Roadside Beanie

I'm going to Shetland Wool Week at the end of September - the first time I've been to Wool Week, and the first time I've been to Shetland too.  It's especially exciting, because I'm part of the programme - I'm giving an evening talk on the Knitting & Crochet Guild and its collection.

Every year, there is a special Wool Week hat, with a free pattern, and the idea is to wear it then so that fellow knitters can recognise you.  This year's pattern (available here) is the Roadside Beanie, designed by the Wool Week patron Oliver Henry.  I started mine at the end of April, and finished the knitting months ago, but only blocked it and sewed in the ends last week.  I took it to the Huddersfield Guild meeting on Thursday for the show-and-tell session which we have at the start of every meeting, and a friend took a photo of it.

Here's another photo, posed on a mixing bowl, to show the band of sheep around it, and the corrugated rib:

Back in April, when I was planning my beanie, I looked through the suitable wool that I already had, and found these colours:

The three balls of Jamieson's Spindrift, in Chartreuse, Jade and Parma, I bought a few years ago, when a local yarn shop closed.  I didn't then have any plans for them, but they were a bargain. And now I have found a use for them.   The other five colours were left over from a pullover that I knitted for John more than 30 years ago.  He posed in it for the very first post in this blog, in 2010.

 The pullover is from Sarah Don's book, Fair Isle Knitting, which I bought in 1981.  I used the colours she suggested: moorit, cream, blue, rust, yellow and grey.  As far as I remember, I wrote to either Jamiesons or Jamieson and Smith, in Shetland, to order the wool.  (No online shopping back then, of course.)   When I was looking for wool for my beanie, I couldn't find any of the blue left over, and I didn't in the end use the rust.  Being a conventional sort of person, I did feel that the grass should be green(ish), the sky should be blue(ish), and the sheep should be a possible sheep colour.  I think it's worked out very well, and I particularly like the corrugated rib, with a moorit background and the ribs shading through parma, jade, chartreuse, yellow and cream.   I'm looking forward to wearing it for Wool Week.

Disco Sweaters

One of my favourite blogs is The Knitting Needle and the Damage Done, by Orange Swan.  She reviews knitting magazines, and often exactly nails just what's wrong with a design.  And occasionally she has a post collecting together photos of unusual (aka seriously weird) knitted garments.  Her most recent post is one of those:  Lederhosen and Tutus and Other Knitting Fables.  It included this knitting pattern:

Sirdar leaflet 6065

Her caption is "Penelope had come up with the perfect way to get men to buy her drinks when out clubbing."

It's a super example of 1980s picture knits.  I looked for the leaflet in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, and found that it's one of a small group of "Disco" knits.  Here are the others:

Sirdar leaflet 6062

Sirdar leaflet 6063

Sirdar leaflet 6064

You were evidently supposed to wear your Disco sweater with skintight metallic lycra in a bright colour, and BIG hair.  But a long-sleeved sweater in a thick yarn (DK) seems very impractical for a disco - you'd boil.  I can see that one or two of them might also do for everyday sweaters - the giant daisy, and the hearts.  Maybe even the butterfly.  (It was the 80s after all, when picture sweaters were normal wear).    But the lips/straw/glass combo - as Orange Swan says, that's just begging someone to buy you a drink.

Picture This

Last week's Huddersfield KCG branch meeting was a trunk show of picture sweaters.  I took a large suitcase full of picture knits from the Guild's collection, along with bag full of pattern leaflets, books and magazines.   I mostly chose knits I was already familiar with, and several of them have already featured on this blog - the Postman Pat sweater, with its pattern; the Cherry Brandy sweater (sing-along optional);  the Mary Maxim jacket; the Willow Pattern sweater.  Here are some more.

Most of the picture knits and patterns I showed on Thursday were from the 1980s - the heyday of the picture knit.   (Though the Mary Maxim jacket is 1950s.)   Around 1980, sweaters with landscapes on the front were popular - I found several patterns as well as the sweater below.

Sirdar 6109

A lot of elements appear in several similar designs - there's a blue sky with white fluffy clouds, often some hills or mountains in the background, often a few trees (usually conifers); maybe some water, and sometimes a few sheep.  I showed a Hayfield pattern in the same genre here.

I also showed a landscape sweater of a very different kind, by Sandra Inskip.  We have three or four of her Yorkshire scenes sweaters, all knitted in the natural colours of British sheep breeds. I think this one, showing the Ribblehead viaduct is the nicest.

The flower-vase sweater below is a bit later, I suspect - 1990s?  I haven't seen a pattern for it, and I think it might have been knitted from a kit.  (But see my PS below.)

It's worked sideways, and I guess is intended to be done in stranded knitting.  But the knitter has woven in the colour not in use.....

...which gives an uneven texture on the right side.  I think it's quite an attractive effect.

I like it very much - especially the unexpected touches of  bright colour, turquoise and pink.  If anyone recognises the design, I'd love to know.

I finished the show with a couple of seasonal knits.

The polar bear sweater is from a Scheepjeswol kit.  To me the polar bear has a rather odd expression - as though he is grumbling about a mild toothache.  In case you miss the wintry theme, the back reinforces it:

 
And finally, although we don't have any specifically Christmas sweaters in the collection, as far as I know, we do have a very nice one with a robin.

I guess the bobbles are meant to represent snowflakes.  The robin is done in intarsia, and the footprints are in stranded knitting...

-- and continue all across the back.  Isn't that charming?  Again, if you recognise the pattern, please let me know.

