Vintage Purls

I’ve seen adverts for this little booklet many times in vintage magazines and I’ve finally managed to get hold of my own copy.

It’s delightful. One of my favorite sections is on towels:

“Leave all the washing up, particularly china, to drain instead of drying it, so as to save wear on your tea towels. … 

If you have to go away to stay take your towel with you.

If you are a billetee you must provide your own towels.

It isn’t fair to expect the housewife to be the only one who gives up her coupons. Everyone in the household must contribute coupons when new towels are needed. …

Take your towel with you to the office.

Take your towel with you to the hairdresser.

Buy a new towel only when absolutely necessary. Make do and Mend whenever you can.”

I can see Douglas Adams may have been inspired by such words; a towel is a vital asset.

Of course this wee booklet has much to say about knitting. “Wool is precious” and every ounce is to be valued and used. Knit and reknit. “You save every scrap of wool when you are unpicking, don’t you? A needleful of wool can be used for mending or sewing seams.”

 We seem to think we know a lot about recycling these days and attach a sense of pride to any act we view as recycling but compared to wartime Britain (and other heavily rationed nations) we are mere amateurs methinks.

I totally get the irony of posting about being a bad blogger in January and then totally failing to post anything in February. Sigh.  

I purchased another spinning wheel recently unfortunately it’s in Rangiora and I’m in Dunedin. I’m trying to work on a way to get it to me without too much cost being incurred. It’s a Wing, a friend has one and I got to try it out, I liked, I liked a lot and I’ve been wanting an upright wheel to cart around instead of my slightly awkward to move Ashford Traditional. 

I’m knitting but have nothing finished to show since I keep starting new things (I’m such a process knitter). Yes the Model T is still on the needles and has made little progress of late. It’s summer - he doesn’t need a jersey at the moment. 

I’ve been dying lots and lots of yarn and am recovering from a terrible dye-geek wave of excitement over getting a ph meter. 

The local Guild’s Knitting Study Group project for the year is a vest. I’m considering the 1933 Lux Book model, not exactly what they meant by vest I think but totally fair game as far as I’m concerned. 

Lyne mentioned that she’d discovered Ravelry from my brief mention of it “recently” (stop laughing). If you don’t know about Ravelry, get ye to www.ravelry.com and sign up. It’s a fantastic tool for knitters and a great way to meet fellow knitters. 

I realised this morning that if I don’t post something today that I won’t have posted anything at all this month and I’m sure that would make me a very bad blogger indeed. I have not been neglecting the site (despite external evidence to the contrary). I’m running out of space with my hosting package and I’m doing a lot of behind the scenes twiddling at the moment to make this affair a leaner, meaner, fighting machine. I’ve also got some grand plans bubbling away. Rest assured more patterns are coming.  

I’ve been knitting steadily too (of course). I muttered the frightful words “there will be no knitting tomorrow, I have to get some work done” earlier in the week. I was of course lying, there was knitting just not so much of it. If you have a Ravelry account you can see some of my recent work (my Ravelry username is vintagepurls), nothing particularly vintage right at the moment though.

Here is my favorite cutey project of the minute: 

Baby socks - always a classic. These are toe up numbers (my pattern), the yarn is one of my dye jobs (green machine). The little picot hem makes a darling turn down cuff: 

Edit: Okay despite what the date at the top of the post says it’s the 31st in my corner of the world. Stupid time setting, hopefully future posts will reflect the timing of my reality better.