Yarn company designs - classic & by me.

Like most UK knitters, I made sure to watch The Golden Age of Knitting last Wednesday on BBC4. Which was great, but so inadequate- basically the whole history of knitting, including machine knitting, in the 20th century, in one hour. It made me think how much the way you get hold of your knitting patterns has change.

I don't actually remember being taught to knit - though I do remember not being able to cast on and having to get someone else to cast on my teddys' oddment scarves (I could always cast off) - which I guess must mean I learned in the 70s - but most of my active childhood knitting memories are of the 80s. Then, the only real source of patterns was yarn companies - Sirdar, Wendy, Patons etc - or "womens" magazines  - Women's Own or my granny's People's Friend (I still have her pink plastic free People's Friend crochet hooks). In fact I'm pretty sure the Women's Own must have been granny's as well. We had an eclectic collection of patterns culled from both grannies, and from the LYS in Long Eaton where I used to dive in the bargain bins for cheap wool. I was, and I think remain, the only knitting granddaughter, which is why I ended up with all of them - and still have many of them.

So we had some very 80s yarn company patterns:

 

A typical example, in glorious 80s chenille (although chenille is now back, back, BACK, as Smash Hits would say, sticking with the 80s theme).

 

We also had some older yarn company patterns:

 





This is I think a particularly splendid example, from good old Sirdar, the company who basically taught me to knit - I was knitting Sirdar long before I got into Ravelry, knitting magazines or even Rowan. It's obviously my Luton Gran (i.e. paternal)'s pattern as it has the stamp from her LYS in Luton - Angelique, in Riddy Lane - I would imagine long gone. This is quite a good way of dating patterns as my family moved a lot - so I can date a pattern to within a few years according to whether it's stamped Bristol, Bradford or Long Eaton.

However some of my favourites in the collection are the magazine patterns, which they always used to give a bit of "lifestyle" styling, and would produce little themed pattern books, like this:

This one is quite classy as it seems to have been in combination with the Wool marketing board - but these were the days when non-natural fibres were in, so you also got leaflets advertising the joys of, for instance, Bri-Nylon:

 



I've actually always been rather fond of this one! The Wool book is very much of its time, so you get this...

This is the "young and gay" design, so here is "poised and elegant", if you're interested:

I could actually sit around doing this all day (I have LOTS more), but I have samples to finish so I can't. What this is sort of leading me onto is how thrilling it is to be designing for a yarn company - even if I can't say my patterns quite reach the giddy heights of this collection. The Artesano Blue Faced Blend pattern book is out now and has 3 of my accessories and I've been asked to design for them again in a new yarn (That's the sample I'm working on now and it is not giving anything away to tell you the yarn is so gorgeous I am going to have trouble parting with this sample).

This is the Marryat Hat which I've designed for the book - very pleased that Jenny from Artesano is knitting a version of this to send out to someone serving in Afghanistan - apparantly the rib design is ideal under-helmet wear! The pattern is currently free to try on Ravelry & Jenny is going to send any hats anyone else wants to knit for the Forces out to Afghanistan - get in touch with her (ArtesanoYarnsLtd on Rav or @artesanojen on Twitter) if you would like to help out.

The theme for the book was classic British family designs so I when naming my patterns I went for authors of classic British childrens' classics. Frederick Marryat wrote Children of the New Forest and various other books, often with a naval theme - e.g. Mr Midshipman Easy - based on his own experiences in the Navy - the precursor of C.S. Forester, Patrick O'Brien etc. The Forces connection is quite appropriate for Jenny's hats!

I also have Nesbit mitts:

Named after Edith Nesbit,  best known as the author of the Railway Children but who wrote loads of terrific books of which The Pheonix & the Carpet is probably my favourite.

My final choice was John Masefield, who was Poet Laureate, writing virtually the only poem anyone was called on to learn by heart when I was at school ("Quinquereme from Ninevah..." etc), and also one of the most fabulous children's fantasy books The Box of Delights.

It was great to be able to celebrate these authors with the names and hopefully any children who get these patterns knitted for them will go out and have adventures in them!