Vintage crochet - the introduction

Tanith has been powering out blog articles this month and has made me feel lazy. As I'm at a point where I need to scrounge for photos before I can do many more, I've filled in with a post where I can grab the photos from the net!

Vintage crochet patterns are lovely and surprisingly easy to find. 
I get lots through the reprints done by Bramcost Publications - you can order their stuff through Amazon, and I always get the parcels from them weeks ahead of the shipping estimate.  Another good source is the searchable newspaper archive Trove, which now has the Australian Women's Weekly. (I wish it had been so during my thesis, but never mind. Those hours I spent going through the AWW on microfilm are a source of fond memories and lots of 1940s short stories.)

AWW, Feb 4 1953. An example of the sort of patterns you can find.

They now have a new trial interface for the Australian Women's Weekly here, which makes searching for craft patterns so much easier. You can also get all wistful about the patterns, particularly dress patterns, that are described and pictured but are to be sent away for...

Send away... annoying words to read. AWW, 29 Oct 1958

Trove also has the Illustrated Sydney News and the Australian Town and Country Journal, which have the advantage of being very old, totally out of copyright, but I have to admit the quality isn't amazing and it lacks the cool trial interface of the AWW. 

Jan 4 1905, Australian Town and Country Journal.

 See what I mean?

Of course, vintage patterns also have some drawbacks - the biggest being the complete lack of gauge. Modern patterns almost always have this, except for afghans or scarves or items where the finished size can vary and it doesn't make a lot of difference. Vintage patterns almost never do, and the ones that occasionally do are striking for that alone.

A tension given! A miracle. AWW, 24 Aug 1946

A lot of patterns just give the hook size (sometimes in a specific brand) and the thread/yarn details. The pattern above gives way more details than many.  Without knowing enough about the yarn (and often they are out of manufacture; one of the good things about fine thread work is that a No 20 crochet cotton is much the same today as in 1940) and no tension gauge given, working out what you are making will be too small or too big often doesn't happen til mid-way through - or even the end.

As a result, vintage crochet requires a lot of trial and error. I'll show some of the trials, errors and successes in a later post.