Ladies' Crocheted Spencer (1915) and Princess Julia Crocheted Spencer (1916)

The Columbia Book of Yarn for 1915 contains this pattern for a crocheted spencer, here a sleeveless jacket rather longer than the usual waist- or below-bust length of a spencer.  This version is for a "36 or 38 bust," as are many if not most of the items in this book -- for which we are grateful to the author, Anna Schumacker! -- and is worked in period 4-fold (4-ply) Germantown yarn, which Kim Salazar of "String or Nothing" tells us is roughly equivalent to a modern worsted, e.g. Cascade 220.

A year later, Corticelli revised the pattern* to use their Sweater Silk crochet thread or alternatively, their Princess Pearl Crochet Cotton --

From Corticelli's Lessons in Crochet, Book 1, page 41 (page 43 of the PDF), available free from the Antique Pattern Library.

Note that the Corticelli version is to fit a 34-inch bust, with the suggestion to add more chain stitches to the beginning chain for a larger size, "allowing about six chain stitches to an inch."

Princess Pearl Crochet Cotton seems to have been approximately equivalent to a modern size 8 crochet cotton.

Advertisements for Sweater Silk and Princess Pearl at, respectively, the beginning and end of the Corticelli book.

*Yes, despite it being copyrighted by Columbia's publisher. The Corticelli version rewrote the pattern with their own abbreviations, but otherwise it is the same, even to the (presumably inadvertent) omission of instructions to work the left front.

"Boudoir Jacket no.476" (1917)

This crocheted boudoir jacket pattern is from Corticelli's "Lessons in Knitting and Crochet, book 6," available at Antique Pattern Library.  A boudoir or bed jacket was a waist-length garment, often knitted or crocheted, worn over one's nightgown while reading or perhaps breakfasting in bed; it was most popular from about the 1920s to the 40s.  (Joanne Thompson theorizes, quite logically, that the garment's decline in popularity in the 1950s was due most likely to the rise in central heating, that an extra layer of warmth simply wasn't needed any more.)

Fatima at Crochetology by Fatima has a long post detailing her making of this boudoir jacket.

In the Winter 2021 issue of "PieceWork" magazine, Pat Olski has rewritten the jacket pattern into modern format, adding to very handsome effect the Crocheted Coat Fastener no.321a from Corticelli's "Lessons in Crochet, book 2," also available in its original format at Antique Pattern Library.

 The boudoir jacket in "Weldon's Practical Crochet, 194th series" (no.423, vol.36) from about the same date,

is of very similar construction, though rather more dégagé in appearance.  Note also the similarity between these particular boudoir jackets and the hug-me-tight worn by Trini Alvarado as Meg in the 1994 film of "Little Women" which, if it is indeed an authentic 1860s garment, would certainly be an ancestor --

"Panel Slip-On Sweater" (1919)

This panel sweater appears in the May 1919 issue of the American magazine "The Delineator," available online at the Hathi Trust, via Google and the University of Iowa. Note the model's fashionable post-war "corset-less" figure! quite a difference from her mother's rigid silhouette twenty-some years earlier.

British sailors knitting

Note that the original file-name is "sailors knitting out of boredom" (emphasis added)!  Sailors were usually very handy with needle and thread, so there is no reason not to believe that many of them also knitted, possibly on a regular basis. Note also their "drawing-room" style ("parlor style" in America) of holding the right-hand needle. Source, alas, unknown.

The Amazons' red caps

"Swallows and Amazons" (1974)

In the classic series of children's books by Arthur Ransome that began in 1930 with the eponymous Swallows and Amazons, the Blackett sisters usually wear distinctive red knitted caps.  The caps aren't described much, only that they are knitted and that the red color can be seen for miles, as when the four Walker children aboard their beloved "Swallow" can easily recognize "Amazon" as she tacks across the lake, by the red caps of her crew.

"Swallows and Amazons" (2016). Peggy has somehow got hold of a striped cap here, instead of the usual red one.

Because Ransome was so vague about the style of cap that Nancy and Peggy wear, we have more leeway in choosing a pattern.  In 1920s England, a watch cap pattern would be a logical choice, and would certainly have been available to a knitting mother or grandmother who had a relative in the merchant marine or the Navy, who had knitted for servicemen during the recent War as so many women did, or who simply had sailors in the family, as do both the Walkers and the Blacketts.

"Crow's Nest Cap" pattern, probably from the 1910s, from "The Needle-Worker" magazine's booklet Comforts for Sailors, and How to Knit Them. Note that the cap is worked from the top down.

One could also get a bit more elaborate than a simple watch cap, as the costumers did for these two filmed versions -- the 1974 Blacketts wear a longer version more like a ski cap with pompom, while the 2016 Blacketts' caps look very like the voyageur style.

"Girl with ice skates," 1917

 "Girl with ice skates, interior from the school household, Falun" (1917) by Carl Larsson.

