Best laid knitting plans...

I'm sorry to those of you waiting for my kickoff post for the Vintage Knitting College! Sometimes the best laid plans go awry, which has been the case for me. I wanted to use my new video camera that I bought, however once I finally had time to sit down and play with it, I realized it won't do close up without being blurry. Of course, I realized this after the return policy expired.  I'm trying to figure out if I can accurately capture in photographs what I wanted to show in a video.  I'm still sorting some things out as a result, unfortunately. So I wanted to let you guys know what was going on! Thanks for being patient. :)

In the meantime, I'll show you a bit of another project I've been working on, since I can't work on my VKC project until my posts catch up to my knitting. (Now how's that!) So I started a cardigan, another colorwork pattern from the 1940s, Bestway B2637. You can buy the .pdf from Retro Knitting Company here, and I added it to the Ravelry database here.

I decided to stick pretty much with the original colors, and I'm really happy with how the color scheme has worked out. (Except I need to order a couple more balls of yarn!)



I'm knitting it in the round, with a 9 stitch steek up the center. You can see the steek as the area of stripes that breaks up the rest of the pattern in the photo below. Once I'm an inch about that orange stitch marker towards the top, I will work the bind off for my armholes, but will then cast on steeks for each armhole, continuing to knit in the round. At the end, I will reinforce the steeks, cut them, and I'll suddenly have a cardigan body instead of a tube. And I'll have pretty much avoided purling in colorwork entirely.

This all means the colorwork just flies off the needles! You can certainly purl in colorwork (and I do it plenty), but it does slow you down quite a bit. The added benefit of working a steek in the center of the cardigan is that I'm changing my colors there. This means I'll cut away all the ends when I open the steek, saving myself hours of weaving in ends. Big bonus in my book!

Sometimes 40s patterns require several "oddments" of colors. I actually used one less than was called for, because I didn't have two greens I liked, so I just used one. But there's two yellows, two reds, two blues, a green, white, and the oatmeal background color.

When you think about it, this is a great way to use up leftover yarn from other projects. In a time of rationing and making do during the war, highly patterned jumpers may have looked like a luxury item but could have conceivably required no purchase of new supplies at all! And with all the colors in them, think how easily they would have paired with a variety of wardrobe staples. It's really quite clever.



Anyway, I hope to sort out my technical difficulties and get the Vintage Knitting College on the road very soon!