Showing posts with label Techniques: Short rows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Techniques: Short rows. Show all posts

Saturday, March 28, 2026

Dahlia pan-holder from "The Workbasket" (ca.1937)

This is the "Dahlia" pan-holder, one of three from the vol.3, no.3 issue of "The Workbasket" -- "Home and Needlecraft for Pleasure and Profit -- Ideas for the Bazaar, the Home, Gifts and Sparetime Moneymakers -- with Many Inexpensive, Easily Made Articles that find a Ready Sale" -- published in Kansas City, ca. 1937 (and generously made available through Antique Pattern Library).  "Frost Tone thread" is vaguely suggested in the pattern, but no gauge or target size is given; I used Lily Sugar 'n Cream in two not-very-dahlia-like-but-high-contrast colors, resulting in a potholder about 9 in./23cm across.  The yarn not in use is simply carried along the round underneath the working yarn, which makes for a lot fewer ends needing to be woven in, although it does mean that the carried color tends to peep through the stitches.  The scalloped petal tips are made with short rows.

(Lily Frost-Tone thread looks from the photos on Ravelry to be about the weight and luster of size 3 perle cotton.) 

There is a short history of "The Workbasket" magazine by Nancy B. on HubPages -- originally "Aunt Martha's Workbasket" but it seems, judging by the relative sizes on the cover of even this fairly-early issue, that most people just called it "The Workbasket".  The magazine was published for an impressive 61 years, changing with the times in the types of patterns and crafts it featured, but finally ceased publication in 1996.  The Antique Pattern Library has a number of issues available, mostly from the 1930s and 40s.


Thursday, October 24, 2019

"London Eyre Shawl"



 
(There may have been two shawls used in the film, as this one looks considerably smaller than the one in the photos below.)


The London Eyre Shawl free pattern by Donna Strom recreates the shawl worn by Mia Wasikowska as the title character in "Jane Eyre" (2011).  Strom notes,
The London Eyre Shawl pattern was created and named solely by me as a replication/copy of a shawl which appears briefly in the 2011 Focus Features film production of "Jane Eyre" -- costume design by Michael O'Connor. According to Focus Features the original shawl was free-knitted by the owner of a company near London, England which produces custom pieces for period films. The name of the pattern is my way of paying tribute to the talented original knitter -- whose name is not known to me. To the best of my knowledge, no written pattern exists for the original shawl.
Note that Charlotte Brontë's novel was published in 1847, though is set somewhat earlier. Most film adaptations tend to use fashions of the 1840s for the main part of the story.

Short rows contribute to much of the shaping in this shawl.



Friday, May 25, 2018

"Mittens Knitted on Two Needles" (1876)

"Mittens Knitted on Two Needles" in Regia 4-fädig in color 1991 (grey heather) and Paton's Kroy in "Muslin" (cream). The crochet edging was improvised. A handsome and comfortable fingerless mitt. Photos from A Bluestocking Knits.

The terms "mitts" and "mittens," though today we usually use to refer to, respectively, fingerless-but-thumbed gloves and those with one fully-enclosed space each for thumb and all of the fingers together, seem to have been used fairly interchangeably in the early days of published knitting patterns, as here in the "Mittens Knitted on Two Needles" by Miss H.P. Ryder, in her Winter Comforts and How to Knit Them (1876). The Misses Ryder, sisters Elizabeth and Henrietta, were both writers of knitting "receipts" during the middle and later parts of the Victorian period; they were from Richmond, in Yorkshire.

The thumb is shaped with short rows. Note, too, this early use of the slipped-stitch selvage.

Uploaded to Archive.org courtesy the Richard Rutt Collection at the University of Southampton.

See also the article "The Richmond Glove and its Creator, Henrietta Pulleine Ryder" by Lesley O'Connell Edwards in the March/April 2018 issue of Piecework (Ravelry link here) which has background information on the Ryder sisters and an updated pattern for Miss Henrietta's Richmond Glove, which is a layered duo -- knitted in one piece -- of glove and fingerless mitt.

A blog post by Ann Kingstone about the Ryder sisters and the Richmond Glove is here.

The original ribbed top edge of the Mitten Knitted on Two Needles, before sewing up the side seam or edging the thumb.