Larsson conveys the texture of knitted wool wonderfully even in a small watercolor -- though as knitters we'd perhaps like to see that interesting hem in more detail!  This looks like a typical 1910s jumper, possibly with a finer one in cream underneath, or the grey has a cream collar in addition to the cream band around the wrists and possibly the hem as well.  The cream color matches with the girl's hat, probably a felted knit much like this timeless one from Knit Picks.

Two sonntags

Sontags -- or sometimes, though rarely, "sonntags" as here -- apparently had a revival in the 1910s, when Lion Brand Yarns included two patterns, one knitted and one crocheted, in their 1912 book A Manual of Worsted Work. Both featured the faux ermine border so popular with their grandmothers in the 1850s.  It's a shame that this useful garment didn't catch on (again), but perhaps that is because in 1912 it doesn't quite suit the very-fashionable "pigeon breast" puff at the waist of the S-curve figure as modeled by Miss Crochet in these photos -- but historical knitters now might appreciate the Lion patterns for their more explicit instructions than the earlier generation's!

Elsa Schappel Barsaloux

 Elsa Barsaloux first appears in print, so far as I can tell, in 1915, with both The Priscilla Baby Book no.1 and Utopia Book of Filet and Venetian Crochet, no.2. A veritable spate of books followed in the next few years, some of crochet but mostly knitting.

She had been born in Germany in 1875, and immigrated with her parents and younger sister in the early 1880s, settling probably in the Bronx, and married David Barsaloux around 1897.  He had been born in Colorado also to immigrant parents -- his father from Canada and his mother from Ireland -- and by the time of the 1900 and 1905 censuses, the young couple was living in the Bronx with Elsa's widowed mother, David working as a cashier in a hotel.  Elsa sold design models to several major department stores, and made her first foray into knitting pattern books in 1915; these first books were mostly published by various yarn companies, but towards the end of the Great War the Barsalouxs had opened their own company and were publishing under their own imprint.  Although 1917 was her glory year -- with at least six pattern books published -- five more were published in the next few years, but sadly Elsa died at the age of 49 in 1924, and David just four years later.

This article from the "Dry Goods Economist" highlights a Barsaloux innovation -- "the newest thing in the way of a retail store ... a shop devoted exclusively to yarns".  As hard to imagine as that is nowadays, in 1917 there was no such thing as a bricks-and-mortar yarn shop!  Mrs. Barsaloux's establishment -- The Yarn Shop, mind you!-- was located at 400 5th Avenue (where the Langham Hotel is now), was tastefully decorated in up-to-the-moment gray and lavender, and included tables and comfortable chairs "for those who are receiving instructions," and, with an admirable knowledge of her prospective clientele, a children's room with child-sized tables and chairs! 

The Yarn Shop, close up.

Pattern books by Elsa Schappel Barsaloux

1915

• The Priscilla baby book no. 1 : a collection of babies' garments in knitting and crochet, with directions for making
• Utopia book of filet and Venetian crochet, no. 2 (Henry E. Frankenberg)
  

1916

• Richardson's cross stitch book and filet crochet no.5 (Richardson Silk Co.)*
• Richardson's silk and cotton crochet book no. 11
• Utopia book of Cluny crochet (Henry E. Frankenberg)
  

*According to Leigh Martin, Richardson's didn't publish the names of the designers, so it's interesting that Barsaloux's is known -- perhaps she insisted on it?

1917

• The Priscilla sweater book, including hats, caps, and other accessories, with directions for working
• The Priscilla war work book, including directions for knitted garments and comfort kits from the American Red Cross, and knitted garments for the Boy Scout
• Good Shepherd fingering yarns and their use: Sweaters (Shepherd Worsted Mills)
• Good Shepherd fingering yarns and their use: Infants' wear (Shepherd Worsted Mills)
• Good Shepherd fingering yarns and their use: The boudoir (Shepherd Worsted Mills)

1918

• The sweater book (The Yarn Shop/David N. Barsaloux)
  

 

1919

• Knit wear de luxe : original model creations and designs (The Yarn Shop) 
• Utopia yarn book : being a practical treatise on knitting and crocheting (Utopia Yarns)
  

1920

• The Priscilla Cluny crochet book

1921

• Sweater styles : original model creations and designs (The Yarn Shop)

Sources

New York, New York City marriage records, 1829-1940 (database).
New York, New York City municipal deaths, 1795-1949 (database).
"Sells yarn exclusively," in Dry Goods Economist, vol.72, no.3836, January 12, 1918, p.59 (bound in issues 3835-3845).

Polk's New York City directory, 1920-1921 ["Barsaloux, Elsa  yarns  500 5th ave" on p.283], 1922-1923
United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 (database).

Double-twist loop cast-on (1917)

This cast-on method can be found in The Priscilla Sweater Book by Elsa Barsaloux et al. (Priscilla, 1917).  Going by the objective in the picture for Step 7, it is clearly what we know now as "double-twist loop cast-on". I confess that I couldn't "get" Mrs. Barsaloux's instructions after Step 4, but the following two videos (and I'm sure there are other descriptions both in print and on the internet that are equally worthy!) are obviously using the same maneuvers --