Thursday, November 13, 2014

Patons and Baldwins Woolcraft Booklet

I'm a few days late but thought it an appropriate time to show this book which I found on my shelf while looking for a machine knitting booklet on socks (I'm still looking for that!).
Appropriate because on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1914 armistice was declared and World War I ended.
The book has no publication date but one newspaper article tucked into it is dated 1938 so its at least older than that.  It was sold for one shilling - 10 cents in our money.

 The book contains patterns for virtually every type of garment one would ever need, all written line by line, no graphs or schematics.  Above is the range of underwear; underpants, knickers, vests and spencers and below are socks with a range of heels, Dutch, French and auto.  Who would have known!
 Tucked inside are hand written patterns in both my Grandmother's and Mum's writing for Balaclava for Seamen, balaclava and skull cap which gives the book the military significance.
Who knows how many pairs of socks, balaclavas, etc the steel needles I inherited and use have made.

4 comments:

  1. You must have had the upmarket edition of Woolcraft, I'm sure ours only had a sepia cover but the pictures, especially the socks look very familiar. Of course When I got home last night I went searching for my copy but without success. I found a lot of other vintage knitting books during my search but not that one so there's another job for the weekend. My grandmother who taught me to crochet claimed to have no knitting skills. There were stories of her sardine to knit baby clothes for an expected grandchild but they turned into balaclavas, scarves and goodness knows what else - thanks for the memories. Helen

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  2. I think that was "starting to knit". The wonders of predictive text

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  3. What a wonderful find Dianne ~ if you ever get it scanned into the computer I'd love to see it. That is truly one of the things I miss most about living in NZ...the wonderful knitting shops loaded with patterns that are like hens teeth here on Vancouver Island.

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    1. Our local yarn shop in Katikati has gone which I discovered last week :( but the Waihi one reopened :)

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