Sunday, November 28, 2010

Jackson's Practical Companion, Page 126

I have two more patterns from The Practical Companion to the Work Table, by Elizabeth Jackson that I have charted out: German Lace Pattern from page 124, and Open Pattern For Shawl from page 126.

Well, I haven't gotten around to knitting swatches up yet, but lillybomm on Ravelry has already tested the Shawl Pattern: in a lovely orange yarn. So I thought I may as well post the chart without knitting up a swatch to go with it. It is a fairly simple pattern.

The german lace pattern appears to have several errors in the written instructions, so I won't post the chart until I've actually swatched up what I think is the correct pattern.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Jackson's Practical Companion, Page 105

The next edging swatch I made in The Practical Companion to the Work Table, by Elizabeth Jackson was the Brussels Lace pattern, on page 105.

As with the prior two patterns (Pointed Lace, Open Lace), this pattern is again written in garter stitch lace, and I have charted (and swatched) both the original and a stockinette style version. These charts use two additional symbols. One is a double decrease. The other is a non-standard symbol indicating two yarns-overs; on the following row only one of the yarn-overs is used and the other is dropped. This results in an extra loose yarn over, and a larger hole.

This pattern has an 8 row repeat. The written instructions for row 9 say to bind off some number of stitches then continue with row 1. In the following charts, row 9 is fully diagrammed. Thus row 1 is only used at the beginning, and the pattern then repeats between rows 2 and 9. When ending, the last full row of the pattern should be row 8, with the 9th row being the bindoff. Here is a chart of the original version, with even rows knit.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Jackson's Practical Companion, Page 103

I continued swatching some of the edging patterns in The Practical Companion to the Work Table, by Elizabeth Jackson. Following is the sample and corresponding charts for the Open Lace Pattern, on page 103.

As with the prior lace pattern, the instructions were written for a garter stitch lace. I concluded after knitting both the version as written and the modified version in stockinette style, that I actually preferred the garter stitch version for this particular edging.

The original instructions are missing a single knit stitch at the end of row 8. Here is a chart of the pattern, with the correction marked in orange:

Monday, November 22, 2010

Jackson's Practical Companion

I was thinking of making a baby bonnet for my future niece, but I was unimpressed with the selection of baby bonnets I found on Ravelry so I decided to browse through the victorian era public domain books on Google. Well, I didn't find much in the way of baby bonnets (so far), but I found a number of edging patterns that looked interesting.

So I've started to chart and knit a few of them. Almost all the patterns I looked at are written out as garter stitch lace, but I've charted them out as both garter stitch and stockinette stitch. Thus, the following charts show the front of the lace. For the most part, the charts use the JIS symbols (a list and visual instructions of how to knit the stitches can be found at this helpful site, and more general information on Japanese knitting symbols can be found here), but the following key can also be used (in the following, SSK is used instead of SKPsso).

I started with the pointed lace pattern, on page 102 of The Practical Companion to the Work Table by Elizabeth Jackson:

Sunday, November 14, 2010

V&A Fashion In Detail

At some point this summer, when I noticed Amazon was out of "Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Fashion in Detail", [Amazon, B&N,GoogleBooks,V&A], I hurriedly ordered "Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail" before it also vanished, [Amazon,B&N,GoogleBooks,V&A]. At some point "Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Fashion in Detail" came back in stock and I got around to ordering it. Well, last week I ordered "Underwear: Fashion in Detail", [Amazon,B&N,GoogleBooks,V&A]. So now I have three V&A books of eye candy.

The cover photos on the books are of course ©V&A
Shop at the V&A: 17th & 18th C., 19th C., Underwear

The "Underwear: Fashion in Detail" may have somehow been both the most disappointing and the most interesting. Despite having a gorgeous corset on the cover, I think most of the book covered 20th century underwear. They had plenty of earlier pieces (chemises, shifts, drawers, stays, corsets, hoops, and bustles), but the book was organized to highlight certain things, and the 20th century had so much change in underwear, including underwear as outerwear, that there seemed to be a lot of 20th century selections. I found this is what made the book interesting; the text explained a lot of the changing fashions and how they sometimes fit within the more general social context.

In any case, some of the 20th century pieces were still stunning. One of my favorites was the stocking with the embroidered, sequined snake encircling the leg, circa 1900, Item V&A:T.53-1962. Another was one of the dresses, circa 1930s, shown on the back cover (the one on the left), Item V&A:T.308-1984.

Again, photos displayed on the front and back covers are ©V&A
I am also vaguely tempted to try and crochet a whirlpool bra. Don't know what I'd do with it if I made one, but designing and creating something like the bra on pg 150-151, Item V&A: T.196-1989, just seems kind of interesting.