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Tag: knitting history

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.

Knitting for the Troops, 1918

From The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, Saturday the 8th of June 1918

“KNITTING!”

“And the girls are ever knitting — still are knitting”— we might parody Edgar Allen Poe. At church socials, like that of St. Andrew’s, Parramatta, on Wednesday,  on the chairs around the hall at the War Chest hop, in the trains and trams, in the streets as walkers take the air and the sun, even on the holy Sabbath; old women knitting, girls knitting; men (at times, not often) knitting; boys knitting. It is one of the sights of the age, one of the few things that bring a little color to life, so to speak, in these dark days when everything is so clouded with doubt and uncertainty. At any rate, our kith and kin are bearing ”service.” And those piles of socks for our boys are growing!

Knitting Tips from 1933

Most of these knitting tips are as true now as they were in 1933! I’m not sure about the seaming tip though. I prefer a whole stitch in from the edge unless an edge to edge finish is needed (for example, if there’s a seam in the sole of a sock that was knit flat).

From the Muswellbrook Chronicle, May 19th 1933.

KNITTING.

When you are knitting remember – Never stretch your wool by winding it into a hard ball. Wind it loosely over three fingers; changing their position frequently, and a soft, loose ball, delightfully easy to work will be the result. Knitting is often spoilt because it is carelessly made up and finished off. In joining edges, be careful not to draw them too tightly. Use the same yarn as the knitting and a coarse, blunt-pointed needle, and take up the end loops only of each edge.

When changing from one colour wool to another twist the two wools together to avoid a gap in the knitting. Avoid joining the wool in the middle of a row, but if the design demands this, try to do so as neatly as possible.

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Have You Ever Wondered Why Doilies are Called Doilies?

Bluebell cloth from the Book of Good Needlework Number Four
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.

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