2020 has been a bad year for many things, but a good year for little home-made presents made from stash. I used a lot of cotton fabric for pandemic masks (with an added inner layer of fabric cut from an upcycled duvet cover made of special hypoallergenic tight-weave, dust-mite-proof fabric) and a big piece of green felt went to this iPad cosy, but I still had plenty of large scraps of all kinds of materials and the usual box full of odd buttons and leftover embroidery floss. Meanwhile, the holiday season was upon us, all the stores were closed and I wanted to be frugal with money but still be able to leave some mini-presents in friends’ mailboxes with a card and some cookies. These little felt stars from the December 1963 issue of Stitchcraft were the perfect choice.
There was a life-size transfer in the magazine to trace (or photocopy and cut out — I’m lucky to have a printer at home that is also a scanner and single-page copier) with samples of the three star designs to copy onto the points of the star. I traced it onto the felt with chalk, cut out two stars, picked my favourite design, and embroidered away. (Technically I should have first traced the design onto the fabric, then embroidered it and then cut out the stars, but it worked anyway.)
I had neither sequins nor pearls, so I just did everything in embroidery and added a button for the center on one side. I overstitched the edges to make a little cushion, added a loop for hanging on a tree and stuffed it with polyester fluff. Wonderful! The first star went to a fellow knitter from my now-online knitting meetup — we did a Zoom version of our usual “secret Santa” wool gifting party — and by then I was so involved in getting people’s knitted gifts finished that I ended up not making any more this year. Now that I know how it works, and that it works, I can make more next time.
Merry Christmas, if that’s your holiday, and happy New Year to all of you.
I have a huge backlog of unfinished projects and recently even got a commission to write a pattern for a new knitting and sewing magazine, so I needed the December project to be something quick and easy that I could make from stash. Behold, a very 1960s crocheted flower-petal cushion from this month’s issue! I love cheerful crocheted cushions and afghans — they have that fun, old-fashioned charm.
This one is made in double knitting, and I had two colours of blue and one of green to make a big, blue flower. I guess it’s a cornflower? Whatever, it’s cute and the colours looked good together. The dark blue is 100% acrylic (left over from this project and this project, which was patterned after this project — yes, I bought plenty of yarn), the light blue is 90% alpaca / 10% sheep wool (a gift from a very nice friend who brought it over from Chile!) and the green is a wool-acrylic blend last seen in this project from January 1960, so I was concerned that the finished item might behave inconsistently when washed or blocked, but I had no problems with that.
The size and scale, on the other hand… There was no tension given in the instructions, only a finished size of “approximately 17 inches diameter” and instructions to use double knitting wool and a No. 8 (5 mm) hook. The cushion is made in pieces — first the petals, then the triangular inserts at the top of the petals, then the center, then it gets sewn together, then you crochet the border and sew it onto fabric for the back side of the cushion — so it was hard to tell how big it was going to be. Also, the instructions very clearly say to make 12 petals and 12 insertions, but the accompanying photo very clearly shows a cushion with 16 petals and insertions. Patience Horne, you need a tech editor and a proofreader!
The result — once I had finished all 16 petals and 16 insertions, which was in fact the correct number to get the petals to form a circle, and sewn all the fiddly bits and pieces together — was huge. Granted, 17 inches in diameter is a fairly large cushion, but mine was 19 inches in diameter before I had even started crocheting the border, and the triangular insertions were also too big, making them pucker and wave a bit. I made a snap decision to just crochet the border larger and larger until all of the green wool was used up and have it be a baby blanket instead of a cushion, which would also spare me the trouble of figuring out how to make the back of the cushion, whether or not to make an inner cushion pad and have the crocheted part be a removable cover, etc. etc.
The border in the instructions only being a few rounds and me not being the world’s best crocheter, I searched for a formula to crochet something in rounds of double crochet that would have the right amount of increase per round to keep the circle flat. Though I found many amazing doily patterns and not-quite-fitting formulas, I didn’t find what I was looking for, so I just increased one stitch per petal each round and did a plain round in between every so often. There was much ripping back and doing over, but in the end it worked out fine. As for the still-puckery triangle inserts, I declared them a “design feature” and left it at that.
I wash-blocked the blanket, which evened it out some more, and only then realised that I had forgotten to embroider the lines down the center of each petal. In the end, I decided against it. The dark blue and green yarns were all used up, I didn’t have any other colour that looked right and I honestly thought it was fine the way it was. The finished size is 23 1/2 inches or 60 cm in diameter, which will fit a baby’s pram nicely. Not having a baby on hand, here it is with a teddy bear for scale:
It’s not perfect and it definitely has that “home-made charm”, but I think it will make any parents and baby happy.
“Someone coming to tea, nothing much in the house and you are short of materials?” None of those things are likely to be true in our pandemic-stricken December 2020, but if it were September 1949, you might very well find yourself making one of Stitchcraft‘s recipes from this issue. After having excellent results with December 1949’s nut loaf recipe and fairly disastrous results with September 1949’s (this same issue) “oat crunchies”, I was cautiously excited to try out the date and ginger cake, which was promised to be “very welcome” and have a “delicious flavour”. It certainly looks appetising in the photo.
It claimed to make a 2-pound cake (weight, not price …) and that sounded huge to me, so I decided to make a half recipe for the first experimental run, using my little 16-centimetre-diameter round spring-form pan. The measurements in the original recipe are all in old-fashioned ounces by weight, so I did some halving and rounding to convert to gram measurements. (Apologies to any of my American readers who may want to try my version of the recipe at home — I meant to notice and record the measurements by volume as well, but I was too caught up in adapting that I forgot!)
Admittedly, there was a lot to adapt. The Stitchcraft recipe starts off with 8 ounces of self-raising flour, which I don’t use, so I had to figure out how much baking powder I should use for one-half of 8 ounces i.e. 4 ounces i.e. approximately 113 grams of flour. One teaspoon seemed right to me. One egg can’t reasonably be halved, so, one egg. Three ounces of margarine divided by two converts to about 40 grams — not very much for a cake! Then there’s one tablespoon of syrup or black treacle (“the latter for preference”) — I am lucky enough to be able to buy actual date syrup in my local yuppie organic supermarket, so I used a whole tablespoonful of that and reduced the sugar (I used Demerara brown sugar) to 1 tablespoon, so a bit less than half of the 3 tablespoons called for. Then 5 to 6 ounces of chopped dates (about 70 grams?), 3/4 cup aka a generous 1/4 cup milk (I used oat milk), and 1/2 = 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate-soda i.e. baking soda. Plus almond and lemon essences (“although not essential, they do improve the flavour”) and/or a teaspoon or half teaspoon of lemon juice.
