Saturday, September 26, 2009

Ox-Heart Point Knit Edging from 1880

While I was at it, I went ahead and worked up a second edging from Knitting and Crochet: An Illustrated Manual of Home Industry. And I must say that although the pamphlet does have illustrations, it does not have illustrations of everything, not by a long shot. I was knitting blind here. Though I suppose the up side is that I'll never have to worry that my recreation doesn't look just like the original. I'll never know if it does or not.



My written version came out this way:

Ox Heart Point Edging

Working Note: on Rows 2, 4, 6 and 8, you will be knitting into the first loop and purling into the second loop of the double yarn over.

Cast on 6 stitches
Row 1: k1, yo, p2tog, yo twice, p2tog, yo, k1: 8 sts on needle.
Row 2: k2tog, k2, p1, k1, p1, k1:7 sts on needle.
Row 3: k2, yo, p2tog, yo twice, p2tog, yo, k1: 9 sts on needle.
Row 4: k2tog, k2, p1, k1, p1, k2: 8 sts on needle.
Row 5: k3, yo, p2tog, yo twice, p2tog, yo, k1: 10 sts on needle.
Row 6: k2tog, k2, p1, k1, p1, k3: 9 sts on needle.
Row 7: k4, yo, p2tog, yo twice, p2tog, yo, k1: 11 sts on needle.
Row 8: K2tog, k2, p1, k1, p1, k4: 10 sts on needle.
Row 9: k9, yo, k1: 11 sts on needle.
Row 10: k2tog, k1, pass the st formed by k2tog over the second st knit to bind off 1, bind off 3 more sts in knit, k5: 6 sts on needle.

and it looks like this:



I don't know why it's called "Ox-Heart".

I must say I've been quite engaged (obsessed?) with looking over the old knitting pamphlets that can be found by searching in Google Books. The one this edging comes from was published by "The New York Tribune" as an extra, and many (all?) of the patterns were sent in by appreciative readers of their knitting column - some of the introductory statements are rather charming. One thing that hasn't changed over the years is the eagerness of enthusiastic knitters and crocheters to share their favorite projects.

2 comments:

TracyKM said...

The old patterns are fascinating, aren't they?
At first glance, I would interpret the first row as "Knit 1, YO twice, p2tog, YO 3x, p2tog, YO, Knit 1"...however, that's 10st and row 2 uses only 8st, LOL. Perhaps the difference is how the author holds the yarn?

Cindy G said...

Exactly. I ran into the same situation on the first edging I tried (Wheat-Ear), a double yarn over resulted in too many stitches. In both situations, this came right before a p2tog, so I guessed that what it meant was "yo and bring the yarn forward into position to purl".