fifties

You are currently browsing articles tagged fifties.

Hello all,

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.)

Fuzzy Wuzzy is an undignified name for a yarn.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

This will be the last Free Pattern Friday for the next two weeks -I’m blowing this popsicle stand and heading to the Eternal City. That’s right, I’m going on spring break in ROME! SPRING BREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK,YEAH! I’ll either be getting very rowdy or face existential crises while looking my sharpest. Why Rome? It’s got the most history crammed into the smallest space for your euro, plus they have way better coffee than Paris.

For anyone else gearing up for a visit, do not do what I did and watch the following movies:

‘Mamma Roma’ (Pier Paolo Passolini) – a bleak tale of a mother willing to sacrifice everything for love of her son in poor, postwar Rome. It does not go so well.

‘The Bicycle Theif’ (Vittorio DeSica) – a bleak tale of one man’s quest to get back the bicycle on which his and his family’s livelihood depends. It does not go so well.

‘La Strada’ (Frederico Fellini) – a naîve young girl joins a man in a traveling roadshow, bearing his many cruelties. It does not go so well.

“La Dolce Vida’ (Frederico Fellini) – a jaded newspaper writer hangs out with a bunch of nihilistic rich hedonists as they try not to stare too hard at the void in their lives. It does not go so well.

Each film painted a more harrowing picture than the next. So instead of a long, dark journey into night, I recommend watching ‘Roman Holiday’, starring the always-charming Audrey Hepburn.

It highlights the beauty of Rome without using it as a backdrop for humanity’s cruelties, though it is sort of bittersweet. This week’s pattern is the sort of dress she might wear if she had another day free to wander. Well, she doesn’t because she’s a princess and they have responsibilities, dammit. But you can whip this up and trot about to your heart’s content!

Molto Bene!

Tags: , , , , , , ,

On a recent trip to a fancy junk shop (also known as an Antique Store) in Carroll Gardens, I grabbed a photo from the top of a large pile heaped in a glass bowl.

I had no other clue as to who these people were, why Mr. Grumpy’s frowning in the background instead of joining the others or why the photographer gave up and framed them all that way, but I had to have it. A wee sign on the bowl said ’4 PHOTOS FOR A DOLLAR’ so I dug around and found four more in short order:


There’s something great about the expression on both women’s faces, particularly the one dancing in the center. If you squint you can make out the larger gathering on the edges, but the background’s darkness makes it seem much more intimate.


At first I thought this was a dad relaxing on the weekend; it could be but the ‘U.S’ and caduceus emblazoned on the jacket pocket suggest a doctor at an Army barracks.


Another great set of expressions. This one was cut to fit a round frame.

Tags: , , , ,

This week’s pattern is a jaunty little meta-sweater displaying engagement in the very activity the sweater is intended to be worn doing. The pattern’s a bit easier to follow than that sentence.

Intarsia knits are always a bit annoying to work but make up for it in pure 8-bit joy of wear- the awkward blockiness of the images charms enough to get over a thousand dangling strings tangling themselves as you go along. Mary Maxim patterns are the most well-known (that is, well-known among knitters, i.e. not at all among the general population), but there’s also Bouquet, Knit-O-Graf, and the looser search term ‘cowichan’, referring to the style of knitting developed by the Cowichan people of British Columbia.

A few choice examples:

Funnily enough, I found a reinterpretation of the same chart from this week’s pattern in a sweater for sale on ebay:


Intriguing!

Let’s hit the slopes!

Tags: , , , , , , ,

This week’s cozy, comfy pattern comes courtesy of Beehive Handknits for Men. Doesn’t Johnny Pompadour just look snug as a wee, sweatered bug in this? As someone who currently spends most of their existence working Morlock-like in the icy wastes of an unheated concrete basement, this Grandpa sweater is the sort of thing I dream about.

So warm looking, so….snuggly and nice. Like a Slanket, but with dignity!

The book has tiny sketches throughout, not as weird or humorous as those found in the Minerva books but rather small observations of men of the time.

Pipe and slippers not included.

Tags: , , , ,

« Older entries