Are you still with me? Is your head spinning? You understand why I forgot to record the volume measurements. Also… where is the ginger??
I read the recipe again. Definitely called “Date and Ginger Cake”. The description definitely mentioned the it was the combination of “dates, ginger and essences” (emphasis mine) that gave this cake its delicious flavour. And definitely no actual ginger mentioned in the list of ingredients! I think the cooking editress needs a proofreader. So I chopped up about 60 grams of dates and 20 grams of candied ginger, which looked like a good amount for a small cake, and added about a half or maybe it was closer to a whole teaspoon of grated lemon peel.
On to the recipe itself. “Rub fat into flour” — I was again impressed at the relatively small amount of margarine — “add dates, sugar and ginger”. Ah, so it is supposed to have ginger in it after all! Pro tip: toss the chopped dates in some of the flour before adding it to the mixture, so they don’t stick together. “Break egg straight into dry ingredients; stir in treacle.” The italics are original and I wonder what that “straight” is supposed to mean. Don’t beat the egg first? Don’t throw it in at an angle? “Dissolve bi-carbonate soda and essences in milk, add to mixture and mix thoroughly.” Okay. According to the recipe, the resulting batter should be fairly sticky and mine had a bit more liquid, so I added some more flour, then put it in the cake pan and baked it. The recipe said to bake it at Regulo 4, or 375 degrees, for … one and a half hours? That seemed excessive even when reduced for a half recipe, so I set a timer for 30 minutes.
It baked fine in that time, though a little less would have been even better. Then I added my own personal secret ingredient: coconut icing. Nothing goes better with dates and ginger than coconut! I used a sweet coconut spread from the same organic supermarket, slightly warmed and then smoothed over the top, but it’s easy enough to make it yourself from coconut oil, dried coconut whizzed through a grinder to make a sort of powder, powdered sugar and a little coconut milk. Heat together in a double boiler until liquid enough to spread and spread it on the still-warm cake, then let it cool well.
It looked good, but did it taste good? Yes! It tasted delicious. The consistency was a bit on the dry and crumbly side, which I guess is to be expected with so little fat in the batter, but the icing balanced that out perfectly. The date and ginger flavours came through well and harmonised. And it had that depth of flavour that comes from good gingerbread or spice cake, although I used no extra spices. The half-recipe cake is small, but rises well and will surely keep for a while if covered and in the refrigerator. It makes the perfect cake for your socially distanced, one-person 2020 holiday teatime. (If that’s any consolation.)
Here’s my version of the recipe, for a small cake:
DATE AND GINGER CAKE
125 grams flour (you can mix 1/2 whole grain and 1/2 white)
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
40 grams margarine
60 grams chopped, dried, pitted dates
20 grams chopped candied ginger
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel
1 tbsp brown or Demerara sugar
1 tbsp date syrup, dark sugar syrup or molasses/treacle
1 small egg
1/4 cup milk or milk substitute (almond, oat)
1/4 tsp baking soda
Coconut icing
Toss dates in a small portion of the flour. Mix rest of flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl; add margarine in small chunks and rub into the flour with fingers until crumbly. Add dates, sugar, ginger and lemon peel and mix. Make a small well in center of mixture and break the egg into it. Add syrup. Dissolve baking soda in milk; add to mixture and mix everything until blended. Drop into a greased and floured 16-centimetre-diameter round spring-form cake pan, smooth surface evenly and bake at 180 degrees C for approximately 30 minutes. Set on a rack to cool. Warm the icing in a small double boiler or microwave until spreadable and smooth over the still-warm cake. Decorate with date slivers, ginger or shredded coconut as desired and let cool completely before serving.
It’s that time of year again, and Stitchcraft is getting into the festive season with their annual Christmas issue — though if it weren’t for the wreath on the door behind our cover model and the other model in the window holding a metallic tree and box of ornaments, I wouldn’t know it was the Christmas issue at all.
The suit on the cover is “The Suit for Spring ’63”, made in Bracken Tweed double knitting (colour: “Green Witch”! Great name) and trimmed with black braid, like the November 1961 suit from which I made the blazer last year. The December 1962 jacket has no buttons and more of a boxy “swing-line” shape, like the classic Chanel suits that were especially popular in the early 1960s. The simple pink blouse worn with the suit was made from a Vogue pattern which could be ordered via Stitchcraft, thus completing the outfit.
The other larger knitting projects are either warm, bulky and practical for the cold, or fancy, pretty things to wear to parties. In the first category, there’s a wonderful hooded coat for a toddler which keeps out “all the draughts” — except, of course, the ones traveling up her bare legs! I still feel sympathetically sad every time I see pictures of cold-weather children from pre-1970s eras with five layers of wool on their upper bodies but basically nothing on the bottom half.
There’s a zig-zag patterned sweater in Big Ben wool for a larger child or young teen (who is luckily old enough to wear trousers, as seen in another photo) and a stranded design in double knitting that fits into the same “harlequin” diamond-pattern idea (though the adult version makes me think of spiky eyes looking out at me). Also in double knitting is the cabled turtleneck “for the extra slim” (30-31 or 32-33 inch bust). Rounding out the warmer designs are two partner-look sweaters in bulky Ariel and an “Italian stitch” (stranded knitting and purling — that’s going to be really warm and bulky.) The “Continental” trend can be seen in the spiky-eyes sweater as well, which is apparently of Viennese (as per page 20) and/or Tyrolean (as per back cover) design.
Then there are the party clothes: a fluffy cardigan for a young girl and a beaded 2-ply blous with minimal shaping and a beaded crochet finish on the neckline. Holly green is always a hit in the winter designs and other than that, the preferred colour is white with bright contrasts in red, orange or turquoise. The cabled turtleneck is made in “Lipstick Red”.
Surprisingly, this month’s homewares are not particularly special. Our year of embroidered flowers has come to an end with a design of “Christmas roses” (really, they’re just roses) and readers could back-order any transfers they might have missed over the course of the year to make a tablecloth with all of the 12 flower designs on it. There are quick, easy cushions in darning or crochet and a cutwork design for another tablecloth.
