The Bestway Men’s Glove Pattern
I wrote a micro-study of a 1940s Bestway men’s glove pattern which has been in my family for three generations. The pattern is well travelled and means different things to different people, having been used a lot for teaching and learning to knit (myself included), as well as knitting for the forces and for family. The pattern has come to mean much more in my family than ‘just a pattern’; it has a whole life of its own with many layers of social connotations and even spawned its own social network of its own.
They even commissioned a new pair of gloves to be knitted up, as you can see, above, in contrast to the school ones that my Mum and Nan made for me, below. There’s a real story to them, as I was wholeheartedly ungrateful at the time!
Image copyright Giles Babbidge Photography
It was a great honour to be asked to write something for the Historical Knitting edition of the magazine, and I’d really like to thank my Mum for all of her help in the family research.
The Historical Knitting edition of PieceWork is a really interesting one – I’d not seen a knitting edition of the magazine before, but would very much recommend getting hold of a copy if you can. There’s a particularly interesting piece about the US First Lady Grace Coolidge and her knitted couterpane, as well as a pattern for Anna Zilberg’s Fireworks Socks from the front cover (see the top of the post). Just what is needed to start off the year.
Pingback: Tweets that mention A Feature in PieceWork « Ingrid Murnane -- Topsy.com
I just read your article in Piecework, lent to me by a friend. It was fascinating to read – old knitting patterns that you knew as a child do lodge in your memory for ever. I have an old pattern leaflet for mittens, that my mother had originally, and I have knit from it myself – if you want a pair of mittens, it’s a perfectly good pattern, so why buy a new one? Patterns for things that are more subject to fashion, like jumpers, tend not to get passed around so much, I think.