Vintage

I'm very fond of old knitting books, so I was delighted when this turned up at the library used book sale yesterday.



I was holding down the fort at the library itself, while the sale was going on across the way at the Legion building, but Gretchen spotted this and held it aside for me, for which I am grateful.

The bulk of the book is a collection of charts for color patterns, most of which I already have available in one source or another (though a couple were new to me). But when it first came out it must have been like the Barbara Walker for Scandinavian color patterns. Barbara, wonderful as she is, scorned to include more than one pattern for stranded color work in her first "Treasury"; and even that, one feels, only reluctantly. She says these are not properly speaking stitch patterns, (being basically stockinette), describes the technique succinctly, and then says (justly) that anyone can work out designs for themselves.

I suspect she simply didn't enjoy this type of knitting or find it very interesting, which is fine. She gave us more than enough in other areas. Still, I imagine that at the time there were many knitters who were interested in the technique and didn't want to spend hours working out different variations with pencil and graph paper, or who were in search of authentic looking patterns for ski sweaters and such. For them, Chatterton must have been a godsend.