More Vintage knitting

The last time I went home to visit my family in Maine, my mom gave me another vintage knitting magazine she'd found in her travels. It's a McCall's Needlework & Crafts issue from Fall-winter 1956-57. It not only has knitting patterns but crochet, sewing, weaving, and woodworking. It sounds like the Craft magazine of the 50's.

One thing I find particularly interesting is an ad for something called the Ezee-Knitter. It looks almost like a round knitting loom with pegs, but I don't think it is really.

I did a quick search on the interwebs and came up with some more explanation. On the Girl from Auntie blog (who acquired one in real life from Ebay), I found this explanation:

"Like most knitting frames that predated it, the Ezee Knitter has two equal sets of pegs set equidistantly long the edge of a gap such that the pegs are aligned in staggered fashion. Unlike previous knitting frames, the gap was curved along an arc, so the pegs along the inner edge of the gap are naturally placed closer together than along the outer edge.

In use, the knitter would wind the yarn around the pegs of the device, wrapping twice around the end peg, then wind the yarn back along the same path. Once the winding was complete, the lower strand of yarn was lifted over the upper strand of yarn on each peg using
the crochet hook. The hooked stitches would form the knitted fabric and feed through the gap. A particular stitch pattern–ribbing, stockinette, twisted stitches–could be obtained by wrapping the yarn along different paths. The instructions glibly promised that “Of course, one can apply the argyle or pattern weaving instructions in any knitting instruction book” to the Ezee-Knitter, by simply winding different colours around the pegs at different intervals."

I also found this posting on Ebay for the instruction booklet that goes along with the machine itself. Patterns were included. Looks like it'd be fun to play with for a while. Not sure how great it is in use, however.

There are a few patterns I like from this magazine, too. If I made them, I'd probably do a little updating to the style.