Wonderful Things

A few days ago I was looking through some of my vintage knitting books (I have a few) and a slim packet slipped out from between the dust jacket and the book. I've had the book for well over 10 years and have never seen them so it was a bit of a surprise. A wonderful surprise as they were a small collection of hand written knitting patterns. They are in different hands, at least  three but since hand writing used to be far more formalised and strictly taught it's difficult to know for certain.

I started to look through them: Soldiers Mittens, Lemon Pattern, Gimlet Pattern, Stockings Eric aged 5, Easter Chick, and others. There was even a sample of wool pinned to Balaclava Helmet with flaps. It made me smile that this little relict from a previous knitter had found a new home. I think they may have been copied from different sources but I can't tell for sure.

Some of the instructions are basic, but this is common among vintage patterns, none give a tension, a few don't even give a needle size or wool weight but I have decided that I am going to make them up and re-write the patterns to see if anyone recognises the patterns.

There are 12 complete patterns and 3 which are no more than a schematic, so they might take a bit more work, so this is going to be a year long project with one a month so keep coming back and see how I'm getting on.

Sunny Saturday Free Pattern

This is just what every woman should want for winter - her own pixie hat.

This great pattern is from the early 1930s and originally made from angora. You could try alpaca or even one of those bonkers fun yarns for a modern twist or stick to the beautiful yarn that is angora.

I know that some people have a bit of  problem with angora since there are some issues, in some places, with production standards but there are so many beautiful angora yarns out there from artisan suppliers who have the highest standards of animal welfare so is you get the chance have a fondle of this fibre.

This is so quick to make up as it's basically a rectangle with a neck band but it's such a fun hat that you could production line them and one for every person you know

Click below for the pattern and have all the fun making the classic Pixie Hat