The Christmas issues of Stitchcraft usually have a lot of very creative and sometimes bizarre ideas for knick-knacks, small gifts and other “novelties”, but this year seems to put more focus back on knit designs. There are a few small sewing projects that could work as gifts any time of the year — little aprons, a pincushion doll and a sewing case. The winter-motif mats for the Christmas table, a small tapestry scene and a felt Father Christmas wall panel that you can pin cards to are more appropriate to the holiday theme, and the back pages give readers a few traditional cross-stitch motifs to adapt to their own use and ideas for table trimmings. The table-trimming “trees” are made of sequinned tissue-paper trees stuck on top of empty sewing-thread spools and the “Berries and Twigs” are twiggy branches from a real tree, painted white and decorated with red wool pom-pom “berries” and foil leaves.
Christmas and any other large family get-together holidays are obviously not happening this year, but — good news! — as the blog year 1962 draws to a close, so too does the real-life year 2020, which I’m pretty sure most of us can agree was awful. I hope you all continue to get through it with minimal damage and enjoy the holiday season as much as possible in a pandemic-safe way. My project for this month will be the easy crocheted cushion, and finishing up all the unfinished projects.
The November 1962 issue had so many exciting projects that I wanted to make, but as I am woefully behind on so many other projects, I settled for a modern version of the cute embroidered tea cosy from this “star motif” cosy-and-tray-cloth set. The star design only really comes out on the tray cloth, where flowers with spiky leaf bases are embroidered in circles. The tea cosy has the flowers arranged individually in lines.
Since I don’t use tea cosies, I adapted the design as an iPad / tablet cosy, like I did with the “Gay Goslings” design from April 1960 and the “Posies for Cosies” from March 1961. I had plenty of green felt left over from the not-so-successful October 1960 “No Fun Fuchsia” project and enough scraps of embroidery floss in fitting colours to make everything from stash.
Obviously I didn’t have a transfer, but luckily this design is so simple that I was able to just draw around a coin with chalk for the flower heads and add in the stems freehand. I say “simple” and “just”, but the felt material was of a nature that chalk does not stick to it for more than a minute and the colour is too dark to draw on with a pencil or embroidery marking pen. My continuing incompetence in drawing, cutting or embroidering straight lines came back to haunt me! Oh well, that’s how you know it’s handmade.
The tea cosy has three rows of flowers: three in the top row, four in the second and five in the third. Not sure exactly how to scale the design for a tablet cosy, I started by embroidering two rows of flowers with three flowers in the top row and two in the bottom row. I didn’t like the asymmetry, so I filled in the gaps with more flowers aligned upside down.
Making it up into a bag was straightforward enough (except for the not being able to cut in straight lines thing, even using a ruler and template) and I finished it off with a vintage fabric-covered button from the button box. I’m quite happy with the result, even if the design is not entirely even and the buttonhole stitch pulls to the center of some of the flowers (not sure how to correct that.) And it went so fast! I did the embroidery last night and made it up into a bag this afternoon.
It looks very 1960s!
Since I still use and love my “gay gosling” iPad cover, I will send this one to a friend as a birthday/Christmas present.
Progress on actual projects has been going slowly this month, but here’s a fun extra: a video about the connections between performing early music and knitting from vintage patterns, written, directed by and starring yours truly.
In “real life” (i.e. what I do for a living when I am not knitting) I’m a professional concert and opera singer, and as you all may imagine, work has been more or less non-existent since the pandemic hit. Among other upheavals, my friends and colleagues Yonit Kosovske and Vlad Smishkewych had to first postpone, then completely overhaul the launch of their new organisation for early music, H.I.P.S.T.E.R. (Historically Informed Performance Series, Teaching, Education and Research). Being the creative people that they are, they re-imagined part of the launch as a new video series exploring connections between music and artisanry, called WAVE~LINKS.
Many of us professional musicians perform or engage with other artistic genres, and the idea behind WAVE~LINKS was to showcase those “other” passions and serve as a platform to discuss and reflect upon the shared spaces between (early) music and other artistic disciplines. And we are a very creative bunch! The online H.I.P.S.T.E.R. launch on November 7th, 2020 featured videos from creative artists around the globe sharing their insights into links between music and poetry, painting, pottery, photography, dance, knitting, weaving, fermentation, wood working, and more.
My video is about knitting, obviously, and the similarities that I find between historical performance practice as it relates to singing early music, and historical “knitting practice” as it relates to working with and from vintage pattern sources. I hope it is interesting to musicians and knitters alike.
Enjoy it, and if you like it, check out the other WAVE~LINKS videos on the H.I.P.S.T.E.R. web site, their Facebook page or their YouTube channel. I can especially recommend the video by Rosemary Heredos, a fellow singer and knitter whose video explores the connections between singing, knitting and spinning wool.
For 1960s Stitchcraft readers, November means holiday planning, so this month’s issue is full of quick homewares for decorating and small, easy projects for gift-giving. The garments are warm and bulky, featuring Patons’ new “Ariel” wool. Warm autumn tones of brown and orange as well as bright, cheerful holiday reds and blues are the colours of the season. Christmas Plans and Winter Fashions ahoy!
Our cover garment is a bulky, yet elegant coat in Big Ben wool, weighing in at a hefty 52-56 ounces (up to 3 1/2 pounds, or about 1500 grams). The mock cable/twisted rib pattern certainly won’t curl at the bottom edge, which is why I guess it’s designed without a hem or ribbing, but at that weight and in that pattern, I suspect the coat would grow ever longer and ever narrower (just in time for holiday weight gain). Still, it looks lovely! I especially like the buttoned collar. Also, I just might try to re-create the model’s hairdo with my long lockdown hair.
The outdoor photography was taken near historical buildings in York, whose grey-beige stone walls give a nice background to the bright red and blue sweaters made with “Ariel” a bulky, yet “feather-light” (well… 20-24 ounces for a sweater, so lighter than Big Ben, at least) wool-synthetic mix. I really like the red chevron sweater and it doesn’t look bulky at all to me, just fluffy and cosy. Father and daughter also get warm, cheerful garments, and look at this amazing mini-dress for a young miss! That is going on my list of patterns to adapt for myself.
