New (To Me) Knitting Website Discoveries

I found some new websites about knitting (new to me, anyway). 

Mary Stephens' site ( www.maryannstephens.com ). She seems to have an affinity for stranded fair isle work. There is a page of free patterns, including Christmas balls, basic mittens, some fingerless mittens, hats, too many to mention really. I downloaded the Hedgerow Fingerless Mitts pattern:

 
She has paid patterns too, and they are gorgeous! If you download one for free, I urge you, please please  PLEASE buy at least one of her paid patterns if you can. 

Another new-to-me website is the Center for Knit and Crochet (https://centerforknitandcrochet.org). From their site:

The mission of The Center for Knit and Crochet, Inc. (“CKC”) is to preserve and promote the art, craft, and scholarship of knitting, crochet, and related arts.  To achieve these goals, CKC is creating an online museum, study center, and social networking environment to serve our community and the general public.  The CKC exists entirely online at www.centerforknitandcrochet.org and its resources and collections are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Be warned — visiting this site could suck you into a knitting time pit. There is a lot to see here. I got interested in war time knitting and then I found some sheet music for knitting that they played to keep up spirits while knitting and then I found knitting history articles and .... well. You see what I mean.

 

A third site I found is American for Victory: American Defense Knitting (https://knittingforvictory.rebeccakeyel.com/ ). From the website:

This blog is a companion to my dissertation work on American women’s volunteer during the First and Second World Wars. It will feature posts about archival finds, and will eventually feature images and descriptions of the garments I knit for the project.

I found it fascinating looking through the old patterns, thinking about the real men and women who were really fighting out there. Sons, brothers, husbands, fathers ... daughters, sisters, wives, mothers ... hoping that they would not die ... trying to knit for them so they might have warm hands and feet and heads and bodies. Knitting was a really important part of the war effort; wool kept the troops warm and the packages kept spirits  up.

Knitting Production Value in WWI

I hope you found these sites new and interesting too!