{"title":"Wool","description":"\u003cp\u003eHand-knitted wool tells you everything about the person who made it, tension tightening where they were concentrating, easing where they weren't. I find the join where one ball ran out and another began, and I always stop there for a second. Each piece is attended to at its own pace before it's packed and sent from Melbourne.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"vintage-hand-knitted-cable-baby-cardigan-pastel-stripe-1970s-80s","title":"Patient Hours · 1980s Hand-Knitted Pastel Cable Baby Cardigan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWool · hand-knitted cable panels · pastel stripe · V-neck · pink buttons · handmade, no label · 1970s to 1980s · AU size 0-1, approx 6-18 months\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePastel stripes in pink, lavender, yellow, and white, running the length of a small cable cardigan, hand-knitted in fine wool for a baby. The cables are what make this: they run up each front panel and along the sleeves, a proper display of skill packed into a very small garment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo label, 1970s to 1980s. You do not arrive at cables without practice. They require counting and attention and the ability to hold stitches on a needle while you work others: a technique that takes time to learn and longer to execute neatly. Whoever knitted this was confident enough to add them to a piece about 25cm long, for a baby who would grow out of it in months. That is the particular love of a handknitted baby garment. The pastel nursery palette dates this warmly and precisely to its decade; the V-neck and small pink buttons are the finishing details of someone who knew exactly what they were making.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe kind of cardigan that a grandmother knitted during the evenings, with a particular baby in mind.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44084095713414,"sku":null,"price":105.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_2708.jpg?v=1782125598"},{"product_id":"vintage-hand-knitted-pink-bobble-baby-cardigan-rosebuds-1970s-80s","title":"For Best · 1980s Hand-Knitted Pink Bobble Baby Cardigan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAcrylic or wool-blend yarn · hand-knitted bobbles and cables · embroidered rosebuds · ribbon tie · flower buttons · handmade, no label · 1970s to 1980s · AU size 1-2, approx 12-24 months\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe confection pink of something made entirely for delight: knitted in clusters of bobbles like gathered posies up each front panel, with embroidered rosebuds at the yoke.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo label, 1970s to 1980s. There are four separate hand techniques on this one small cardigan: bobble stitch, cable stitch, embroidered rosebuds, and a ribbon closure. Bobble stitch requires you to work five stitches into one and then knit them back together, creating a raised cluster that takes more yarn and more attention than a plain row. Cable stitch requires holding stitches on a spare needle while you work others, crossing them over to create the twist. Embroidered rosebuds are worked in satin stitch after the knitting is complete. Each of these techniques takes practice. Someone did all four of them on a cardigan for a baby, for one occasion. The flower-shaped buttons are the final warm touch, chosen with obvious pleasure.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA genuinely extraordinary small garment.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44084111114374,"sku":null,"price":105.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_2693.jpg?v=1782128241"},{"product_id":"vintage-hand-knitted-fair-isle-baby-cardigan-cream-1980s-90s","title":"Smiling Buttons · 1980s Hand-Knitted Fair Isle Baby Cardigan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWool yarn · hand-knitted Fair Isle colourwork · cream ground · smiley-face buttons · handmade, no label · 1980s to 1990s · AU size 4-5, approx 4-5 years\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCream wool banded with fine Fair Isle colourwork in red, pink, green, and blue, fastened up the front with smiley-face buttons. Fair Isle is one of the more technically demanding hand-knitting traditions: you carry multiple colours across each row, the unused threads running along the back, which means you are always managing several strands at once and must keep an even tension across all of them or the finished fabric pulls and distorts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo label, 1980s to 1990s. To do Fair Isle well at the small scale of a child's cardigan takes a real knitter. This person was a real knitter: the colourwork is even and bright throughout, no distortion, no loose threads at the back. The smiley buttons are the detail that makes this completely loveable, a warm, funny choice that dates this happily to the late twentieth century and is impossible to resist. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA piece that will be remembered.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44084112392326,"sku":null,"price":120.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_2723.jpg?v=1782129581"},{"product_id":"menagerie-tsumori-chisato-illustrated-knit-dress","title":"Picture Book · Tsumori Chisato 1990s Illustrated Wool Knit Dress","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTsumori Chisato · 1990s, the label's first decade · hand-drawn print of birds and sea creatures · charcoal wool knit · metallic crochet neckline trim · silver thread seams · L 95cm flat · AU 10–14 · very good condition\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpend a minute with the print and it keeps introducing new characters: birds, sea creatures, an octopus unfurling in orange, florals in teal and violet and gold, and the designer's own name hiding in the drawings like a signature worked into a mural. All of it hand-drawn in the loose, joyful line that belongs unmistakably to Tsumori Chisato, printed across a soft charcoal wool knit and finished at the neckline with a braid of black-and-silver metallic crochet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a 1990s piece, from the label's first and most collected decade. Chisato trained at Bunka in Tokyo and joined Issey Miyake's design company in 1977, rising to head the Issey Sport line before Miyake himself encouraged her to launch her own label in 1990. The illustrated prints of those early-label years, drawn by her own hand and dense with hidden creatures and lettering, are exactly what collectors hunt now. She became one of Japanese fashion's great storytellers, building collections like picture books, serious craft wearing a childlike grin. And she drew on wool here: a fine jersey with the gentle brushed surface wool takes on, warm without weight, with fine silver thread caught in the seams. Whimsy, rigorously made.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44149787033734,"sku":null,"price":240.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3771.jpg?v=1784766421"},{"product_id":"kept-by-ribbon-1950s-70s-hand-knit-lace-baby-bonnet","title":"Kept by Ribbon · 1960s Hand-Knit Lace Baby Bonnet","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eHand-knit lace bonnet · wool blend · four-panel diamond eyelet crown · double satin ribbon ties · unsigned handmade · 1960s · 13cm crown length · fits newborn to six months · excellent condition\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCount the eyelets in a single panel and you get a different number each time, the lace holds its shape but never quite its arithmetic. Four panels meet at the crown like the corners of a tiny circumstance, decided by whoever cast on the first stitch and never wrote her name anywhere on it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo label, no tag, nothing sewn in anywhere, which is ordinary for a piece like this rather than a gap in the record. She is a 1960s bonnet by construction and yarn alone, hand-knitted, likely at home, gifted between women, worked in spare hours for a baby who was already loved before she arrived. That the maker's name did not survive does not make the work any less exact: four matched panels of eyelet lace, worked evenly enough that none reads looser than the rest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe crown is built from four diamond eyelet panels in garter stitch, each rising to a single point and joined so the whole thing sits low and close rather than domed. A double satin ribbon ties at each side, 47cm from the bow, long enough to knot properly under the chin. The cast-off edge runs in a plain garter border rather than a picot, letting the lace do the talking.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44165974261894,"sku":null,"price":52.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3479.jpg?v=1784267475"}],"url":"https:\/\/checkout.caitiedid.shop\/collections\/collections-vintage-wool.oembed","provider":"caitiedid","version":"1.0","type":"link"}