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.

"The Hempstead Sweater" (1908)

"The Hempstead Sweater," a sporty number from The Columbia Book of Yarns by Anna Schumacker (Philadelphia : Columbia Yarns, 1908) -- the pattern begins on page 125.  The sleeve width has decreased remarkably since the Delineator's sweater not even ten years earlier, but much emphasis is still given to drawing in a narrow waist.

"The Columbia Book of Yarns"

The cover of the 1904 edition, with a lovely, rather Pre-Raphaelite illustration.

The Columbia Yarn Company issued a number of pattern books for knitting and crochet in the early years of the 20th century.  The first edition shows some of the articles in drawings and some in photographs, but the subsequent volumes are nearly all photographs.

All of the editions from 1907 to 1918 are credited to Anna Schumacker.

The Columbia Book of the Use of Yarns (1904)

Columbia Book of Yarns (8th ed., 1907)

Columbia Book of Yarns (9th ed., 1908)

Columbia Book of Yarns (16th ed., 1915)

Columbia Book of Yarns (17th ed., 1916) and another copy here

Columbia Book of Yarns (1917)

Columbia Book of Yarns (19th ed., 1918)

Columbia Book of Yarns : Women's Sweaters, Scarfs and Hats (22nd ed. no.2, 1921)

It is interesting to see the changes over time not only in fashions, but in the names of the garments themselves --  for example, the "Eton Waist" becomes the "Eton Vest".

For a helpful guide to relative yardages of Columbia yarns for those knitters now who want to find an equivalent yarn for the patterns, see the Columbia Yarns page at the Vintage Yarn Wiki.

I have not been able to find out anything about Anna Schumacker, who, by the entries in WorldCat, wrote (or revised) quite a number of books for Columbia besides The Book of Yarns, with publication dates from 1907 to 1919, including Columbia Cottons and How to Use Them: Latest and Most Practical Manual for Making ['Crocheting' on the cover] Infant's and Children's Caps (5th series, 1915).

Some time during or after the Great Depression, the Columbia company merged with Minerva Yarns to become Columbia-Minerva.

A Columbia Yarns ad from "The Dry Goods Economist" (a periodical for dry-goods merchants) of 25 February 1922, via GoogleBooks.