Older teens and young lovers can make “the ‘sweater-match’ theme with girl-friend and boy-friend” – classic pullovers with cable ribs in double-knitting weight and identical except for slightly different shoulder width and back length proportions. That’s all for the knitted garments in this issue, since the real focus is on Christmas preparations with little gifts and housewares.
For children’s gifts, there’s a doll, clothes for another doll (pattern in last month’s issue), and a night case in the form of a puppy. This last was especially popular around the late 1950s and early 1960s – I have a different magazine with a poodle nightcase on the cover, and Stitchcraft also had some kind of poodle nightcase in the later 1950s. Poodle or puppy or not, I don’t know why a person would want to put their nightgown in a special case in or on the bed. If you don’t want other people who might be using the room to see your nightdress lying around, you could just… put it under the pillow?
There’s an intriguing “Byzantine” cushion, a firescreen with this month’s embroidered flower (chrysanthemum) and some little gifts sewn in felt, but the more interesting projects are displayed nicely in the large colour photo in the middle of the issue. We’ve got an embroidered farm scene for the nursery wall, a “hostess set” of apron and coasters featuring international drinking mottos, the usual cross-stitch cushion, and a tray cloth/tea cosy design that I would love to adapt to an iPad/tablet cover. Crocheters can use up all their scraps with medallions or a … cute? eerie? not sure what to say about it? pixie doll and patchwork fans, generally ignored by Stitchcraft, finally have a little bag as a starter project.
There are even rugs in Scandinavian designs (is that basket pattern from Denmark or from Sweden?), one stitched, the other done with a latch-hook.
What an issue! There are so many projects I would like to make from it: the girl’s dress in my size, an embroidered tea-cosy for the digitalised world, the little girl’s bulky red sweater, even the green latch-hook rug. Sadly, pandemic and lockdown have thrown a monkey wrench into my current knitting plans, it’s hard to get supplies, and I’m trying to finish or even start multiple other large projects that were planned or promised or have been lying in the WIP pile for ever. One of those WIPs was a (non-vintage) garment that I will have to frog anyway (ran out of wool and can’t make it work), so the plan is to frog that project and use the wool to make “Father’s cardigan” from this issue. Said project and I are geographically separated at the moment, though, so long story short: I do not know when I will be able to post a November project. Take heart, though: there will be some more Stitchcraft cooking fun in December as well as a special surprise next week.
It was very difficult to get a project going this month. The October 1962 issue of Stitchcraft didn’t have any designs that interested me and I had been trying to finish up some larger, non-vintage projects in time for the cold-weather season. But inspiration came from a good friend of mine, who politely reminded me that, way back when I made this “charming blouse”, I had casually offered to knit one for her if she ever wanted one, and wouldn’t this be a good time to make it for her? I agreed! So this month’s project echoed the one I made then. Here are photos from that issue and the finished project:
The original blouse, from the July 1960 issue, was designed for “larger”, curvier figures (37-38 or 39-41 inch bust) and featured horizontal bust darts, which was very unusual for knitting patterns of the time. I was intrigued to see how the bust darts would turn out, since I don’t usually make them on garments for myself. As I probably could have guessed, the bust darts were not only unnecessary for me, but actually negatively impacted the fit — since I am not busty enough to fill out the darts, the front of the blouse was too long compared to the back. That didn’t particularly bother me, but I did note it for future projects.
My friend has a more suitable figure for this design, and her version turned out even better. I used the same wool (Juniper Moon Farm Herriot Fine) in a lovely tweedy green colour, and (by request) without a collar or contrasting colour bands along the front.
It turned out perfectly and we were both very happy with the result. Since we’re not meeting indoors and it was still too cold for her to wear just a blouse outside (even a warm knitted one), I’ve only got her selfies for now, so I’m sorry if it’s hard to tell what the finished product looks like. When it’s warm enough to do a socially distanced outdoor photo shoot, we can hopefully get some better photos! According to her it fits perfectly, and it’s obviously a fantastic colour for her.
My friend, by the way, is the wonderful opera and concert singer Andrea Lauren Brown. We have all been out of work for a solid year now due to the pandemic, but you can definitely still buy her CDs, which I heartily recommend to all of you who love classical music. Seriously, she’s amazing.
“There are several “special” things about this issue” writes Stitchcraft’s “editress” on the facing page, and I’m glad she put the word “special” in quotes, because this month’s issue is definitely a mixed bag. On the plus side, it has extra pages in colour and introduces a new yarn: Patons Ariel, designed to be “triple-knit” bulky and therefore quick to knit, but still lightweight. On the minus side… we’ll get to that later in the post.
The new wool, Ariel, is listed on Ravelry as bulky weight (97 yards in a 2-ounce ball) and composed of 80% wool and 20% “other” (synthetic fibres). According to the person who wrote the Ravelry entry, it may or may not have been waterproof! It appears to be quite fluffy, thus the name and the “light as a feather” claim. It’s used for the two-colour, slip-stitch-patterned garments in the cover photo as well as the identical boatneck pullovers for men or women. The partner-look idea is still going strong.
Tweed looks and suits are always popular in the fall, and this month’s issue gives us a loose-fitting suit with a short-sleeved jumper to wear underneath, all in double knitting weight. Nubbly Rimple yarn is also DK weight and still a fashionable choice for this sweater with a contrasting bow-tie. The purple pullover with the big collar (still in fashion after two years!) is made in bulky Big Ben wool. Greens, browns and yellows dominate the colour palette and go with the autumn theme.
Embroidery and tapestry take a backseat to the autumn knits in this issue, with typical floral chair-back, apron, and traycloth designs. There’s a tapestry of four famous castles, a cross-stitch wall hanging with a poem about what type of wood to burn in a fireplace (I had never heard this rhyme, have any of you?) and a more complexly embroidered cushion of “Indian design”. I cannot vouch for its cultural authenticity, but the woven and latticed stitches are certainly striking and effective.
Speaking of cultural history, remember our little model Judy with her “trim Outfit” from 1960? (Of course you don’t, and I wouldn’t have recognised her either if her name weren’t in the caption.) Here she is, two years older, cutting a dash in her warm 3-piece play suit and all set to play with…
Ah, right. Her “Golly”, who “steals the show” and whom readers can also knit from a pattern in this issue. “He’s favourite”, writes our editress, and “everyone in the nursery loves Golly.” Who is he?
