My new pair of Clarks shoes!

After collecting the pretty images of the Clarks shoes past week here I decided to get a pair for myself. Since those shoes were from the 2013 fall collection a lot of were sold out (sigh...) and what was available wasn't on sale (of course). At the end of the day I picked up the Oxford-type 'Alfresco Art', a pair of lace up shoes with 'snake' details in black, which I can wear both with skirts and with trousers. The fit is really great and the inside has a soft cushion which relieves the pressure on the ball of the foot. Though I have wide feet the 'regular' d-width is pretty comfortable for me (a lot of shoes, like pumps are also available in the extra-wide E-width!) Though I paid the full price I'm convinced it is worth the investment. I'm already addicted!

Jumper plans spring 2014

I have already made plans for knitting a few new jumpers!
Moving a bit backwards in time, to the late 30's I choose the 3 patterns above. The 3 jumpers above have their individual challenges to me and all of them need to be resized a bit as well. Of course, I'm not planning to frog and re-knit them like I did on the Victory, so there are no lace stitches this time! Nice, solid knits with geometric patterns, mainly constructed with basic knit/purl stitches for an easy calculation of the gauge.

1. valerie
This pattern appeared in an 1940's AWW. Though it is a 1940 model we know that the AWW used mostly imported patterns which were released overseas earlier. I love the tabs and the all-over pattern which make this jumper special and very 30's. Actually, I already started knitting this one in 2013, but sewing up the pieces and the finishing took more than a month. In te meantime the Knit for Victory challenge started and I just didn't got round to share the finished jumper. Mine has 3/4 sleeves and is knit in a bright, electric blue color. I ordered the yarn (drops baby merino as always) when it was on sale. A short series of the knitting process will follow shortly.

• my challenge: to achieve the right fit and calculate 3/4 sleeves

2. trellis jumper
This is a Lincoln Mills booklet pattern, which is another free pattern from the internet. There is no exact dating possible, but looking at the hairstyle, the small shoulder pads and the button detail it must be released somewhere in the late 30's or very early 40's (though in the early 40's the shoulders 'grew' quickly bigger, like my Philippa's)
Again, the pattern looks rather simple, but very decorative, containing a small cable pattern in the yoke and sleeves. Most vintage patterns include some amount of increase along the torso to achieve a slight V-shape. This pattern instructs to increase in the last row of ribbing to the definitive amount of stitches at once. That way the visual lines of the vertical cables won't be disturbed.
I'm going to use the same drops baby merino yarn in bright blue-ish red, which I also used in my Victory jumper (yarn ordered when it was on sale)

• my challenge: cable pattern

3. easy stitches jumper
Guess what, another free pattern from the net! The main pattern of the bodice of this one looks similar to the trellis jumper, but the spacing between the vertical lines is filled up with moss-stitch here. Also, the jumper has a rounded yoke which is knitted in the round for the front and the back, including the top of the sleeves. raglan style sleeves. This will be a new challenge to knit! Interesting detail: the pattern instructs to cast on more stitches for the front than for the back. The color is going to be medium or light gray drops yarn which I yet have to order. I might try another quality of yarn to avoid too much calculations in the round yoke area. The drops cotton merino yarn is slightly heavier than the baby merino I use and is available in a pretty light-green color which I like very much!

• my challenge: to knit the yoke in round with the right fit

Similar patterns

source image

I came across this 1943 Stitchcraft cover today. The pattern used here is very similar to the Top Honors jumper pattern. There are probably more stitches in between the slip-stitch sections, but otherwise it is the same.
Knit in the Italian (or Hungarian) tricolor it would look very cheerful for spring!

Jumper styles and shapes from the 30's to the 60's

It is interesting to look at how jumper styles changed through the decades. Before starting to knit you really need to look at the pictures of the finished items and ask yourself the quetion: Will this look good on me? We all have different body shapes and let's be honest, not every garment accentuates the best parts of it. The models, even from 100 years ago seem to have the same, slender body shapes with tiny waists which makes every item look wonderful on them. Frustrating!

When it comes to making vintage inspired garments I think you need to know which era produced the most flattering patterns for your body type.
As you might know by now, I prefer the 40's. This is why:

• The accentuated shoulders are perfect to disguise the lack of shape in the waist. 
• The 30's could also be a good choice because of a wide variety of embellishments, for the same reason. 

I also know which parts to adjust:

• Those era's are well-known for the high necklines. I lower them a bit because of my round face. 
• Since I am high waisted I know it is more flattering to add extra width above the waistline to create a slightly blousy shape.
• Of course, I lengthen the tops too, because a very short jumper with a high waist is not a good combination...

The 60's are not my fashion era, simply because of the lack of shaping in the garments. I can imagine those garments would look fabulous on a thin person with small boobs, but with my swayback and broad shoulders they'd just look shapeless sacks on me. The 50's have a question mark in my book, because the hourglass shape which I simply don't have...

Which fashion era do you prefer and which one looks best on you?
Sloping shoulders or elevated ones, dolman sleeves or puff sleeves, fitted tops or relaxed ones?

