1 post tagged “book reviews”

Thanks to assorted miracles of technology, we have quite a collection of Victorian knitting and crochet patterns available to us; just yesterday on antiquepatternlibrary.org, I was browsing through an Irish crochet lace manual from 1900, and assorted guides to winter knitwear from the 1860's. Many of the patterns are quite beautiful; some are probably must-haves for historical recreationists, and some others might work even with today's fashion sensibilities. But there are some mysteries - what should you substitute for circa-1900 DMC #70 crochet thread? How can you pick out proper needle sizes without your very own personal 125-year-old gauge? What the heck is "Berlin wool", and how is it different from "fleecy"? Couldn't they have given us a couple hints about at least what gauge we were looking for? Or some, any at all, dimension relevant to the finished item?

As I discovered the other day, there's an easy answer for the first question: DMC #70 crochet thread. (Go DMC.) The others, not so much. I checked this book out of the library hoping for a little information relevant to Victorian yarns as much as for the sock patterns.

Nancy Bush had to address some of these issues as she was working on this book, which is based on sock patterns that appeared in Weldon's Practical Needleworker (probably the premier British knitting magazine of the day, and available in facsimile from Interweave Press) throughout the last half of the nineteenth century.

The most important discovery she seems to have made pertained to the needle sizing gauge: The needles called for by most of the patterns, in the size range of 14-16, were equivalent to modern US sizes 000 and 0000. And that kind of rendered moot the question of what modern yarns were equivalent to the specified ones - because nobody but the most mavenny of authenticity mavens is going to knit socks (or, imagine, thigh-high stockings!) on size 0000 (1.25 mm!) needles. (I think needles of this size are included in the Boye "sock set" I've seen around - but I definitely fall into the "you must be kidding me" camp on this issue. If authenticity in your Victorian garb is important enough to you that you will willingly knit thigh-high stockings on size 0000 needles, more power to you...) And thus, a lesson to take to heart for anyone trying to knit from a Victorian pattern: the socks Nancy Bush presents here are certainly in the spirit of those published in Weldon's, but adapted to modern materials and knitterly sensibilities. You almost need to figure out what you're going to end up with and then work out how to get there.

(From a technical perspective: several different heels and toes are presented, and a couple of the socks are knit in a fashion we find kind of unusual. Good stuff.)