In 1895, the English-American cartoonist and illustrator Florence Kate Upton produced her first children’s book, titled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. Over the next fourteen years, she and her mother Bertha collaborated on twelve more books starring the same characters. The books, and particularly the “Golliwog” character, enjoyed enormous popularity for at least sixty years afterwards and “Golly” dolls and toys as well as “golliwog” images on brand names and household products were practically ubiquitous in popular culture — particularly children’s culture — in the UK and elsewhere throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Though Upton intended the Golliwog(g) to be a positive character and the hero of the story, it can’t be denied that his representation is a racist caricature born of the blackface minstrel tradition in the United States. According to Upton herself, her inspiration for the character was a Black minstrel doll found in her house, and typical “Golly” representations show him with exaggerated, distorted features and wearing an outfit typical of minstrel performers in the early 20th century. Later literary and cultural depictions of “golliwogs” often portrayed them as animalistic, uncultured or criminal, thus reflecting and perpetuating negative racial stereotypes about Black people. Over time, the word “golliwog” and shortened forms of it became used and recognised as demeaning racial slurs.
Though many white Britons, Americans and Australians who grew up with golliwog dolls continue to claim that they are inoffensive (and capitalise on their popularity via Internet auctions and collectors’ organisations), it should be pretty obvious that they, and their related imagery, are problematic. For a more in-depth understanding of why, I encourage further reading, starting with this excellent article from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan (US).
It’s not the first or only time that Stitchcraft (like just about every other knitting/craft publication of its time) has featured patterns for toys or dolls that reflect stereotypes of particular ethnic groups or portray them as an “exotic Other”, even if those representations are supposed to be positive. Many patterns from the 1940s and 1950s are particularly offensive (take my word for it, I don’t want to show them here), as is the use, up until the late 1950s in some cases, of racial slurs as colour names for certain shades of wool (ditto). By the way, I have issues of Stitchcraft and many other vintage knitting magazines up to the mid-1970s and nowhere, in any of them, have I ever seen a model who was not white — the caricatures were also the only representation to be found. Let’s remember that, for all their fantastic fashions, the mid-century decades were definitely not the “good old days”.
On top of all that, there’s no pattern in this issue that I particularly want to make, so I’ll either embroider some anemones on a vegetable bag or finish up something from the WIP pile.
“The most welcome present you can give to a mother-to-be is something warm and hand-knitted for the layette,” wrote Stitchcraft’s “editress”, Patience Horne, in the September 1962 issue, and it’s still true! If I can’t decide on a project, if I don’t feel like making a full-size adult garment, if I have bits of wool that want to be used up in a useful way, I make a baby jacket. Someone, somewhere is having a baby soon, and I always have a couple of finished objects on hand in case I didn’t know that a colleague or acquaintance was “expecting”.
That was the case this month, funnily enough in my own weekly knitting group. We have been “meeting” via Zoom since March due to the pandemic, and I dropped out for a while due to being ill myself, so by the time I came back I had apparently missed some happy news — one of my fellow knitters will be having a baby this winter. What better time to make this cute and easy first size raglan cardigan?
I had 3-ply wool left over from this jumper, so I was even able to achieve the tiny gauge of 8 stitches to the inch. Only… it turned out I did not have enough of this wool, so the raglan yoke part is leftover mystery purple 4-ply. I’m not quite convinced that it’s going to work; the harsh colour line seems weird at the moment.
I don’t know the name of the stitch pattern, but it’s a lovely easy sort of herringbone:
Row 1: knit
Row 2: k1, p3
Row 3: knit
Row 4: p2, *k1, p3*
Except… I decided to make the yoke in one piece, because I didn’t want to sew raglan seams, and the raglan decreases change the pattern at the armholes. I knew that would happen, but was too lazy to work out mathematically exactly what the decreases would do. It turned out that the fronts and back stay in the proper pattern and both sleeves end up in k3, p1 rib. OK, it’s symmetrical and doesn’t looks terrible, so I decided to live with it.
But… then I ran out of the mystery purple wool as well! And had to make the last bit of collar ribbing in another mystery purple-ish wool that was also thicker. Well, at least the colours didn’t clash too much? And I had cute, matching, vintage buttons in the button box!
… except that I somehow utterly failed to sew them on evenly spaced? I could add one more in the gap near the top — there’s a buttonhole there — but somehow the buttonhole in the lower gap got sewn shut while I was weaving in ends or sewing on the front bands. I have enough buttons, but can’t decide whether to cut a new lower buttonhole and add two more buttons or just give up and leave it as it is. At least the gaps are vertically symmetric.
Not my best work, but it will keep a baby warm and clothed. Perhaps I’ll make something else for my knitting friend’s baby — a fellow knitter deserves a more successful project!
Autumn is the nicest season for knitting, and 1960s Stitchcraft usually gave it a little push with extra pull-out supplements, extra colour photo pages, or “bumper issues” full of the latest developments in home-knitting fashion. The September 1962 issue doesn’t have any of these extra features, but it does have a wide variety of designs in mid-weight and warmer wools, starting with the chunky twisted-bobble sweater on the cover. Made in bulky Big Ben wool, it weighs in at a whopping 38 (for the smallest of three sizes, 35-36 inch bust), 40 or 42 ounces (the largest size, for 39-40 inch bust), i.e. about two and a half pounds or 1190 grams. I am guessing the model is quite slender and even she looks bulky in it!
The dresses and separates, made with the same loose fit but in double knitting wool, show a smoother look with minimal patterning. The orange dress in the colour photo and the charcoal-grey dress with the colour-pattern border (“for those who like something really eye-catching”) are the same design, but the pattern-border version is only available in one size, “for the younger girl.” I guess that pattern was just too exciting for doddering middle-aged matrons! The blue and white ensemble, also made in double knitting weight, has three pieces: a simple sleeveless blouse in white k2, p2 rib, a plain blue skirt and a back-fastening cardigan with white vertical stripes on the front. Tops continue to be hipbone-length and hemlines are firmly anchored just below the knee.
Other garments feature interesting colour and texture effects: the man’s “smart weekend sweater” has been treated with a teasel brush to achieve a fuzzy, felted effect. The knitter was not expected to do the brushing herself, but was instructed to “take all pieces at this stage [after knitting all the separate pieces, but before making the garment up] to your usual wool shop who can arrange to quote a price and send them away to be brushed for you.”
