Unraveled

We know that older patterns don’t get a lot of love, but as I was putting together this post I was surprised to find that out of the 600,000 projects completed in 2016 so far, fewer than 3000 are known to be based on patterns from 1990 and earlier. There are more out there that we don’t know about because we don’t have publication dates for every single book and magazine in Ravelry. That is something that I think we can improve.

These Ravelers dug into patterns from days past and found inspiration there:

Above:

• Idberg’s Elven gifts from Lothlorien from Coats & Clark, 1955.
• troysurrett’s Granite Club Curling Sweater from Mary Maxim, 1958
• thecharmofit’s A Selkie’s Second Skin Cardigan by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts & Deborah Robson, 1985.

Above:

• NorthernDancer’s Nicole’s Nicole from Heinrich Bauer Verlag, 1966.
• vintagegranny’s A murder is announced from Lister & Co (Knitting Wools), ~1940
• Ladyrhedd’s Baby Blanket for Charlotte from Woman’s Day Crochet, designed by Mary Ellen Thompson, 1980

Above:

• JennyLee1011’s Signal Code Blouse from The Spool Cotton Company, 1935
• zebraeule’s Haben Sie dieses Huhn gesehen? designed by Alan Dart, 1989

Apologies if you fall for one of the out of print designs! About half are no longer in print. If you look, you’ll find that some of the out of print magazines and pamphlets are available on eBay, used on Amazon, and elsewhere.

PS – if you have knit or crocheted an older pattern and would like to help with dates: please click from the pattern page to the source (book, magazine, pamphlet) and see if we have a publication date listed there under the photo. If not, you can click the pencil icon at the top of the screen to contribute a date. Thanks!