Pins and Needles Covers

The covers of Pins and Needles

No. 1 Winter 1949	No. 11 Summer 1952
No. 12 Autumn 1952	No. 15 March 1953
No. 17 July 1953	No. 18 September 1953
No. 19 November 1953	No. 20 January 1954
No. 22 May 1954	No. 27 March 1955
No. 29 May 1955	No. 32 August 1955
No. 35 November 1955	No. 36 December 1955
No. 37 January 1956	No. 39 March 1956
No. 40 April 1956	No. 41 May 1956
No. 49 January 1957	No. 52 April 1957
No. 53 May 1957	No. 56 August 1957
No. 58 October 1957	No. 59 November 1957
No. 60 December 1957	No. 61 January 1958
No. 62 February 1958	No. 63 March 1958
No. 64 April 1958	No. 65 May 1958
No. 66 June 1958	No. 68 August 1958
No. 69 September 1958	No. 72 December 1958
No. 74 February 1959	No. 75 March 1959
No. 76 April 1959	No. 82 October 1959
No. 83 November/December 1959	No. 86 March 1960
No. 92 September 1960	No. 98 March 1961
No. 99 April 1961 No. 121 February 1963 No. 153 October 1965 No. 167 December 1966	No. 105 October 1961 No. 124 May 1963 No. 165 November 1966

With Spring nearly here . . Marriner's 443

. . . what better thing to do than start planning your spring and summer wardrobe? And this lovely should take pride of place.

This pattern from Marriner (No. 443) is such a pretty summer blouse and comes in 4 sizes so can be easily sized up a couple more inches either by altering the weight of the wool and or needles sizes to fit a larger size. If you do go this route, make sure you don't use a yarn that's too heavy as it could alter the drape of the blouse and you'll just get left with a saggy mess (ask me how I know). 

The original wool was a relatively lightweight 3-ply and the tension 7.5 stitches to 1 inch. Increasing the tension size to 7 stitches per inch will give you approximately 1 inch gain over the width of the jumper. 6.5 to 1 inch will add 2 inches or 4 inches overall but I think that this might make the yoke huge and you'd lose the lovely ribbing at the neck so perhaps it's time to grab your adventurer's pants and crack out the calculator and grade the pattern up to the size you want.

With muti-size patterns it's easier than you think and using a spreadsheet programme to get the calculations right means you can see across the whole range to see if anything look wrong. To start you need to read through the whole pattern and mark where numbers change. Rather than write out all the figures, here's the link to the google doc I used with some notes to hopefully explain better. I've used the established numbers for bust sizes 32" to 38" to take the pattern up to 40", 42", 44", and 46"

For the purpose of this, I've assumed that most larger women are larger overall, so bigger waists, bigger arms and wider necks and bigger busts. If you are slender but have a large bust, you could use the smaller sizes for the casting on and then increase to the larger sizes or use bust shaping to get to the required number of stitches for the yoke.

Like most knitting, the proof is in the making and I have not made this up so please use the figures with caution and if you see any glaring errors please comment so I can update the chart.

To download the pattern, please click on the pattern cover above.

Happy Valentine's Day

Code is valid until 17th February so you have the whole weekend to find something that gives you a thrill

A Hat for A Head - Patons 814 Free Download

Turbans are part of our shared memory from the box of 'things that make the 1940s' but they have a longer history in the UK. The well-to-do of Britain first got turban fever in the late 1700s along with the fascination in all things oriental but it was a relatively short lived fad soon to be replaced by other exotic items. Working class women had used a practical head covering that kept their hair away from their face and out of their work for centuries. It's likely that a simple remnant of cloth wrapped about the head was used but painting and photographs show that these could be quite fancy. It could be the connection to working class that made the turban fall from high fashion and suffer an image problem and it was not until the 1920s that it rose again.

The fashion for shorter hair styles and less frou-frou paved the way with film stars and socialites needing something to keep their locks sleek. Mass media gave everyone a chance to copy the trend and the place of the turban in British fashion history was set. By the 1940s they were everywhere: in films, fashion, newspapers, adverts.

When rationing slowed, and then stopped, the availability of millinery supplies, women got creative with their headwear and took the turban to new heights (quite literally) as there was still a need for a good, warm, and practical hat that was easy to wear, required no pins to hold it, and could be made with the supplies at hand. And knitting stepped up. Some patterns were no more than wide strip of loose knitting wrapped and tied but others became a little more elaborate. The pattern here has 3 versions: a plain wrap, a twisted wrap and then one with a crown which makes a more formal hat.

The crown one uses 2 strands of 4-ply worked together, or you could use an aran weight yarn as I have done here. It takes less than 100g, this one took 79g of an acrylic and wool mix and works up very quickly, in fact you may spend longer arranging the knot that actually knitting it.

To download the pattern please click on the link below
3 Turbans in Carin Rimple Wool

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Knitting shops now gone

I've long been intrigued by the number of knitting shops that used to populated the UK. Talking to older people has made me realise that just about every town had somewhere to buy wool no matter how small so last year made a start on logging them on Google Maps.

The locations come from the stamps that shops put on the patterns, usually on the front cover, but sometimes on the inside. There are a few that I can't find, the red dots, but hope that by the time I've gone through my entire collection I might have worked out where they are.


This is a work in progress so hopefully the map with gather more pink dots and show just how widespread wool and craft shops were. My dream is to find a shop that is pre 1969 and still open.

New Year, New Project

 In the Sheffield group on Ravelry we're having a 12 in 2015 Challenge. It's simple, just knit 12 things over the next year using your stash as much as possible. Some of the projects are themed but most are a do what you like. It can be any size project but the crux is to use as much of your stash as you can whilst making marvellous things. For January we are having a deep stash sub-challenge so you have to use the oldest yarn in your stash. It can be oldest as in years, or oldest in terms of one of the things you recorded on Ravelry. I've gone with a ball of 320g or 11 ozs of roughish wool that I bought in 2004 in the Yorkshire Dales and a pattern from my vintage collection.

It's always tricky marrying up unknown quantities of yarn to unknown patterns and this one seems to be going very well. It starts on 3mm needles then jumps up to 3.25mm, then just before the bust jumps again onto 3.75mm. But I realised after I had knitted about 20cm that I wasn't going to make it to a full jumper as the 3mm section ate so much of the wool that I knew that I wouldn't have enough to finish and with no chance of getting more I had to find something else

So I am now working on this lace cardigan worked on 3.75mm needles so it's nice and open without being loose. I'm still a bit worried about running out of wool but figure if I can get the back, fronts, and button band sorted, I'll work the sleeves together from the top down so will stop when I run out. What could possibly go wrong?

Birthday Sharing

Happy New Year Lovelies and thank for your support since I opened the shop in February. To celebrate my birthday on the 13th I am giving everyone a discount of 25% on anything for the whole of January. You can use the coupon as many times as you like and I plan on adding lots more patterns, both downloads and originals so there is bound to be something that you like. I might even get round to adding some sewing patterns.

Just use the discount code BIRTHDAYSALE25 at the checkout and please pass this offer on to anyone you think might be interested.

Pretty Old Patterns