vintage

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This week’s pattern took a little extra time to set up because it had to be dug out of an enormous pile of miscellaneous vintage paper goods. Somewhere in that massive stack sat an absolutely patriotic salute to this great land, and consarn it, it would be found if it took all night. And it did! And here it is, the Americana, in all its star-spangled glory. The directions don’t come right out and say it but you can only knit it while listening to John Phillips Sousa marches.

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!

Let the Eagle soar!

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Hey folks, today’s a special occasion here on A Rarer Borealis. This week marks the 100th pattern shared on the site, and I’ve been saving a particular pattern for just such an occasion. It’s one that delights with vintage detail and nerdish charm, and what a coincidence, it’s just in time for the end of the school year!

Yes, no more pencils, no more books, except for the full set of Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ (that’s how most kids spend their summer, right? That or deeply immersed in the Teapot Dome scandal?). It’s almost surprising to see ‘algebraic symbols’ used as decor in an age where the phrase ‘guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses’ pointed out the social stigma of girlsmarts (clearly demonstrated by eyewear) and the horror of it possibly impinging your marriage potential (don’t worry about that any more, ladies.)

I hope you children remembered to bring your implements of destruction.

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First, a gentle dip into the past, when fashion wasn’t just worn, but sung! Tra la la la la la la la laaaaaaaaa…..

And now, a disturbing look into….THE FUTURE! A world full of strange new materials, disturbing man-traps, and for the gents, articulated facial hair:

Laugh if you will, but parts of this are suprisingly prescient. Behold! (it’ll help if you read all the following with this playing in the background):

Which brings us back to the past-present, which is to say the present of the past in which this pattern was created, brought to us in the present-present moment of the future, you there, reading this now (now being the immediate present moment of current existence):

It looks classier in the illustration than it does executed in real life, where the model looks like she was on the losing end of a doily fight:

WELCOME….TO THE FUTURE!

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hi·a·tus [hahy-ey-tuhs]
–noun, plural -tus·es, -tus.

1. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
2. a missing part; gap or lacuna: Scholars attempted to account for the hiatus in the medieval manuscript.
3. any gap or opening.

For the next season I’ll most likely keep ‘summer hours’; fewer posts while I attempt to make hay while the sun shines (sort of literally). In the meantime please enjoy this belated pattern in honor of Memorial Day and Fleet Week, the twice-yearly opportunity to scream ‘HEYYYYY SAIIILOOOR!’ on a crowded street without seeming like a complete nutjob.

Described as a ‘beach ensemble’, this 1934 outfit from Minerva manages to combine all the ridiculous fashions of the last few seasons: hats worn in inappropriate settings, rompers, ‘retro’-mania, too-short and too-long skirts, giant tassels, and to top it off, a giant pom-pom.

Actually the skirt’s not so bad, an appropriate tea-length nowhere near the silliness of this season’s ‘maxi’ length. Ladies, if you find a need to hold up the bottom of your outfit to avoid constantly tripping over it, it no longer meets the basic requirements of safety and has tipped over to the frippery of fashion. Then again, stripper heels (aka ‘platform heels’) are suddenly everywhere so we’ll probably see a lengthening of skirts and heightening of heels until we’re back in Italian Renaissance chopine territory. My, this section’s become an outlet for bitching cattily about fashion!

Honestly folks, wear whatever you want. If studying clothing throughout history has taught me anything it’s that every form of dangerous, ridiculous excess and exaggeration has been and will be tried, and this year’s model is no better or worse than what came 100 years before (except for maybe foot-binding, let’s not do that again).

Hoy!

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Ah, Easter. That delightfully confusing time when parents gloss over the potential question of what a giant rabbit and ovomania have to do with Jesus by plying their children with sweet, sweet sugar. Until the hippie revolution, Easter was also a time of Great Hats, with a venerable tradition of ridiculous haberdashery in the Easter Bonnet, a frivolous bit of headgear that welcomed in Spring with lighthearted silliness. Excellent examples can be seen below, tossing aside the dour seriousness of winter with increasingly goofy bonnets almost completely abstracted from the concept of ‘hat’ save for their placement upon the head:

EASTER HAT PARADE


(click to play)

In this tradition, here is a delightful pagoda hat, with or without tassels, sure to perch perkily upon your head with Deco charm:

Not coincidentally it sort of vaguely resembles DEVO’s famous engery dome, itself based upon a 1930s light fixture.


(yes it was an excuse to post this image.)
Happy Easter!

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