Crinoline Robot's Vintage Week

Ooooh, I haven't shared a Vintage Week post with you in ages. I haven't finished reading a book or watched anything new to share with you, but I thought I would tell you about my general bimblings over the past week and beyond.



I've bought a suit! It's a Printzess 'Cooltimer', so very lightweight, probably early 1950s going by the style, and I'll be doing a proper post on it once it's out of quarantine. At the moment it's still sealed in its plastic postal bag along with a couple of Zensect moth-killing balls to remove any risk of it bringing travelling pests into my wardrobe. After all, you can steam or carefully iron out creases, but moth holes are forever.

I bought the sewing pattern you see on this post from Etsy, even though I don't sew. Claire at Eternal Magpie was clearing some out, and among them was a large late 50s/early 60s half-size pattern – if you haven't come across those before, half-size means it's a bit thicker round the middle, just like me. By the way, 1920s lovers: Claire makes the most amazing hand-blocked felt cloche hats, so if you're looking for a specific colour or trim to go with one of your outfits, take a look at what she's got in her shop. I believe she also takes commissions.

The reason I don't sew, though I'd love to, is because I don't have room for a sewing machine. Mr Robot and I have agreed that if I use up some of my knitting wool, it will make room for one. Project: use up wool is continuing, and when I went to York I cast on a new project in the car, a 1940s fair isle cardi. The colours I'm using aren't authentic – a black base with white, grey, raspberry pink and teal instead of the original's fawn with red, white, blue and chocolate brown – but this will help get a few more balls out of the stash. (I'm not entirely sure how moving wool in ball form in the boxes to cardigan form on top of the wardrobe counts as making space, but it definitely does.)

I'll share more of the project once it's actually started to look interesting; I've converted the pattern to be knitted in one piece as far as the armpits because I couldn't face weaving in all the ends from two fronts and a back, and so at the moment I'm still plodding through the boring old ribbing.

And I suppose the biggest thing to have happened is that I've given up a lot of my freelance work. I used to have a motto, 'Never turn work down', and recently was worried about losing my day job. Well, I didn't lose my day job, but in planning all the things I could do to earn money if I did, I realised just how many creative things I really wanted to do and never had time for because of other commitments. So I have reclaimed my free time and am planning to start designing knitting patterns again, completing a writing project, and generally having fun. At the time I thought I might regret giving up the freelance, and who knows, in a year's time I might decide it was a terrible move after all, but right now I'm enjoying being able to march to the beat of my own drum rather than race from deadline to deadline doing things I'm not completely satisfied with.