This is my latest knitting project: a 1940s ribbed cardigan, titled 'A Chic Cardigan to Knit', it has a Ravelry page here. Notice the darling little embroidered flower on the front? I did too and it killed me with its cuteness.
I'm using Rowan's linen drape, a linen/silk blend and I aim to finish in time to enjoy during our Indian Summer. The yarn makes a beautiful heavy drapey (surprise) fabric. Also be warned that it splits like crazy and I have found more than one knot while unwinding the balls, otherwise a lovely offering from Rowan. Only half of the left front and both sleeves remain. I'll be doing a long sleeve version if yardage allows.
I love the color, a cool deep steel grey but want to add more color to my wardrobe so I'll be embroidering the flower motif in some cheerful brighter colors. Biiiiig thanks to my sister who gifted me the Rowan yarn some years ago!
The pattern was found on the National Library of Australia's "Trove" database. The site offers a huge collection of digitized material from magazines, books and newspapers. I noticed several vintage knitting patterns on Ravelry from the NLA so I decided to have a look myself. I was not dissapointed, oh no I was not, a search for "knitting" limited to the 1920's-1940's yielded hundreds of patterns...and they're all FREE!!!! Some have complete instructions and high quality images and others were fuzzy or only provided scant guidelines for knitting them up.
The NLA's also has me covered for my next knitting project! Its called 'Blanket Wool Cardigan' and is on Ravelry here. The loose casual cropped lines of this cardigan and the super quick "blanket weight" yarn are all tempting me.
Oooo, this looks fantastic! I just got into knitting this year, and I love the possibilities for a vintage wardrobe, but it takes me SO LONG to knit anything. I do it in between my sewing projects. Sewing gives *relatively* instant gratification to be motivated by, and slowly but surely the knitting gets done!
ReplyDeleteI'm exactly the same way! I need instant gratification and sewing does that for me. I try to approach my knitting as "character building". Big projects become a lesson in perseverance and patience and I think doing them kinda makes a difference in my personal life. That said, I'm lucky if I can see two big knitting projects through per year. Warning though, now that your a knitter, fall and winter will never be the same. There are times when my sewing machine gathers dust and I'm chained to my needles in front of every historical romance netflix can cough up!
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