Free Pattern Friday: Little Dutch Mill Cardigan

When it comes to knitting I have a soft spot for the ridiculous, and this fitted cardigan toes the line nicely with a lovely shape and It’s A Small World imagery plastered on the front. Knitting worldliness must have been popular at the time, as other patterns from the Australian Home Journal (where this pattern is again from) feature London and Paris imagery.

Interesting note about this pattern, one of the colors called for is ‘nigger brown’. Yep, right there in print like it’s no thing at all. It’s a measure of how far the world’s come that today this is a slap in the face to see written so casually. I wish I could say it was uncommon, but numerous vintage patterns from the UK and Australia also call for ‘nigger black’ along with ‘rose red’ or ‘sunshine yellow’ as basic color descriptives. This is yet another reason vintage patterns are fascinating- many of the differences between yesterday and today are perceived only when something runs contrary to the modern mentality, when something we take for granted smacks into something previously taken for granted and there’s dissonance. I could write a whole essay on how media and linguistics influences us in ways we can’t even perceive day-to-day and yet make arguments against stuff like introducing new gender-neutral pronouns into the English language, but this is Free Pattern Friday, not Discourse On Media Perception and Causality Fridays. Much less catchy. Enjoy the pattern, but do muse on the history.

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