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