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!

Finished Object: 1930s Sweater Sheer Lace Blouse or Top

1930s Sweater Sheer Lace Blouse or Top

Knit pattern PDF 5353

 

We would like to thank Kate for sending in pics of her finished sweater. She knit the Sheer Lace Blouse and it looks great. I can’t believe how nice her knitting is, especially with such fine yarn. Kate used a vintage crochet cotton. And is a really fast knitter. I wish I was that fast.

 

 

From Kate: 

"I thought you might be interested to see the jumper I made from the lovely pattern I bought from you in August. I love it so much I am making another one straight away :)"

"I like to knit old patterns using old yarns, and I don't worry too much if the yarn I want to use is not the same ply or weight as the pattern was written for."

“This is a really great, easy to follow pattern that was fun to knit. I used 3.25mm needles for the basque and 4.5mm for the torso and sleeves. The only variation I made to the pattern was that for the sleeve top decreases, I only made one decrease per row, where the pattern calls for two per row.”

 

 

You can find the pattern here.  

Our thanks again to Kate. She made a lovely sweater. I'm a little jealous of her knitting skills. 

Don't forget to check out the Vintage Yarn Wikia page for questions regarding vintage yarn weights.

Happy knitting!

Ladies Three-Quarter Sleeve Cardigan - The Beginning

The yarn has been calling to me for a year and a half. I finally had to start the project.

I inherited a stash of almost vintage yarn from a friend of my mom’s. There are plenty of yarns in the stash that were really nice and colors and weights that I want to make things (sweaters, hats, vests) with. There were a couple of yarns in the stash that I didn’t particularly like, but for some reason couldn’t get rid of them. Something about them made me want to hang on to them and use them together in a project. It’s the weirdest thing. 

I don’t really like the color of one of the yarns in this new project, but I liked it with the second color of yarn. I’m not sure they even go well when put together. But there you go, I couldn’t get rid of the yarn, so I had to come up with something that would use both yarns in a single project. 

Bernat Berella & Unger Utopia yarns.

I was clicking through our patterns one morning and came across this pattern, the 1950s Three Quarter Sleeve Cardigan Sweater - Knit pattern. The pattern called for mohair yarn, but I don’t enjoy working with mohair yarn…it’s almost impossible to rip out stitches when I mess up stitches.

1950s Three Quarter Sleeve Cardigan Sweater - Knit pattern PDF 0858

I started with a swatch to test the pattern. I hadn’t done a slip stitch pattern before and I couldn’t figure out how the stitches were going to work together to create the design. It turns out the pattern rows are easily memorized and even easier to knit.

Test swatch, using scrap yarn.

The yarns were perfect for the jacket. It’s pretty neat looking in-person. Using the darker yarn as the secondary color means that the color pops look more like shadows - they are subtle.

I have 4 skeins of the lighter/main color and 3 skeins of the darker/contrast color. I searched online and could not find any yardage information for the Bear Brand Curlicue or the Fleisher’s Curlette yarns. That isn’t too surprising. Back in the olden days, yardage wasn’t generally included on the label. The original yarns were worsted weight. Here's a link to theVintage Yarn Wikia page for info on yarn information we've run across over the years.

The pattern calls for 11 ounces of the main color and 6 ounces of the contrast color.  I have 14.10 ounces of the light and 10.5ounces of the dark yarns.  Here’s hoping I have enough to make the sweater.

Slip stitch pattern.

The project details:

• Yarn 1: Unger Utopia, Color: 171, 100% Courtelle Acrylic, 240 yards/skein.
• Yarn 2: Color: Bernat Berella, Color: 8815/Antq Rose, 100% Acrylic, 200+ yards/skein.
• Needles: 8 US. Chaiogoo Stainless Steel.
• Gauge: 5 sts = 1 inch (per the pattern).

I should have pics of the started project shortly. Fall baseball has started and we have some Saturday games where I will have to be knitting to calm my nerves.

Happy Knitting!