The gift of awesome vintage patterns


A while ago, a woman from my church community gave me a large bag full of knitting odds and ends, since she was no longer able to do it herself.  I had recently started a monthly "Fibre Party", basically a nicer name for a Stitch-n-Bitch group, at the church and this woman decided that I would be able to give these odds ands a happy home.

When I opened it up, there were some amazingly kitschy acrylic yarns, a couple random darning needles, a set of very long, straight size 8 needles, and a whole bunch of old patterns.  The patterns are AMAZING. Between the fantastically cheesy (see the photo above) to the fantastically hideous Christmas stockings, it was a real treasure trove.  There were 2 thick books of sweater patterns for men and family full of Scandinavian fair-isle patterns from the mid-1940s, some children's sweater patterns from the 1970s, 1970s christmas patterns and random mimeographed versions, and a couple more odds and ends. Particularly the forced poses from the 1940s mens sweater book are a riot, and the fact that there is a squirrel fair-isle pattern with the Scandinavian sweater book made me giggle.

Thanks to a recently acquired printer/scanner at home, I decided to record these amazingly awesome patterns for the future, and I couldn't keep them to myself.  The folder is now on Google Drive, here.

If anyone makes something from these patterns, I would love to know and see the results! I am hoping that this is the gift that keeps on giving.

**Disclaimer: I do not have specific rights to these old patterns and am not profiting in any way from sharing these online. I am deathly afraid of lawyers and really don't want to be sued.**
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Update: Beginning of last year, I made a tea cozy for my almost mother-in-law, since apparently people don't sell tea cozies anymore. I had found this really awesome pattern online, but hadn't actually managed to save it. Luckily, I managed to find it back in my old email again. It's an awesome pattern from 1945 that is supposed to resemble daffodils - it was pretty simple and it was my first really complicated texture.  You can find the same pattern here, even though it's not the same website where I first found it. It's still an awesome pattern.

I hadn't thought about that in ages, and I know that the place I originally found it had a bunch of other historic patterns that I would love to find, but perhaps I at least have a start!

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