Vintage inspired shoes from...Clarks

very 30's: lace up shoes, shaped heels, slingback sandals, suede

very 40's: heavier heels, pumps, suede, platform soles, ankle straps, wedges, fabric & canvas

Continuing the vintage inspired shoes series I've recently found a few gems in the collection of Clarks. you find the other posts under the label 'shoes' To be honest, never looked at the Clarks shoes until now because my mom who has 'difficult feet' loves them. The good thing is, the fit must be good, but on the downside she tends to like really shapeless shoes lately. It took me some time to talk her into buying a few neat and feminine shoes with low heels instead of the Birkenstock-type sandals she likes to wear.
The shoes above have typical late 30's and 40's shapes, they would all look equally pretty worn with a skirt or trousers. Now, that we finally (almost) sold our old house I'm aloud to buy new shoes. Above there are quite a few from the 2013 autumn/winter collection which are amazing but sadly, already sold out here. How about the Alma Kendra? To die for!
From now on I really need to watch the Clarks collections for new, vintage inspired items for myself...

As a little extra, below a 1946 article on tips for buying the right shoes for your feet:

1945 Top Honors jumper - proper pics at last!

I've realized that somehow I missed out on making proper pics of my finished Top Honors jumper (which is one of my favorites to wear right now!) So here they are! You find the project posts here.




Here is one more picture of the finished closure of the back neckline:

1945 Victory jumper - 7. the big reveal!

I'm trying to do the 'phone-pose' here with my grandma's old bakelite phone:
  

Fastest knit ever!!!
A quick recap of the past days:
31/1 Setting in the sleeves!
30/1 Finished the back of the bodice and the neck ribbing and sewed up the sleeves. Only need to set the sleeves in and weaving in the endless amount of yarn ends (did the white stripes with separate pieces of white to avoid a thick string of yarns along the edges)
29/1 Made a mistake while doing the armhole decrease, o had to rip out about 20 rows...
28/1 Finished the front armhole and neckline. Like the neckline shaping better than in my first version.
27/1 Finished the bodice up until the armholes!
25/1 Going from 90% to 30 again, with only one week left to compete the Knit to Vitctory challenge. Ripped out the patterned part of the bodice today and only left the ribbing intact. Re-started from the ribbing, planning to make the bodice wider, going towards 0 to max 1 inch of negative ease.
24/1 finished knitting the sleeves! In theory about 90% of the jumper is finished, but I'm afraid the bodice has to be re-knitted. Hours of work has to go, but now I want it to be perfect, with just a zero ease instead of a negative ease. It is hard to predict how lace patterns are going to look when finished... 20/1 sleeve I started is too wide, need to go... I'm going to restart the project tomorrow .

1945 Victory jumper - 6. close to the finishing line

Yes! Today is the day when I'm going to finish my Victory jumper, knitted in a whopping 10 days! To start, a picture from yesterday evening, when knitting the neckband:


To avoid stretching out I opened up the neckband and did a quick crochet buttonhole with a heart shaped button this time. I explained how to do this here.


picking up stitches - the easy way!
I used a 5:6 ratio for picking up the stitches for the neckband, same as on my Top Honors jumper. What I like about this technique is that you pick up every stitch in the first round, you don't need to count at all. By reducing the amount of stitches when starting to knit the ribbing you avoid holes between the stitches.

- pick up every stitch you come across evenly
- reduce the amount of stitches in the first row of ribbing by ribbing 4 stitches and then knit (or purl) the next two stitches together.
(you knit like this: K1, P1, K1, P1, K2TOG, P1, K1, P1, K1, P2TOG...)


Project of the day: setting in the sleeves and weaving in yarn-ends. (+ taking pics of the finished garment!)

1945 Victory jumper - 5. the victory is close

The victory is close!!! Yesterday was a rather unproductive day. In a hurry I made a huge mistake when decreasing the armholes. Knitted a huge piece with decreasing at both ends of the back while I should have decreased only at the beginning of every row. The evening was again about frogging and re-knitting...sigh...

my armhole shaping
(already used 3 times and works perfect for me)
- cast off 6 sts at the beginning of the next 2 rows
- decrease 1 st at the beginning of each of the following 10 rows

My planning was to finish the bodice yesterday and start knitting the neckband today. But again...I don't give up! Luckily have 2 days off from work, so I should have enough time to finish the back today, block the pieces and knit the neckband. The original pattern instructs to do this in two parts, one for the front and one for the back but I'm going to stitch up the shoulder seams and pick up the stitches all around like I did with my Top Honors jumper. The neckband is going to be a bit wider this time. I like the neckline of this second version of my Victory better, though I did a partly 'freehand' decrease to shape it. The jumper must be ready by friday midnight If everything goes well I only need to set in the sleeves tomorrow and make pics of my finished project.

1945 Victory jumper - 4. rewind and repeat!

Sometimes things are not working out the way you expect. The only thing you can do is raise the bar, start over again and perform even better...

