The knitting yarn - wool
Knitting was essentially always with wool in the 1940s and 1950s because
there were no man-made fibres, and cotton and linen had no elasticity. One of
my friends was once very proud of her knitted white cotton summer cardigan because
white cotton kept its colour whereas white wool always went cream - but the
cardigan went out of shape quickly, and she only wore it a few times.
Obtaining the wool: the wool shop
In the 1940s and 50s money and resources were in such short supply that it
was cheaper to knit scarves, gloves and pullovers etc oneself than to pay someone
else to knit them. So every town had a shop dedicated to selling wool, knitting
patterns and knitting needles, usually along with items for sewing and embroidery.
A skein (or hank) of wool - as wool was bought from wool
shops in the 1940s up to the 1950s.
The skein of wool twisted, with one end tucked inside
the other, to prevent tangling in storage or transit..
The wool from the shop came in loose coils called skeins or hanks, and each
skein had a batch number. To be sure that every skein used in a garment would
match every other skein, ie that it had been dyed in the same vat, it was important
to buy all skeins for a garment together and to check that they all had the
same batch number. Some women could not afford to buy all the skeins together,
and the shop would reserve them for a specified length of time.
The wool came in three thicknesses - at least I only knew of three - called
ply. 3-ply seemed to be the standard for most knitwear. 2-ply was for fine garments,
although they could never match the fineness of the shop knitwear of today.
I suppose that 4-ply was for heavier garments such as scarves and balaclava
hats. I can't ever remember seeing really chunky wool.
Skeins from wool shops were not pre-shrunk in the 1940s and early 1950s -
and wool certainly did shrink when it was washed. Woollen garments had to be
washed very carefully and dried flat on a towel. Hours of knitted effort could
be wasted in a few hours by poor washing. (This was another reason why I decided
to give up knitting in my late teens.) The wool that reaches the customer today
has improved immeasurably from the wool of my childhood.
Obtaining the wool: unravelling old knitwear
Unravelled wool in a loose skein, ready for washing and
drying to remove its kinks..
Wool unravelled from old knitwear, kinked into the shapes
of the original stitches.
Another way of obtaining wool was to unravel it from a knitted garment that
had either got too small or had holes or thin parts. Unravelled was easy because
knitting was a form of chain stitch. All one had to do was to snip an end and
pull. However, the resulting wool wasn't smooth or straight because it had been
'set' into the shape of the stitches. So women first had to coil it into loose
skeins to wash and dry it to remove the kinks.
winding the skeins of wool into balls
In the 1910 version of TV’s Upstairs Downstairs, there
was a brief clip of Sir Hallam Holland holding a skein of wool for his wife
who was winding it into a ball. The script had him saying that he often
used to do this for someone else in his family. Yet he clearly had never
had in real life, and there was no-one young enough on the TV set to tell
him that he was doing it wrong! He held the skein loosely so that it sagged
– which would rapidly have come off his hands and tangled; and he did not
move his arms forwards and backwards with the flow of the wool – which would
have resulted in the wool catching on his fingers.
Wool could not be knitted directly from skeins as it would quickly get tangled.
It had first to be wound into balls. This process required two people - although
there were various gadgets that never worked properly which claimed to replace
the second person.
Winding a skein of wool into a ball. Holding the skein
was invariably a task for children, and was very tiring because arms had
to be outstretched and swung in and out to allow the wool to come off the skein
at constant tension.
One person had to hold out the skein as shown in the sketch while the other
person would take one end, pull it off the skein and wind it into a ball. The
person holding the skein had to watch which end the wool would be wound from
next and move that arm towards the other person, so that the wool would slip
easily off the hand. Then that arm had to be moved back and the other arm had
to be moved forward, in time with the person winding. It was very tiring to
keep doing this with outstretched arms, and also extremely boring as so many
skeins needed to be balled for a whole garment. Inevitably the task fell to
children, and many a child had to sit in front of mother or grandmother, arms
outstretched, swaying them forwards and backwards while mother or grandmother
unwound from the skeins and wound the wool into balls.
Obtaining the wool: using up leftover wool
This detail from a photograph on a
Silver Street School page shows
how usual it was to wear hand-knitted garments and how intricate stitches
and patterns were commonplace.
There were invariably lengths of wool left over from knitting a garment,
and these were carefully kept.
Knitwear with coloured designs was common and I suspect that the fashion
developed because it meant that odd lengths of wool of different colours could
be put to good use.
This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as
Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.
The 1940s and 1950s are also written as the 1940's and 1950's
