Vintage patterns and the search for discontinued yarns

The beauty and pain of working with vintage patterns is that they require a little love and work before you’ve even started swatching and knitting. And math. Oh the math.

We get often get asked about the discontinued yarns. The yarn companies are often long gone by the time we find the pattern and decide to make it. We want to know how much yarn we need to buy at the start of the project so we don't have the match dye lots, or worse, try to find a substitute yarn for the substitute yarn. This means a little research is needed to find a substitute modern yarn.

The research I do to find the correct yarn weight and estimate yarn yardage generally consists of:

• An online search of the name of the discontinued yarn. This usually leads me to the Purple Kitty Discontinued Yarn Chart site (https://purplekittyyarns.com/discontinued-yarn). 

• I also take a look at the Vintage yarn wiki to see if we have the yarn info listed there (https://vintageyarn.fandom.com/wiki/VintageYarn_Wiki). Alison posts information on yarn as she finds it in the vintage pattern books or when she finds vintage yarn in thrift stores. You can add vintage yarn info as you come across it in real life.

• I’ve also found that using the Bing search engine often provides better search results on vintage yarns than other search engines. I don’t know why it works better it just does.

• An Etsy search for the yarn.

• A search on eBay for the specific yarn. It’s amazing how often I find the yarn I am searching for, for sale on eBay.

• A Ravelry search for both the yarn manufacturer and the specific yarn. There’s a lot of good information entered by users.

• A search for similar types of patterns to find the yardage requirements for the specific pattern.

If I can’t find information for the yarn, I am searching for I head over to the Craft Yarn Council’s website to look at their Standard Yarn Weight System. I’ve been able to figure out the yarn weight based on the knitting needle or crochet hook size and/or the swatch gauge of the pattern. While this will not give the yardage needed for a pattern, at least I have an idea of what weight yarn to use (https://www.craftyarncouncil.com/standards/yarn-weight-system).

For example, we were looking for information on Spinnerin Sparkle Twist yarn. I couldn’t find any info online regarding the yarn. I visited most of the sites listed above, and still came up with nothing. After looking at the Standard Yarn Weight System, I figured that the yarn was a lace or super fine yarn (0 or 1) based on the size of the crochet hook used. I then went to the Purple Kitty site, saw that the yarn would likely be a Category “A” yarn, and that the average yarn yardage for that category was 175 yards. It varied from 145 to 200+ yards per skein. The pattern called for 11-13 skeins of yarn, so I multiplied 175 yards of yarn by 11 skeins and came up with 1,925 yards of yarn.

That’s my process for estimating yardage for vintage yarn and patterns.

Happy needling!

Update: 1950s Three-Quarter Length Cardigan

I’m slowly making progress on the 1950s Three Quarter Sleeve Cardigan Sweater. I really like the design of the sweater. Having only side seams to sew up is gonna be terrific! I don’t like seaming very much, I’m not great at it. While practice makes perfect, it drives me crazy trying to get the seams to look nice and lined up correctly.

My check list. In pencil. So I can erase it when I have to rip out and redo.

I’ve been tracking my rows using a handwritten check list. It’s great. I can erase the pencil marks when I rip back after I discover mistakes. Boy, I’ve done a lot of ripping back because I lose focus for 4 or 5 stitches and knit or slip two stitches in a row. That really messes up the pattern. I’ve also used lifelines like they are going out of style.

A view of all the lifelines in the sweater back & sleeve backs.

The lifelines provide a good way to make sure the lengths are the same on each of the fronts. I can line up the lifelines as I complete the right front sections and insert a lifeline through the rows I noted during the construction of the left side.

I restarted the increases 4+ times. I didn’t like the way the edge was looking with the first several types of increases. I finally settled on knitting (or purling) the first stitch and then making a stitch (M1R or M1L).  

The increases meant that some of the rows have three stitches of the same color. At first, I worried about the stitches were going to stick out and look weird;  then I realized that I was making stitches that will be seamed up and barely noticeable. I shouldn’t have too many people wanting to inspect the underarm seams. I can’t even imagine how that would happen in the real world surrounded by non-knitters.

When it came time to put the right front stitches on a separate circular needle, bind off the neck, and work on the left front, I decided to try and leave the right side stitches on my working needle. It was a terrible decision. Not only did I have to constantly check that I was working on the left front, the needle was getting pretty heavy. I finally wised up and moved the right front to it's own needle with stoppers on the end, to keep the piece from sliding off, and the whole project became so much easier.

Left sleeve back.

I pinned out the left sleeve back on my foam blocking pad to measure the width. At this point I was really really hoping I was at the 11.5 inches as the pattern requested. 

That's it for now. I'm still poking along. Next up: finishing the left front and starting the right front.

Link to the pattern.

Happy knitting!