This week’s pattern comes from the very specifically themed 5th Avenue Fashions, shot on and around the Empire State Building. Tourist magnet, glowing beacon, the very symbol of the city, what frights could possibly await at the top of New York’s famous icon, barring a giant gorilla on the loose?

Wooooooh! Wooo! woo. Eh. It’s no Q The Winged Serpent, but tell me that underlighting and sly grin don’t imply she’ll push you off the balcony the second you turn your back? What inspired the book’s photographer to light her like that? Especially given that, in the 1930s, underlighting was shorthand for ‘terrifying monster’?

Eh?

Eehh?

Eeeehhhh?!

At a time when Hollywood had gauze shortages from soft focus ‘glamour lighting’ their leading ladies, harsh underlighting screamed menace and terror. Also it doesn’t help her direct gaze resembles a more modern movie psychopath:

All work and no crochet make Jack a dull boy.

The pattern itself makes up a lovely crocheted top, and if the nautical color scheme isn’t up your alley, it would also look great in black with Fiesta-color triangles (Fiesta being….an unspecified amalgam of bright hues). Or if you really want to stick with the Halloween theme, you could knit it up in this and go as a background extra from ‘Hellraiser’.

Even in the wider shot, it looks like she’s holding the elevator door saying “Room for one more...” in the creepiest tone possible.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a lack of posts recently. Perhaps you’ve been too enomoured of the changing seasons to even notice. Perhaps my ego’s puffed up enough to assume anyone actually notices anything about a particular website before immediately clicking on to the next series of animated GIFs (featuring kitties, of course). Of late time has become a more precious commodity, due to the slowly dwindling amount of daylight to burn, the toll of the daily grind, and what I’ll loosely refer to as ‘The Saturn Return’. Mark Twain said it best when he wrote, “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” I’d hate to think of this site as work, and, for now at least, will limit Free Pattern Fridays to a vague schedule of every other week-ish, or whenever I find a genuinely exellent pattern to write about and share.

So much for the ‘bad news’; on to the good: this week’s patternsssssss(plural) include a most delightful removable Peter Pan collar, a dainty belt, wee rosebud jewelry, and a change purse. The change purse (or ‘compact cover’, to hide the shameful fact you powder your nose) I could live without, but who knows, perhaps someone on your holiday gift list has been dying for some way to keep their loose change just like the folks on ‘Mad Men’.

(Here’s what’s on the table this week.)

Instead, here are a handful of gorgeous images from a genuinely beautiful state. Utah has numerous national parks, including Arches National Park which contains the famous natural bridge featured on the Utah license plate. As a bonus, hiking trails run the gamut from several hours to 30 minutes, and all will make you feel as if you stepped into a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

We know we belong to the land! And the land we belong to is grand!

You may notice the ugly new watermark covering the image – please feel free to thank Ebay user bythelightofthemoon, aka Etsy’s toknittowoo, as their repeated theft of free patterns led me to this decision. Also note that it says right there in plain Latin that this stuff is FREEEEEEEEEEE for personal use. Do note if you’ve not already the clarifying paragraph on the RIGHT under HEADS-UP, stating the specifics of this personal usage.

We on the East Coast are geographically fortunate, mostly avoiding natural disasters that plague the rest of the country. We’re on a major fault line, but it’s mostly inactive. We do get storms, but they’re weakened after moving up the coast. We’ve even had the occasional tornado, though with the dense build-up they’re rarely as destructive as those in the Midwest and barely touch down. So it’s a bit of a surprise having a hurricane follow an earthquake in less than a week.

The yin and yang of stereotypical New York mindsets, the high-strung neurotic and the blasè rock, are reacting about as expected. For every gallery owner panic-grabbing fontina and prosecco at Eataly screaming “I HAVE CHILDREN TO THINK OF!”, there’s a stoopfull of elderly Hispanic guys quietly chatting and playing dominoes (which they would continue doing whether the sun came out or a car exploded in front of them). Given how hectic day-to-day life in a crowded city is, either mentality is an acceptable coping mechanism, but it’s funny how few major disasters the city has to deal with. With the 10-year anniversary of September 11th drawing near that may seem strange to write, but it’s the 10-year anniversary, and how many large-scale terrorist attacks have we experienced since? Exactly.

Which brings me rather long-windedly around to this week’s pattern, from a state that’s no stranger to devastating natural events.

Stay safe, everyone.

On a random tangent, I declare the Allan Moore lookalike the Stevie Nicks of Kansas, for while the rest of the band plays 12 instruments each, he sings and plays tambourine. And sports a boss beard.

This week’s pattern comes from the Lone Star State, while I’m currently inhabiting the Hawkeye State. Some states are bigger than others, but due to jet lag it’s difficult to riff eloquently on Texas’ storied history. Please enjoy this instead. I lack the energy to do the most basic research on Texas, but spending 20 minutes editing Wikipedia for an MST3K reference? No problem.

LEGITIMATELY CITED!