There’s also a striped jumper for “young and carefree” women with a fringed collar and hem, similar to the one in the February 1962 issue (yes, it is more or less the same pattern in different colours and with a split collar) and a pullover in an intriguing striped and dotted slip-stitch pattern. Stripes and/or slip-stitches also feature in the three-colour pullover for older children and the toddlers’ dungarees. Colours are navy blue or charcoal grey contrasted with white and neutral pastels, as we saw with the patterned-hem dress and three-piece ensemble.
There is the usual variety of homeware designs, mostly with floral patterns: this month’s flower is the dahlia, or you can sew and embroider and apron with lilac sprays. The leftover gingham fabric from “your” workaday apron can be used for cute animal appliqués on aprons for the children (unsurprisingly, Father seems to be exempted from the washing-up.) There’s also the usual floral cutwork tablecloth and tray cloth and a coffeepot set made in Hardanger embroidery.
Needlepoint fans can make a stool top or a whimsical cross-stitch rug and/or wall panel for the nursery, featuring characters from nursery rhymes. The motifs are separate and interchangeable and can be adapted for different sizes and purposes.
In the children’s serial comic, Peter the puppet has been freed from his marionette strings and is traveling throughout the countryside writing a play about his adventures. Cyril the squirrel helps out by painting illustrations, using his tail as a brush. (But how will Peter get home?) There’s the usual advertisement for Lux washing soap, guaranteed to leave your woollies soft and fluffy, and the latest instalment of the Patons and Baldwins’ “knit to please your man” series of ads, junior version: a teenage girl knits a “nice, husky sweater” for her boyfriend with her own loving hands to show everyone that he’s the “special one.” The young woman on the back cover ad is presumably also trying to catch a man, but she looks more polished in her snappy red dress and white gloves. You can really see 1960s style coming into its own in the straight or A-line sleeveless dress with low contrasting belt, the bobbed and fringed hairstyle and the edgy, off-angle mirror pose. Compared to the designs in this issue, it also shows how fashion-conservative Stitchcraft is.
I’m not sure what I want to make from this issue. I imagine the embroidered dahlias would make a great design for a laptop or tablet sleeve, but I already have a fine home-made laptop cover, not to mention this wonderful gay-geese-in-space tablet cosy. Also, I have probably done enough embroidery for the time being and still haven’t made much progress on this appliqué masterpiece that I started in July. The knit projects are all so bulky and loose-fitting, which is not my style, and I’m not sure I know an appropriately-aged child for the interesting slip-stitch pullover. There was also a perfectly nice, if not exciting baby cardigan (not pictured) in the issue which I could make quickly from stash, which would be useful enough (somebody’s always having a baby) and maybe the best choice for my uninspired mood. Stay tuned and find out!
August was a pretty blah month this year, what with the never-ending Covid-19 pandemic and associated long-term isolation, illness and unemployment. My knitting motivation is sub-par and the August 1962 issue of Stitchcraft didn’t have any projects in it that really inspired me. Still, I’ve been trying to turn the situation into an “opportunity” to save money and free up space by finishing WIPS and making new projects from stash.
This month’s embroidery flower was the gladiolus, with a special extra design of wild orchids. I chose the gladioli and embroidered them on another one of the recycled moneybags that I bought at an antique market last year. They really do make excellent sturdy little bags for buying small amounts of potatoes, mushrooms or other vegetable items, and with a zipper on the top they would even be good for buying and storing things like beans and lentils in bulk. They also work well as small project bags — I kept this WIP in the bag that I made in December.
The colours that I had in the embroidery-thread scrap box were more or less accurate to the pattern (mauve, mid-mauve, violet, yellow, gold, dark green and light green.) Also, the stitches are technically not very hard to do: the petals are long-and-short buttonhole (blanket) stitch outlined in stem stitch with straight-stitch center lines and satin stitch centres, the buds are satin stitch, the stems are stem stitch and the leaves are fishbone stitch. I like the effect of the dainty flower embroidery on the rough burlap fabric, too.
On the critical side… I am really not that great at embroidery, especially when I don’t have a transfer and I’m working with fabric like this, on which I can’t draw a design outline very well. I drew a few straight lines and dots with a pencil and improvised from there. Also, since the fabric is already made up into a bag, it’s difficult to use a hoop properly or work on the lower edge. The buttonhole/blanket stitch is a strange choice for the flowers, if you ask me — they look very scraggly! (Just like my real plants at home, ha ha.)
I left the top edge unfinished for now, as I couldn’t decide whether to make a simple button closure like on the other embroidered money bag, a fold-over buttoned closure, or a drawstring. (I don’t have a zipper of the right length on hand and I’d like to stay on the “no-buy” wagon for as long as possible, but it would be the most practical solution.)
I still have plenty more of the bags, so I can keep making one every time a little embroidery project presents itself.
August is the end of the holiday season at Stitchcraft, featuring transitional styles for the cooler days of September as well as a few more small, easy projects that can be worked on from the deck chair or picnic table. The “Contents” column on the facing page divides the adult garment patterns into the categories “First Autumn Fashions” and “Continental Designs”.
The “Continental Designs” comprise a colour-block pullover for men “from Vienna” in graded shades of green, a simple cap-sleeve, T-shirt-style jumper with a little Norwegian motif, and an “Italian design for late Summer” with bands of red and black intarsia in a diamond pattern. I wish they had used these for the colour photos instead of the bland white pullover on the inside front cover!
Loose-fitting, casual shapes and light, sunny colours dominate, exemplified by the apple-green cardigan, collared shirt-sweater and boatneck twin-set on the front and inside covers. Notice how much less fitted the August 1962 twin set is than, for example, this one from August 1960, not to mention earlier twin-sets from the 1940s and 1950s. The concept lives on, but the line has changed completely. Everything is hipbone-length with no or hardly any shaping.
Babies get a standard, but very pretty, lacy matinee coat and bootees, the “smart teenager” has a machine-knit pullover, and her little sister gets a “gay Rimple design” in the still-popular knitted terry-cloth look, so the whole family is taken care of.
Homewares are always big in the summer months, when many readers understandably didn’t want to hold bulky warm wool in their hands in hot weather. The bedside rug is obviously an at-home project, but the smaller projects could easily be taken along on a holiday. This month’s flower in the gladiolus, but there’s also an orchid spray and some forget-me-nots, along with two sewing patterns to embroider them on: a round baby shawl or this wonderful little girl’s dress. For once, you don’t even have to send away for the patterns, as they are geometrically quite simple — the shawl is just a circle, drawn directly onto the fabric with a pencil held on a length of string, and the dress is made up of rectangles with measurements given. I would love to make the dress! I just don’t think it would get worn, since it would only be for “dress-up” occasions, of which there aren’t going to be any for a while.
