A couple months ago Kate from Knitty blog talked about a great digital resource: The Winchester School of Art Library at University of Southampton in the UK is the home of the rather remarkable Knitting Reference Library. I am very interested in knitting traditions and ESPECIALLY (surprise!) lace traditions.
As I browsed the books ( they are in PDFs and free!) I was thinking that we, modern knitters, have a great advantage: pictures! Most knitting books from 1800-s had only written patterns, very few had drawings of the patterns.
I did find several with pictures. One of them is
This one had an illustration with every pattern. As I understand it was an advertisement for a company that made silk for knitting ( kind of like the modern yarn companies put out pattern catalogs for their yarns).
Along with socks, mittens and purses the book has several lace edgings that I wanted to try.
It took me while to figure out how to read the patterns (some abbreviations are the same, some a different, so it took some trial and error). Some patterns I have seen before, some are quite original.
Here is one of my first attempts.
This is the pattern from the book:
Look at the picture! not bad details for 1885 book!
Here is how it looked on my needles. Rather nice, I have to say, for a only 4-row pattern.
If you are interested, I have charted it here:
As I browsed the books ( they are in PDFs and free!) I was thinking that we, modern knitters, have a great advantage: pictures! Most knitting books from 1800-s had only written patterns, very few had drawings of the patterns.
I did find several with pictures. One of them is
Along with socks, mittens and purses the book has several lace edgings that I wanted to try.
It took me while to figure out how to read the patterns (some abbreviations are the same, some a different, so it took some trial and error). Some patterns I have seen before, some are quite original.
Here is one of my first attempts.
This is the pattern from the book:
Here is how it looked on my needles. Rather nice, I have to say, for a only 4-row pattern.
to be continued... Happy Knitting everyone!
Thank you for sharing this wonderful resource library! I am always grateful that someone wrote these down and that they have been preserved. I agree with you that the images are amazing for the period when they were published. I am knew to lace knitting and find your patterns are gorgeous. I hope to learn how to do such fine work.
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