Friday, January 11, 2013

Old Favourites...

All my recent tidying uncovered some old favourites - the kind that you know are there but haven't actually  seen for a while! Or is that just me that keeps things which appear to have no particular use?

In keeping with my current knitting fixation this post is about past projects most of which were made and gifted.

This shawl is my interpretation of a pattern which I made for a colleague somewhere in the mid 1980's. I was recently reminded of it, but after a fruitless search, including all the Mother's knitting patterns I gave up and believed there would never be another one.


So when I uncovered a couple of binders with old patterns from magazines, most of which are of the knitting variety, I just had to have a flick through and a giggle too.

These patterns are from the English Women's Weekly dated mid 1980's. I made the one in the middle for another colleague in the early 1990's and the green one on the right which you can't see the detail on I made for my charge when I worked as a nanny in London! These two were made in similar colours to the pattern pictures quite unusually for me.


These next two children's knitting booklets have patterns for some fun outfits - the one on the left is dated 1950 - obviously I inherited that one from the Mother or my Gran, the other one is straight out of the 70's.
Yes, I made things out of both of these books for children of family friends.

This pretty lace cardigan is from the 1980's and SJ made her own version of this in a soft pink mohair blend  yarn, making it both warm and light.

In amongst all those pages - I found the pattern for the Duckling shawl - Yay! 
It is going on my future makes list, it is a very clever design with the centre piece knitted whole round the radius using a short row technique and the pretty edging is knit separately then attached.

 So my favourite today is uncovering old favourites and the happy memories they evoke.


Have a wonderful weekend and stay cool.

13 comments:

Maria said...

Some real treasure there Mistea :-) I used to buy the English WW for the knitting patterns in the 70s and 80s.

Maria said...

Some beautiful lodies there Mistea....

Cheryll said...

OMG I think I have the lace on lace pattern too. How funny...
Love your shawls :)

Lyndel said...

gorgeous Shawl. I love old knitting pattern books, such a quick overview of fashion thru the decades.

Katherine said...

Funny thing is I seem pretty familiar with most of those patterns too lol. My mother only bought the English Woman's Weekly and I also have many lovely old pattern books. Not so keen on the 70s as I lived through it as a child and absolutely hate the fashion more than the 80's.

Katherine said...

Funny thing is I seem pretty familiar with most of those patterns too lol. My mother only bought the English Woman's Weekly and I also have many lovely old pattern books. Not so keen on the 70s as I lived through it as a child and absolutely hate the fashion more than the 80's.

Anonymous said...

gee Mistea i wonder how many things you have knitted so far all up,i bet it is a lot,well done.xx

marina said...

I think I might recognise a few of those patterns!
They are lovely to revisit

Melody said...

It is fun to revisit things from the past.

Shay said...

Vintage patterns are a favourite of mine too. I like seeing how fashions have changed. The 80's in particular were a bit of a fashion nightmare although we didnt think so at the time (all that big hair and shoulder pads !)

However that shawl is timelessly beautiful.

Jindi's Cottage said...

Ah so nothing is lost...it's just in the warehouse...somewhere!...

seabreezequilts said...

I unearthed a heap of my mums knitting patterns last year, they are from the 80's is that considered vintage lol.

flyingjen said...

I've got a book of doll clothes that was gifted to me back in the late 70's early 80's and the clothes definitely are of that era! Kind of fun.