vintage knitting freebies

I have a nice sized collection of vintage knitting magazines.  I started collecting in the late 90s when you could still find them for pennies at the thrift store, and in the space of four years I managed to collect more patterns than I will ever be able to knit in one life time.  And then knitting became popular again and I watched these items disappear from the thrift stores and show up online at prices I will never be able to justify paying ($80 for a 1930s knitting pamphlet!!???!!!).

But I'm not really complaining here.  Aside from the ludicrous prices being asked for original patterns, there are so many good things about the resurgent popularity of knitting (and vintage style knitting in particular).  For one thing, there is so much more choice these days when it comes to affordable yarns in a huge variety of sizes.  New patterns are another great thing - I got into collecting vintage patterns in the first place because at the time there were no contemporary knitting patterns which fit my fashion sensibilities.  Nowadays there are loads of books with retro style looks for knitters.  It's great!!

Last but definitely not least are all the bloggers out there who are sharing free patterns with the rest of us.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  One day, if I ever buy a scanner, I will be only too happy to share with you some treasures from my collection.

In the meantime here are a couple of colour charts I photographed from Oldhams Encyclopedia of Knitting.  Hope you enjoy them!

This second photo was a little problematic as the pattern spanned the overleaf of the book, but it looks like these are just mirrored images of each other, so it shouldn't be too hard to fill in the missing details.