Everything old is new again!

I have been collecting vintage patterns for ages and have been desperate to actually try and knit something from one of them so I took the plunge! I chose a simple looking shawl/shrug-like covering that had no lace involved and only one page of instructions!

Perfect!

I cast on with a lovely lavender purple acrylic I already had in 5ply and using the needles suggested, bravely cast on! I used a circular needle however for this since I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to keep control of over 100 stitches on any of my straights, however long they were!

The knitting itself was pretty boring and not really that well explained in the tiny amount of instruction. Once I worked out what I thought they wanted and placed stitch markers to keep track of stitch increases it got a bit easier...right up to the point, half way through when I ran out of yarn!

I only had that one ball but never fear! I still had the ball band and an intended visit to town (118kms away!) for the next day. No problem! I'll just buy another ball tomorrow.

But alas, disappointment and frustration greeted me! Although I could find the exact yarn required, I could not find the exact dye lot! Not for love or money! So I bought another ball as close to what I had begun with as I could and consoled myself with making it a design element.

So off I went again and soon (although not nearly soon enough to suit me!) I had finished and I had...a great big sheet of knitting.

Now to follow the very brief instructions on how to construct the shawl from this great sheet I had before me.

First mistake: I decided to iron it so it would lie flatter and (I thought) be easier to fold into the desired shape. Result? I ended up with an enormous great sheet of knitting that required either the whole dining table or my ironing board to try and make sense of what I had before me.

Second mistake: It doesn't matter how hard I try I will never get the desired shape if I keep confusing the bottom of the shawl with the top. Once I'd realized what I was doing wrong I did actually start to make headway!

I soon realized however that there was simply no easy way to do this! Folding down the neck and the final edge of the shawl was relatively pain free but then there was the issue of the four tucks, great big long ones! In the end after much experimentation and annoyance I had to sit and labouriously tack together each fold using long quilting pins to hold the folds in place on the right side and a metal ruler of the right dimensions to stabilise the tucks sufficiently so I could sew them together from the back. It took all day.

Then I had to shape the front opening by folding the tucks together to give it the sweeping appearance around the body. Not too hard but then I realized that all the tucks just flopped down from their positions unlike the one in the picture where they seemed to sit with no effort at all, perfectly upright. Damn! Out came the needle and thread again.

I had to tack each fold to where it needed to sit and that was difficult without the stitches becoming to obvious! But after another day of handsewing it was done! I crocheted around each front closure so it looked tidy and finally swept it around my shoulders...

It seemed a little...big?

I attached the hook and loop closures and sewed on the ribbon but it was no use...

It was just too big and wouldn't sit nicely on my shoulders and I didn't like how the closure hung.

Poop!

So I looked at it for another day and decided what I was going to do. I lay it over my shoulders and folded the front edges over each other so the closure became slightly assymetrical. That way I didn't have to add a bulky pleat to the back to try and take out excessive length which would ultimately ruin the drape of the shawl and I didn't have to fold over the front edges, creating clumsy, bulky material at the front. I sewed one hook and loop closure to the centre of the closure going under the top to fix it in place and the two hook and loops on each corner of the top layer to anchor it to the front of the shawl. Then I sewed two faux ribbon ties to the two spots so it kind of looked like they were keeping the whole thing together. It was an improvised kind of solution, I used buttons to fix the ribbons in place but I may sew them down later since they still tend to move slightly and I don't like it when they don't sit even. But otherwise? I am very pleased with the results :)

It sits beautifully, is soft and warm. Not the least nasty and squeaky like some of the old acrylic used to be like. You can clearly see the colour changes between balls of wool but fortunately they fell on a fold so the change isn't as apparent as it might otherwise have been had it happened midway through a length of plain knitting. It falls right on the fold ridge. Couldn't have planned it better if I'd tried :)

So there we have it! My first truly vintage pattern worked and completed. And now I know some things.

Most notably: Few instructions are NOT necessarily a good thing! It's nice to figure somethings out yourself but if there hadn't been a picture with this pattern I would have totally failed!! I'd never have figured out how to put the thing together and even with it there are elements were I had to go "Stuff it!" and improvise. It was necessary and now I have this lovely garment from a beautifully attractive time brought back into the present.

I am satisfied!

Happy knitting :)