Enabling
It’s bad enough when I can’t walk past a table at the flea market with any knitting items and not come away with something. But now Thaddeus is even doing it for me.
Local Flea Market Strikes Again
Since I’m not home during the week, and the local flea market is open on Wednesdays, Thaddeus often goes there without me. Look what he picked up for me on his last trip there.
This is about 40 Workbasket magazines from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. He also picked these little items up.
Vintage knitting booklets from Minerva, Bernat, etc. Folks tell me how lucky I am to have Thaddeus…they’re exactly right.
Current Knitting
I continue unabated the pace of knitting on the red lace tea cloth.
Even on two 32 inch cable needles, it’s starting to become difficult to get a good picture. I also realized that I have another repeat of the leaf motif before I hit the final outer section of the cloth.
Readers’ Comments/Questions
Regarding my mention of Niebling lace in my last post, Cara asks, “Are you planning to attempt something like that?”
Yes, I’ll be posting something about it in my next post.
Meribeth adds, “I have heard that his patterns are very difficult to come by..is this true?”
Yes, it seems that most of his work was published in Burda magazines called Anna. They are often available on eBay, but often go for higher prices.
I do not know how to word this without it sounding like a ‘plug’. There are 2 Japanese knitting books currently available from Moonrise- lace knitting in Hatfield ,PA. Reportedly they contain some Neibling designs. They are pricy!; I’ve ordered but not yet recieved.
Do you know Sandy Terp? There is a Moonrise website to get an idea of her business and interest.
Man, you hit the jackpot with those old Workbaskets. I want to find things like that too!
thaddeus is SUCH a sweetie! enablers are the best!
have a good week!
AS ALWAYS…….YOU are Double Lucky with T and all the magezines he bought for you
I was looking at the Niebling group on ravelry and saw there was a flickr page with a lot of his patterns scanned, complete with finished photos. They’re all in french tho – which isn’t too bad. Also, I think that one version of Meg Swansen’s Mananita is Niebling inspired – she was telling us about it last summer.
I expect cyber gran is referring to the books by Naoko and Kazuko Ichida. I have the first book ($67: I got it from Lacis in Berkeley CA) and would be happy to bring it to MSKR if you want to take a look before you leap. Designs range from small doily-type things to tableclothes and table runners. Not certain whether they are original Niebling designs, or if they are heavily influenced by his work.
The charts are v-e-r-y tiny. I have problems reading them without magnification. Text is in Japanese.
I need to check out the Ravelry group. Thanks, Tricky, for pointing us to that.
I belong to the NieblingLaceKnitters over at the Yahoo Groups and you should try to see if you can join since they have lots of information on the Nieblings in vintage and current publications as well as links that you really don’t want to miss since the Nieblings are so hard to come by. They also have knit-a-longs and can help you interpret the different languages and stitch keys that the patterns were printed in. The knitters there are really awesome. They have a database that tells you which of the patters are directly attributed to Niebling and which publications they found those attributions in. Unfortunately, at the time his patterns were printed, they did not always state which were designed by him. The Japanese books are really nice but the charts are tiny and printed in a grey color. I usually enlarge and darken those patterns so I can actually see to knit from them 🙂