So, I get to work this morning to find an email from a lovely Margaret who was wondering if I, by any chance, had a copy of a Vogue magazine from around 1982 that carried a pattern named 'shawl' she'd spied on another Ravelry user's profile.
A quick look at the hundreds of 40+ years old (unarchived) magazines, pamphlets and catalogues that line my office walls, and began to reply that I couldn't imagine I would ever find it. But before I sent it, I went for a little nosy to see if I could find the image on Ravelry.
Well, lo and behold it's the same shawl that Sandra and I came across a pattern for a couple of weeks ago. The pattern was crumpled, and you couldn't see the detail in the original photo, which had been taken tossed on an old bag of sheep feed! We decided to reknit it in Shetland Supreme 1 ply from the crumpled, badly written pattern. Sandra just brought it back for dressing yesterday. The funniest thing is that up until that point we were all still a bit suspicious of it in its jelly-looking, pre-boarded state. Turns out it is beautiful.
When I mentioned this funny little coincidence to Oliver, he informed me that the shawl was the subject of dispute in the early 80s when Jamieson & Smith's previous owner and manager, Eva Smith, had to battle some designers to have the pattern included in our collection.
The upshot of all this is that we'll be rereleasing the pattern (along with it's sad turned happy little history) as soon as we have it charted and printed, and have some photos that do this overlooked beauty justice after nearly 30 years. And now we know a little bit more about it thanks to Margaret. I'm just praying I don't end up spending the weekend archiving in the hope of finding the old Vogue pattern to find out who the original designer was. I'm sure Eva will remember actually - update soon...
