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Category: Knitting

Learning to Knit – We’ve all Been There

At least those of us who know how to knit have!

Do you remember the times, when learning to knit, finding that your rows were ever widening no matter how you tried to keep your stitch numbers the same? Not much has changed in 80 years 🙂

A poem from the Sunday Times (Perth), October 27th 1935.

KNITTING.

Hush! You mustn’t speak to them,

Marigold and Joan.

Tip-toe past the nursery door,

Leave them quite alone.

They are, oh, so busy now,

For they’ve learnt to knit.

Perched before the glowing fire,

Solemnly they sit.

They are counting all the time,

“Purl, plain, purl – two plain; Purl once more – oh bother it!

Dropped a stitch again!”

Then the ball of wool gets lost,

Till at last it’s found

Twisted by bad Kitty-Cat All the chair-legs round!

What’s Joan knitting? Well, you know,

That is hard to say!

Though, it started as a scarf,

It has run away!

If it grows much more it will

Make a lovely rug!

Big enough – it seems to me –

To keep an army snug!

Make Your Own Knitting Needle Keepers from Nuts

I really want to make these. My stitches are always falling off the ends of my needles when I’m knitting socks. Probably because they sit in my work bag for several years at a time 😉

From Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, December 30th 1899.

Knitting.

Most people who knit have experienced at one time or another the annoyance of stitches dropping off the needles when the work is put down for a few minutes. Knitting-needle holders prevent this, and are extremely easy to make. Bore a hole, quarter of an inch in circumference, in the bottom of two hazel nuts. Remove the kernels, and with a red-hot knitting needle bore two small holes at each side of each empty shell. Run together (at both edges) two pieces of narrow ribbon, not quite half an-inch wide and three-quarters of a yard long. Then draw through the casing a narrow black elastic, two inches shorter than your knitting needles, and stitch each end of elastic to the small holes in nut, drawing the ribbon over the ends of elastic to hide the stitching. Tie a small bow at each end to cover fasten- ing, and the needle-holder is complete.

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Economical Knitting for Children

From the Goulburn Evening Penny Post, July 8th 1936

Knitting

When knitting pullovers for several children, use wool of one colour. When the jumpers are partly worn and shabby, unravel, and wind the wool from the strong parts, and use again. Children’s jumpers can be unravelled and knitted into a fresh-looking pullover for a boy of twelve, a pullover for a boy of five, and perhaps two smart berets for school for miss nine and miss eleven. There is usually enough wool left for darning these articles later on.

Free Knitting Patterns for Some Super Groovy Toys

Many years ago, when the internet was mostly made of text and your website host complained if your site went over a megabyte in size, I paid a rather exhorbitant price for a lift-out from a 1968 Australian Women’s Weekly in an out of the way antique shop in rural Victoria. Alas, when I went to knit the toys, the front page had been torn in half and was nowhere to be found. To say I was miffed would be a massive understatement.

Imagine my surprise all these years later to find the exact patterns available in Trove, the Australian National Library’s online digital archive.

Groovy knitted toys from the October 2nd Australian Women's Weekly, 1968
Groovy knitted toys from the October 2nd Australian Women’s Weekly, 1968

(Re)Introducing: The Mod Menagerie of Beasts and Birds including, The King of the Beasts, Carrot-Power Cottontail, Cat of Super Colors, Mopsy Bird, Hippie-Potamus, Wiggy Bird, Flower Bearing Bruin and Bangle Bell Bossy. They’re all knit at 3sts to the inch to make them super groovy and super fast.

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