This week’s knitting pattern is a stunning wide lace edging from 1911: Knitted Lace in Points.
I’ve updated it into modern knitting terms and made a chart to download as a pdf since it’s such a large lace edging I’ve broken up the chart over three pages. I also used stitch maps to make sure there weren’t an errors.
It’s important to me to make these antique laces available once more, in forms that modern knitters can use easily. I’ve been adding them to Knitting-and.com for over 20 years and still have several hundred to go! Check out the lace collars, edgings and insertions page for 180 more that are already available.
The photograph shows it knit with size 30 thread as an edging for a linen doily, but it would be equally as beautiful as an edging on a knitted lace shawl.
As always, I have updated it into modern knitting terms, added a chart, and have tested it for errors using stitch maps.
If you have any special requests for patterns that are in the public domain, please let me know and I’ll see what I have in my collection that might suit!
I often browse through the online digital archives of the Australian National Library (aka Trove), looking for articles about knitting. Today’s search turned up a real treasure. A pattern for a hand knit oval lace doily.
Hand knit oval lace doily from 1952
From the Townsville Daily Bulletin, October 25th 1952.
My current pile of completed samples looks like this:
A lot of 19th century knitting
No, I wasn’t slacking, I have a very good reason for not being finished yet! I re-read the book. Specifically a section of the book that I thought didn’t have much of use to today’s knitters. It turns out that I had missed some really great stuff so I knit that too. Specifically, all of the blue things. And a beige thing. They’re worth the wait, honest.
I’m currently on the very last 22 repeats of a very skinny edging and then it’s just a matter of a little sewing, a lot of blocking, some photography, a little website coding and then I’m done. I swear! I most definitely will not be knitting samples of the stockings that say cast on 196 stitches with yarn so thin you can’t find it any more on size ridiculous needles. Or the mittens that have you cast on 96 stitches for an infant (OK, I may be making that up but it is a ridiculously large number of stitches for a mitten that’s just going to get chewed and slobbered on).
To be totally truthful, I was tempted to knit the entire beige thing with the original size silk thread on size insanity needles because it’s very pretty but I thought a dk weight sample was more realistic since that (or thicker) will be what most modern knitters will use to make it anyway.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have 22 repeats of a 9 stitch wide edging to go. I’d better get to it before you all start thinking I’ve just been swiping these images off Google Images or something…
I’m so close to finishing knitting the samples for the Ladies’ Guide to Elegant Lace Patterns Etc that victory is in sight at last! I just have one tidy (table runner thingy), one afghan (I’ll just be knitting a sample), and the fringe on another tidy to go.
At the moment I’m knitting the very last edging, which is actually the first edging from the book and one of the largest.
Here it is next to one of the smallest for scale.
One of the largest edgings from The Ladies’ Guide to Elegant Lace Patterns Etc, next to one of the smallest.
Whilst it has you cast on 50 stitches and work 32 rows per repeat, it’s actually quite easy to knit because it has a lovely rhythm to it. This is a good thing because I still have another two repeats to go 😛
I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with all of my samples after I’ve finished blocking and photographing them for the website. I had planned to frame them but there are just too many. Perhaps some kind of archival book?