The back cover shows an interesting feature which took shape in the early 1960s issues: tapestry projects specifically for church use. In this case, there’s a runner and kneeler in shades of red and blue. If anyone happens to know why or if these colours or this pattern are significant in whatever type of Christian tradition, please feel free to tell me, as I don’t know anything about it. The rug, especially, does not say “church use” to me in any way that I can recognise and I could just as easily see it in a normal hallway.
This issue doesn’t stop! The “Readers’ Pages” offer two more very simple projects: a reprint of a young man’s waistcoat from 1957 and a stash-busting baby blanket from double crochet hexagons. And just when you think you’ve come to the end of the issue, here’s this incredible Alice in Wonderland-themed wall hanging in felt appliqué and embroidery:
I’ll close with this full-page ad for Patons & Baldwins wools, showing a newly married couple decorating their home. The happy bride is instructed to
Look after him well. Find out what he likes, and why. See that his clothes are well kept and well pressed. Learn to cook his kind of food. Learn to knit his kind of sweater…
While I’m certainly not surprised that a 1962 advertisement would speak to women like that, I do find it interesting to compare the early and mid-1960s ads — which take on this type of “you exist to please your man” language more and more throughout the years — with those from the 1950s issues, with their much more independent picture of womanhood. Many of the knitting patterns in the earlier issues are explicitly designed “for the office” and most of the advertisements portray women living active, interesting lives in their comfortable shoes and unbreakable skirt zippers. In the wonderful tampon ads (that sadly disappear around the late 1950s), they don’t even let “problem days” stop them from doing anything! In contrast, the full-page P&B ads starting up around this time always feature a man or child with the woman in question and the text is inevitably some variation on “you must do this to please your man.” I had always thought of the 1950s as being a much more repressive time for women that the 1960s, when roles began to change, but judging from Stitchcraft (which, to be fair, is quite conservative both fashion- and otherwise), the earlier part of the decade is more of a backlash than a progression.
I don’t know what project to make from this issue and I still have so many WIPs, both for this blog and otherwise. Maybe a nice, easy flower embroidery on a vegetable bag?
July 1962’s issue didn’t have anything in it that particularly interested me, so I took the time to go back to the June 1961 issue, which had so many nice projects in it that it was hard for me to decide which to make. (I ended up making this lacy top and later, this child’s tunic-dress.)
I loved the extremely complicated, heavily embroidered, faux-neo-Jacobean felt appliqué “birds in a tree” extravaganza featured in colour on the back cover, but it was too daunting. For one thing, of course I didn’t have the transfer or pattern for the appliqué pieces, since I would have had to have sent away for them via postal order in 1962. For another, there weren’t even any instructions in the magazine — the design was offered as either an embroidery or an appliqué project (see photo), and the instructions in the magazine only covered the embroidered version in any detail. The appliqué version just gave a list of materials, size of finished design, and the address where one could order the pattern and instructions. And when it comes right down to it, my appliqué and especially, embroidery skills are really not very well developed.
Oh yes, and while felt is easy enough to buy, the materials included tapestry wool for the embroidery, which is impossible to find in stores anywhere near me and even difficult to order online in the right weight (very fine)! Luckily, last year I happened to be in the one city I know that houses the one shop I know that actually specialises in tapestry and sells the right kind of wool, so I was able to get that, at least.
I decided to make it as a cushion, not a wall hanging. The background tree was easy enough. Technically, the white branches and leaves should have been made by cutting holes in the green tree felt and letting the (white/beige) background fabric show through, but since I chose a blue background fabric, I appliquéd them as well. It was predictably difficult to make and cut out my own patterns for the little bits of felt for the birds and leaves, and after making the first two birds, I realised it was easier to just cut the pieces freehand. Since there were no instructions to follow, I went from the photo and the instructions for the embroidered version, which obviously didn’t give much useful information.
Such a detailed project took forever, of course. It needed many tools and materials, so I could only work on it at home at a table, and not during the winter months, as I needed natural light for the fine work.
I made two of the birds on the left first, wasn’t really happy with them, and realised why after making the first flower on the left. I liked the way the flower turned out — it’s much simpler! The birds seemed overdone in comparison. I thought about changing the design and realised at some point that, of course, the who idea of this neo-Jacobean, embroidered and appliquéd extravaganza is that it is supposed to be over the top.
Before ironing…And after ironing
And so, slowly and painstakingly, it got done, one piece at a time. (It also spent a lot of time in the cupboard in between bursts of activity.) The embroidery directions in the magazine were often quite different from the appliqué version, so I did a lot of guesswork and adaptation based on the (rather small) colour photo on the back cover, from which the colours had changed and faded in the 50 years since its printing.
I was determined to get it done before the end of 2021, and I did (on December 31st.) It was a huge milestone for me in my appliqué / embroidery learning process, and I am really, really happy with the way it turned out.
Holiday and party seasons are both in full swing in Stitchcraft’s July 1962 issue and the more I look at this cover photo, the more I love it. Note how the foreground model is staring off into the distance while sitting on a table with a compass printed on it, as if fantasising about her faraway holiday (though, if she’s on holiday already, as the picture is implying, does that mean she can’t wait to get home?). Meanwhile, it’s a good thing that our flirty tuxedoed waiter’s drinks tray is empty, with that precarious balancing act. If anyone feels inspired to creatively augment this photo with speech- and thought-bubble captions, please do and share it with us!
In keeping with the easy-going, summer holiday theme, the knitting projects are simple and quick to make. The two illustrated on the cover have no sleeves, minimal shaping and patterning, and are made in quick double knitting wool. Although pictured as stand-alone tops, they could easily be layered over a blouse on cooler days. There’s also a simple blue blouse with loopy flower details on the collar and a striped, sleeveless tunic-blouse with matching skirt, all in 4-ply wool. Our waiter from the cover photo has found another holiday-goer to flirt with, and sports a “Casual Italian design sweater” in the same colour as her skirt: “Water Green.” (Holiday tip: if the water actually is that colour, don’t drink it.) Speaking of Italy, doesn’t that beautiful model in the collared blouse look like she just stepped out of a Fellini film?
