Knit Your Native Animals

I love going to op-shops and buying a stack of old knitting patterns. My most recent purchase included patterns from the 1960’s to the 1980’s and while some of the designs are hilarious to me in 2011, some are really stylish.

The patterns which currently interest me most are Australiana – featuring Australian animals, plants and landscapes.

The 80’s were a great time for Australiana. I remember having a jumper (not handmade unfortunately) with kangaroos bouncing across the front. It wasn’t a children’s style either – adults wore native flora and fauna on their knits.

As with many things, children did get to have the most fun. One of the books from the op shop is full of children’s jumpers featuring different Australian animals.  It’s called “The Downunders – Australia’s friendly animals in Cleckheaton 8ply”.

There are kangaroos, cockatoos, platypus and koalas as you’d expect (note: I’ve never met a friendly koala. They are really not very pleasant animals). There are also animals that don’t often get to feature in Australiana, probably because they don’t have the same “cute” factor.

There is a goanna (big freaky monitor lizard about 6 feet long), a ringtail possum, some kind of worm eating an apple and – my favourite because it’s so silly – a witchety grub.

The two knits above are from “The Downunders”. The knits below are from “Patons Proudly Australian in Totem”.

The second pair of pictures is from a book that has adult knits as well, so the designs are a little more restrained and not so cartoonish.

Still, I can’t see how I’d ever wear any of them. I think the time where an adult could go out wearing a kangaroo jumper has passed which is a bit sad but probably best for fashion in general.

One design that almost tempted me featured a kookaburra.  I have a bit of a soft spot for kookaburras – even when they do steal sausages off the barbecue. Their squat shape and flat heads make them really endearing.

Now, I have no intention of making a jumper with a big intarsia kookaburra on the front, but I would like to somehow get them into my knitting.

So I’ve decided to make a fair isle chart featuring kookaburras. I’ll have to be careful to make sure it doesn’t look kitsch, but I’ve seen charts feature blue-birds and butterflies and cats so why not kookaburras?

Because I broke my very loose “no new yarn” rule this week by buying four packs of Totem Merino 8ply, I now have the yarn for a new fair isle vest design. This will be my first new design for ages and it will take a while to knit up the samples, but I’m really looking forward to starting.