Holing up in the one air-conditioned room drinking iced beverages in the dark helps (and is what I’d be doing anyway regardless of temperature), but today is a day to reflect on cold thoughts. The iciest one I have is visiting The House On The Rock in Wisconsin in the dead of winter; we were the only people there (well, that we could see; even taking the off-season abbreviated tour in the parts of the house open took us 5 hours, so it’s likely we could have missed someone between the larger-than-life-sized Squid and Whale battle room and the underground Christmas Village).

The weather was a type of cold not known on the East Coast, a bitter cold that bit into your bones and numbed you in minutes, apparently an average winter’s day in the cheese state. We hustled through it to see room after room after room after room of the most random collections (carousels, automaton bands, model ships, hearses), our breath showing even inside. Aaah, I can almost feel the drafty breezes now.

Which all has little to do with this week’s pattern, another state flower embroidery from the State Quilt project. The Wisconsin state flower is wood violets, a flower so special Rhode Island, New Jersey and Illinois decided to choose it too. Really guys? Jersey has some fantastic swamplands, you couldn’t go with the more endangered Swamp Pink? Illinois, you have fields, what, are you too good for the Smooth Blue Aster, Rose Vervain, or Quaker Ladies? Rhode Island, you are tiny and birthed H.P. Lovecraft so you get a pass.

I had the charming song ‘I’m Living In Wisconsin’ by Joe Jack Talcum stuck in my head the entire time spent writing this post. You can listen to an early version of it here, and bask in the serious Philly accents (‘Oim’ instead of ‘I’m', ‘floy’ instead of ‘fly’, etc.).

Don’t forget to scale the image up to 200% for its original full-size. With all the wonders of the future, of course printable iron-on paper exists, so make excellent use of it!

Yes, melting in a pool of sweat and apathy, combined with startlingly bad heat-induced decisions (‘don’t want to move…what do we have in the fridge….pickles and peanut butter. Creamy goes with crunchy!’). These are the days when having a lap full of yarn seems more torturous than thrilling, and so I present a pleasantly cool alternative (with bonus botanical fun facts!).

Stopping at a well-stocked (and to my New York City eyes, HUUUUUUUUUUGE) vintage shop on a trip out to The Land of Corn, I came across a worn envelope tossed beneath a pile of silk scarves. It looked as if it might contain a mail-order pattern. It did not. It contained MANY patterns, not just a delightful iron-on for EVERY contiguous states’ flower, but a full-sized quilting pattern to sew them all together! SO CHARMING! SO. ADORABLY. CHARMING! No date is listed, but considering Hawaii and Alaska aren’t included, it’s definitely pre-50s.

One of the reasons I post vintage patterns is the hope someone out there will actually work them up, and we’ll all get to see a bit of history come to life. As knitting something usually requires devoting a month or so of time to each project, this doesn’t happen very frequently. So imagine my excitement when, through the magic of googling, I found not one but three real-life examples of the finished quilt!

A square grid instead of diamonds gives this quilt a more severe look.

Sunflowers stitched into the plain squares!

The scalloped border is part of the original pattern; several poorly-photographed variants were on ebay using small-dotted patterns instead of solid cloth to delightful, more 1930s results.
Not to get persnickety but would it kill someone to put the states in order of annexation instead of alphabetized?

Here’s an illustration of the finished quilt, which has ‘been worked out for most pleasing balance in placing’:

I’ve started with the Empire State, as that’s where I currently reside (also I couldn’t find Jersey immediately in the stacks of pattern paper). The pattern is scaled down from the original, so make sure to print it at 200% for full-size.

Here’s the general instructions, which include yardage for the fabric to be embroidered (although the mint-green example above was actually painted on) and a decorative fabric, along with all other materials:

As always, click for full-sized images.

Several Etsy-folk seem to make tea towels, hankies, and other assorted goods using these very same patterns; all are excellent uses. I’d also like to see someone use a patch in Built By Wendy’s Simplicity 3964 pattern, a la this example.

And of course as the title implies, this loops in my brain all summer long.

Speaking of directions, apparently I have to come right out and state the blindingly obvious: THESE PATTERNS ARE FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. DO NOT TAKE THE IMAGES AND SELL THEM, DO NOT PASS THEM OFF AS YOUR OWN. Linking to them is totally fine; printing a copy out for your own use is fine, but anything that involves you taking them and making money off of them, STOP. DO NOT PASS GO. Fellow free-pattern sharer Bex recently alerted me that an Ebay seller stole images from our websites and sold (is selling) them in her store. On the downside, this is extremely rude, lazy and annoying. We post these patterns FOR FREE, buying or digging through archives for the originals, spending time scanning and cleaning them up, not to mention maintaining a website where people can find them, all for the sheer love of vintage knitting goodness. So when someone comes along and snags the images to make a quick buck, it hurts.

On the upside, this is the first time it’s happened in my several years of sharing, and in a rare burst of good mood I shall take that as a general sign humanity, or the chunk of it that enjoys looking at vintage patterns, generally understands what theft is and avoids it. Now, onward to patriotic knitwear!

Note the strange, ‘New Yorker’-like cartoon in the upper left. This issue is filled with surreal ‘jokes’ about knitting and knitwear that never quite reach a normal level of funny. Why would someone knit in an operating room? Why would that specifically distract the surgeon? So few answers.

EDITED TO ADD:
A larger image of the chart.