For cooler days, there are cardigans in “golfer” or classic, slightly bobbled styles, both made in double knitting. The golfer takes her sport very seriously! Knitters who are really in a hurry to get packing can make some simple, bulky pullovers for the kids in the family (shown here building a lovely British castle out of cardboard and sand in the Patons photo studio — I am guessing everyone had a lot of fun on this issue’s photo shoots) or a fine-knit slipover in honeycomb pattern, written for a home knitting machine.
The embroidered homewares are mostly easy and predictable: a chairback with this month’s flower, the carnation; a quickly-made “gay garden cushion” (Happy Pride!), and place mats with heat-resistant cork inserts. There’s a tapestry stool and/or project bag in Florentine pattern, knitted or crocheted cushions, some fancy knitted doilies and a trolley cloth from crocheted motifs. I didn’t photograph all of them, since they’re pretty standard fare.
For those who like to immortalise their holiday paradise in tapestry, there’s a wall hanging of the village of St. Etienne de Bougary in the lovely French Pyrenées. For your outing to that very inviting-looking lake, you can sew you own beach bags and/or an appliquéd blanket-towel-baby’s-playmat for outdoor lounging. The beach bags feature adhesive plastic lining to keep wet bathing suits from leaking into the bag. Smart and easy, indeed.
I’m kind of ambivalent about making a project from this issue. The only thing I could really use is the bobbly cardigan, but it’s not exactly necessary, and the only design that I find exceptional is this crocheted blouse (worn by my favorite Stitchcraft model, who featured in a lot of the mid-and late 1950s issues). Model and blouse are both beautiful, but the blouse is way beyond my limited crochet skills. I wish I had the “Traditional Norwegian Designs” booklets from this ad! I think I’ll take the time to finish up another long-standing WIP instead.
The June 1962 issue didn’t have any projects that appealed to me enough to make them, so I used the time to finish up a project that I’ve been working on off and on for the last few years: a “4-coupon” twin set from Stitchcraft‘s February 1947 issue.
The “4-coupon” title refers to the clothing coupons used when purchasing rationed items during and after World War II. Rationing began for many food products in January of 1940 and extended to clothing in 1941, whereby clothing coupons could also be used for household textiles or wool. The Wikipedia article on rationing in the United Kingdom during World War II gives a sense of the coupons’ comparative value:
There were 66 points for clothing per year; in 1942 it was cut to 48, in 1943 to 36, and in 1945 to 24. This system operated through a “points” system… [ ] …Clothing rationing points could also be used for wool, cotton and household textiles… [ ] … The number of points that each piece of clothing would be valued at was determined by not only how much labor went into making it, but also how much material was used. A dress could run someone 11 coupons, whereas a pair of stockings only cost 2. Similarly, Men’s shoes cost 7 tickets, whiles women’s cost only 5. In 1945, an overcoat (wool and fully lined) was 18 coupons; a man’s suit, 26–29 (according to lining); Children aged 14–16 got 20 more coupons.
The twin-set uses 8 ounces of wool, so apparently one coupon could get you two ounces of (2-ply) knitting wool. (Just to be clear, one also had to pay for the items; the coupons only limited the amount people were allowed to buy, regardless of how much money they had at their disposal.)
The influence of rationing can be seen in almost every aspect of 1940s issues of Stitchcraft: occasionally titles of designs, such as this one, but more often in recipes and advertisements. These two, from the pages of the 4-coupon pattern, promise that the company in question is “sharing out their dress and lingerie fabrics as fairly as possible” and reassure that “it won’t be long until we can have really new lingerie” (lace and frills were banned, and nylon was needed for parachutes et. al., hence the plain, home-sewn cotton nightgowns).
Many products remained rationed after the war, including clothes rationing, which lasted until March 1949. It was only in 1954 that the last rationing measures were lifted. Since then, the only product that has been subject to rationing in the UK was petrol, briefly, during the Suez crisis of 1956-57. And yet, as the global Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage around us, there have been discussions in many countries — including wealthy countries with excellent medical infrastructures — regarding the rationing of personal protective equipment, ventilators and medical supplies. The past is not as far away as we might think.
Booklet photo, February 1947
I had plenty of time to ruminate on that while finishing this project, which I started as a “home away from home” project in 2016 (a year in which I effectively lived in two different places) and finished in home isolation in 2020. The wool — Onion Nettle Sock — is a mixture of 70% sheep wool and 30% nettle fibre. I would never have thought to knit with nettle fibre, but it works very well! It is smooth and somewhat shiny and the textured lace pattern shows up very well with it. Also, it reminds me of various fairy tales involving our heroine knitting shirts for her brothers out of nettle plants (or aster flowers, depending on the version and translation), like Die Sechs Schwäne (The Six Swans) by the brothers Grimm, or De vilde svaner (The Wild Swans) by Hans Christian Andersen.
As always, I am larger than the 34-inch-bust size for which the pattern is written, but also get a looser gauge, so it worked out for me to make the pattern almost exactly as written. I made the sleeves and the body of the jumper in the round, adjusted for length and changed the sleeve cap slightly for less puffiness, but otherwise I didn’t need to change anything. Of course, the lace pattern is stretchy and can be blocked tighter or looser.
Said pattern was the first one I had worked with that increased and decreased in the course of the pattern repetition, and I was at a loss to deal with the side-seam and sleeve increases and decreases at first. The pattern, like all vintage patterns from this period, assumes you know what you are doing, and there are no charts in any case. I learned a lot and I can see that the side increases on the cardigan are much nicer than on the jumper! (Carefully photographed as to be unnoticeable, but believe me.)
My buttonhole spacing on the cardigan was off, so I ended up sewing most of the holes closed ad carefully cutting new ones after backing the bands with ribbon (a common practice at the time, especially on tight-fitting cardigans, to keep the bands from stretching out and gapping across the chest.)
All in all, this is a wonderful design and very flattering to the figure. Nota bene, my upper body is broad and flat and I am not exactly model-thin, but this ensemble somehow manages to make me look both svelte and curvy. The wool/nettle fingering weight is perfect for fall and spring. I love the buttoned placket and collar of the jumper. Knitting this was definitely worth all the time and hard work and it will be getting a lot of wear for years to come.
The Stitchcraft Sixties 