetland as a pastime, but rather as a means of livelihood, and numbers of women in Shetland have no other means of support; but like many another calling it takes the most constant and untiring efforts to keep starvation from the door through the knitting of hosiery.  Those parties who give their attention to the knitting of the finer work have chance of better remuneration, but they are in the minority, and do not properly speaking represent

THE GREAT BULK OF THE KNITTERS

who do the ordinary work, and whose chances of remuneration at best are more or less a sort of lottery. As has been said, hosiery is knitted all over Shetland, the peasants being the great producers. Many crofters own sheep whose grazing is on the common scattald, and when these are unable to produce sufficient wool for the household, then wool must be bought, and in the long winter evenings all the female portion of the household are busy—one it may be carding, another spinning, or some one hurriedly getting through with a shawl which must be finished by the end of the week, to that something new may be commenced with a new one. 

It's remarkable, and sad, that the knitter of the 'finest piece of Shetland wool work produced' is not named, and I don't suppose that she was paid anywhere near its £40 value.  The Chicago exhibition that the shawl was sent to, was the "World's Fair: Columbian Exposition", celebrating 400 years since Columbus crossed the Atlantic.  (It seems that the official inauguration of the exhibition was in 1892, although it was not open to the public until the following year, and clearly exhibits were still being gathered early in 1893.)

 I would have liked an illustration of one of the stitch patterns mentioned in the article to go with this post, but they are either too unspecific, like the "diamond" or the "shell", or I've never heard of them, like the "puzzle".  There is no correspondence at all between the names of the stitches listed, and the Shetland patterns given by Mary Thomas in her Knitting Book (published in 1938), which include Old Shale, Print o' the Wave, Cat's Paw.  The "shell" pattern may possibly be the same as the Razor Shell pattern described by Mary Thomas, but it's impossible to say.    So instead, here's an illustration of a "Fine Shetland Shawl" from a pattern given in The Fancy Workbasket in 1886.