A quick recap on this project. After a month of 'silence' I pulled out my knit-for-victory project and decided to complete it by the end of january. It seemed an easy task since the bodice was almost finished. After knitting the back part from the armholes up I started with a sleeve. This is how my almost finished jumper looked like last week:


This is how it looked like 2 days ago:

So what happened? On the 23th of january the bodice was finished and I was halfway of the first sleeve. Because the sleeve seemed to be too wide I decided to rip it out and re-start with less stitches, following the original stitch count of the Victory pattern. Re-started the sleeves on the 24th of january and finished them on the 25th. The modification in the sleeves is the different way of decreasing used for the sleeve cap. The original Victory pattern starts right away with decreasing without the horizontal part which is usually formed by casting off a few stitches first. I used the decrease of my 'blueprint' pattern,  without an enlarged or lengthened sleeve-cap:
- started at the beginning of the 4th red/white stripe block
- cast off 3 sts in the beginning of the next 2 rows
- decrease 1 stitch at the beginning and end of every alternate row until 28 sts left. Cast off.

sleeve version 1
you can count more pattern repeats in the width here

sleeve version 2
I was a bit tired so decided to start the sleeve-cap decrease the next day and started with the straight part of the second sleeve next to the first one. That's why there are two sleeves on the same circular knitting needle:

the finished sleeves (not blocked yet)


After finishing the two sleeves decided to take the right step and frog the bodice. It was just to small and I knew I wouldn't like it at all. So why knit something and then not to wear?


Frogged the bodice almost completely, with only the ribbing left re-started to knit on the 25th. Instead of 13 pattern repeats I did 16 pattern repeats in the width, which will give a better fit across the bust. Thanks to a quiet nightshift I managed to knit for a few hours during the night and then sacrificed a day on knitting while watching series 3 of Homeland. I must say, it was a great relax-day with just a little of shoulder-pain at the end. Here we are now, with just 5 days left of the Knit-for-Victory challenge, there is hope I manage to finish it on time:

1945 Victory jumper - 3. progress

After 2 days of 'speed-knitting' 2x half of the sleeves are ready. This time the sleeves are smaller, there is less pattern repeat in the width but a little more lengthwise to achieve the same look as in the picture above.

Actually, after getting to the armhole part I just started knitting the another sleeve instead of starting with the decrease in the evening. (Knitting+watching tv works only if you are not involved in knitting increase/decrease or intricate patterns...) I'm trying to finish and set in the sleeves this weekend and hope to finally see the overall fit!

1945 Victory jumper - 2. on track again...or not?

Well, don't be fooled by this picture! This was the case in the morning. Now the jumper is sleeveless again... Victory became officially my jumper from hell!


The story (or should I say, saga?!) so far:
As far as construction goes instead of following the original pattern I followed my own 'blueprint' pattern, both for the stitch-count and for shaping the armholes. (Actually for the third time, as I didn't share my second jumper between the TH and Victory.) The neckline was a bit of freehand work this time, I wanted a wider ribbing than on my Top Honours jumper, but didn't want a too high neckline (like the original) so I lowered it a bit.
Somehow, I just don't know what happened, it turned out a size smaller in width than my TH jumper. Instead to grow, the lacy pattern somehow shrunk. Sounds weird, right? After blocking the results were reasonable, but I couldn't say I was in love...
Anyway, learned my lesson, but still started out the sleeve the wrong way.
Thought to be smart, I added a row of increase after the ribbing, like my blueprint pattern instructs. Instead of the expected results, the lace pattern seemed to grow this time, adding  too much ease with a blousy look, instead of the perfect fit.

Since I really want another perfect jumper decided to frog this sleeve (proudly produced past week - sigh..... and start all over again.
I must say, at this point I'm not completely sure that I'm going to leave the bodice as it is. I'd rather frog it and knit it up again than having something that's not perfect.

My plan for the next 1.5 week:
- start to re-knit the sleeves, this time using the stitch-count of the original pattern
- after finishing the sleeves sew it into the armholes, try the whole thing on and decide whether it looks good or not. (worst case scenario: frog and re-knit the bodice)
- try to finish the whole thing by the end of this month?!
- Yes, I am definitely knitting for victory!!!!

the pattern
Since I didn't share much information about the pattern yet, here is a little introduction:
'Victory' is a pattern from the collection of the English Victoria & Albert museum. Among other patterns from magazines and a couple of Bestway leaflets it is available as a free download. How about these other jumpers from the Woman's Weekly Magazine? I wish all editions of those would be available online!!! There is 'Neat and feminine' and the 'When you're off duty':


There is also 'A new design in cable stitch' or a 'Waistcoat for warmth':


My choice was the 'Victory' jumper, and as it is the 'Top Honours' it is from the war-winning year of 1945, featuring the English national colors of red, blue and white. I really like this bold, strong combination! (fun fact: these are the national colors of the Netherlands as well)


The yarn I use is again my fav.: drops baby merino in the shades 30 (dark)blue, 16 red and 02 natural:


pattern chart


The pattern envelope says it is 'such an easy pattern', because  only two rows complete the pretty scalloped stripe pattern. It is truly easy to memorize.
The stripes are formed by altering 6 rows in blue, 4 rows in red, 2 rows in white, 4 rows in red (my camera seems to fight with the bright red, but you get the idea...)