A few days ago, I found an old Patons & Baldwins pattern booklet in my favourite used bookstore. My bookseller has boxes and boxes of them; I treat myself to a rummage through one carton each visit. Most of the booklets are from the last big knitting craze of the 80′s (oh dear, the hair! the dolman sleeves!) but occasionally I find a real gem to add to my vintage pattern collection.
(Click pics to embiggen)
I fell in love with the cardigan she’s wearing on the cover – it looks like one of the ancestral versions of the Must Have Cardi. It features “the new shawl collar” (!) in an interesting moss stitch, and I think it has a certain style. So I cast on:
Of course I can’t knit anything without messing with it. That’s a provisional cast on there. I’ve got a funny personal tic – I like it when the bottom of a cable twist flows naturally into the ribbing, and it’s easier to work out that effect when you’re knitting down from the cables; it gives you a chance to fiddle with the decreases so you can balance things out. (Yet another nice thing about interchangable needles: you can start with Judy’s Magic Cast On, using the right size tips on two cables, then just abandon one of your cables until you need it again for the ribbing. Right handy, that.)
Naturally, I didn’t start with the sweater back either, like the instructions tell you to – working without a chart, I was having trouble figuring out which cables I was going to have to flip around. Another funny personal tic (sigh); I like them mirrored on the different sides, and the picture only shows the left front, so I thought I’d start there. After knitting the entire first pattern repeat, I find the next instruction: “Work left front to same length as sweater back.” Ahhh…. not very helpful, in the circumstances. I crossed it out and replaced it with “Work left front to same length as last sweater you made that actually fit you.” Crisis averted.
As I knit, I find myself thinking about the woman who wrote this pattern. Who were you? There’s no name anywhere, so there’s no way to know. The booklet was printed more than 50 years ago, going by the address given for the company. You would be old by now… if you are still alive at all. And here I am, with a pattern found in a dusty box, working the same stitches you made way back then. My fingers follow the same movements yours did, and I pull out of thin air the same sweater you created in your imagination. Whoever you were, wherever you went… with every stitch, with every row, I remember you.
2 Comments
Yes–you’ve captured it perfectly. I too think of the writer knitting away so many years ago when I’m reading old patterns or old knitting books. I wonder, too, what’s become of the original sweater(s)–are they still in the bottom of a cedar chest somewhere? Did the moths get them? Did they go to the Goodwill store? And what will be the fate of our knitting/patterns/writing?
I just came across your blog while doing a google search. I hope you keep blogging!! I am curious if you did any further knitting on this sweater? I fell in love with it too and bought the pattern book.
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