I’m still knitting! In fact, I’ve been knitting lace in every spare moment, and sometimes all day (I’m looking at you, pointy forty-plus stitch lace on the top right)!
Some unblocked lace edging samples from The Ladies’ Guide to Elegant Lace Patterns Etc, 1884
I have eight and a half samples to go, then I’ll be uploading all the patterns with corrections, updated language and stitch maps, wherever possible. Wish me luck, one of them starts off with fifty stitches!
I’m making great headway into knitting the patterns from Lace from “The Ladies’ Guide to Elegant Lace Patterns, Etc”, published in 1884. In fact, my sample box is now full so I had better get blocking before I knit any more to make room!
Some of the afghan stripes, tidies, insertions and edgings from “The Ladies’ Guide to Elegant Lace Patterns, Etc” 1884
For anyone that doesn’t already know, I decided to knit and modernise all of the lace patterns from the book (which is available in it’s original form for free download), as it didn’t have any pictures and the language used in Victorian patterns can look very confusing if you’re not used to it. Also, the scan of the book is very faded and difficult to read.
I’ve knit 16 of the patterns so far, with 30 more to go so I expect to take a week or two to finish. I started with the largest patterns though, so I’m more than halfway there with the actual knitting!
There are variations on a few old favourites, such as the green leaf tidy you can see a tiny bit of at the bottom, and some patterns that I’ve never seen before (which is saying something since my edgings and insertion patterns collection numbers well over 300)!
Now please excuse me as I have some blocking to do, and a lot more knitting!
Bluebell cloth from the Book of Good Needlework Number Four
From Dorcas Magazine, New York, February 1885
The word doily, now a familiar one with fashionable ladies, had, by the way, a curious origin. It is derived from the name of Robert D’Oyley, one of the followers of William the Norman. He received a grant of valuable lands on the condition of the yearly tender of a tablecloth of three shillings’ value at the feast of St. Micheal. Agreeable to the fashion of the time, the ladies of the D’Oyley family were accustomed to embroider and ornament the quit-rent table-cloths; hence these cloths becoming curiosities, and, accumulating in the course of years, were at length brought into use at the royal table and called doilies. L.B.S.
I have a few stitch holders in my collection that consist of a pin with a cap on the end, sadly unused as I always use a scrap of doubled yarn instead. It never really occurred to me when they might have first been manufactured until I saw this excerpt from the Launceston Examiner,Thursday 23rd February 1950.
From Knitting News To Bags And Nylons From Italy
Window Shopping with PENELOPE
MOST of the big stores are showing their new season’s stocks of wool, including five brand new shades-a soft mauve, a deep purple, and a green, blue and teal mixture.
A handy new aid for knitters is a stitch-holder, selling for 1/
Instead of the old safety-pin type of holder, this has one side formed by an expanding spring, which makes it suitable for holding even the heaviest and thickest of garments.
I can’t say that I’ve ever found them terribly useful for anything other than holding the stitches for button bands that are knit after the body of a cardigan. The ones I have are either too short for anything else or too stiff for holding longer sections of knitting. I’ll stick to my doubled piece of yarn. It doesn’t matter if you lose that down the side of the couch!