 PS Karie Westermann has suggested that the Flower vase sweater might be a Kaffe Fassett design.  And now I've searched though his designs on Ravelry  (should have done that before), I see that it's a design called Brocade.  I thought at first it was only very similar, because the main illustration on Ravelry shows a sweater knitted conventionally, not cuff to cuff.  But most of the Brocade projects on Ravelry are knitted cuff to cuff - so that more or less confirms it.  It's Kaffe Fassett's Brocade.  I would still like to know, though, whether the colourway in the collection sweater was suggested by KF or devised by the knitter.

Willow Pattern and Others

This week, we were sorting more patterns leaflets in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection - this time a batch of Sirdar patterns from the early 1980s.  Several of them caught my eye, for one reason or another.  The first was a sweater with a Willow Pattern scene on the front - picture sweaters were very popular at the time.  (I love the knitting needles stuck at random into the model's hair, to give an Oriental effect.  Although the big hairpins are a Japanese Geisha thing, and the Willow Pattern is supposedly Chinese, but actually an English invention, according to Wikipedia....  Never mind.)    

Sirdar 6225

I noticed this one particularly, because we have a sweater with the same design in the collection.  The sweater is machine knitted, though it is not a machine knitting pattern.

,    
 And now that we can see the leaflet and the sweater side by side, it's evident that the design has been reflected - presumably that happened in the process of translating it for machine knitting.  (I know nothing about machine knitting, so I don't know how that would be done.)

It's always very gratifying when we match up an item in the collection with a published pattern - it fills in a bit of the history of the item that we didn't previously know.  

Another picture sweater was very noticeable - the design has a tree with sweethearts' names on it. The sweater on the cover has 'Charles' and 'Diana' on it, although the leaflet helpfully says "Adaptable to your own romance".

Sirdar 6226

Part of knitting folklore is that if you knit your boyfriend a sweater, it will lead to a break up.  (See the article about the Sweater Curse in Wikipedia.)  I think that if you knitted yourself a sweater with your boyfriend's name on the front, the relationship would be equally doomed.  However, the sweater might be retrievable - the names are done in Swiss darning, so you could in theory change his name for another one.  Thus leading to an unending series of doomed romances?  Hmmm.

A more traditional design also appears to date from the time of Charles and Diana's marriage -  a Fair Isle style, with some bands imitating traditional patterns, and then one with hearts and initials 'C' and 'D', and another with crowns.  Again, I think you would want to do the initials in Swiss darning, in this case to avoid knitting with three colours in one row and some very long floats across the back of the work, though the leaflet does not suggest that.

Sirdar 6851

And finally, there was a lacy top that I recognised as a re-issue of a design originally published in 1952 - I wrote about the 1952 leaflet here.  It had evidently been a very popular design, and featured in a British Pathe film showing Sirdar designs from 1952.   In the 1970s, it was updated for slightly thicker yarn (4-ply rather than 3-ply) and published as Sirdar leaflet 5193. And the same design reappeared in the early 1980s batch we were sorting this week.    I have never seen any version knitted up, but I imagine it could still work well. 

Sirdar 6036

Sirdar 5193

Howard's Way

When I'm sorting knitting pattern leaflets in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, sometimes I see a design that appeals to me (even among the worst excesses of the 1970s and 1980s you can find the occasional design that still looks good), or an interesting stitch pattern.  Or sometimes I notice a pattern because I recognise the model (e.g. here).   And sometimes a leaflet refers to things that were happening outside the world of knitting, as in three Emu leaflets I saw this week.

Emu 4986 modelled by Glyn Owen (Jack Rolfe)

Emu 4988 modelled by Maurice Colbourne (Tom Howard)

 

Emu 4990 modelled by Stephen Yardley (Ken Masters)

 Remember Howard's Way?   Actually, I never watched it, though I do remember that it was a much talked about TV series in the late 1980s.  It was something like a BBC version of Dallas and Dynasty (so not in fact very like either).  It centred on a boatyard on the south coast of England, hence the slightly nautical air to the three Emu designs, especially Tom Howard's blue sort-of gansey.  I think the three designs still look good as casual chunky knits for men.  I don't personally like dropped shoulders, which seem very 1980s to me, but there have been lots of dropped shoulders around recently (for instance in Rowan Magazine) so clearly I am not one to judge.

Here's Wikipedia's summary of the main characters in Howard's Way, including the three characters shown on the Emu leaflets:

The protagonists in the early episodes are the titular Howard family—Tom (Maurice Colbourne), wife Jan (Jan Harvey) and grown-up children Leo (Edward Highmore) and Lynne (Tracey Childs). Tom is made redundant from his job as an aircraft designer after twenty years and is unwilling to re-enter the rat race. A sailing enthusiast, Tom decides to pursue his dream of designing and building boats, putting his redundancy pay-out into the ailing Mermaid boatyard, run by Jack Rolfe (Glyn Owen), a gruff traditionalist, and his daughter Avril (Susan Gilmore). Tom immediately finds himself in conflict with Jack, whose reliance on the bottle and resentment of Tom's new design ideas threaten the business, but has an ally in Avril, who turns out to be the real driving force behind the yard with her cool, businesslike brain. Jan, who has spent the last twenty years raising the children and building the family home, is less than impressed with her husband's risky new venture and finds herself pursuing her own life outside the family through establishing a new marine boutique whilst working for flash "medallion man" Ken Masters (Stephen Yardley).

There are probably some leaflets in the Howard's Way Collection that we don't have (leaflets 4987 and 4989, for instance) and perhaps those were modelled by Jan Harvey, Susan Gilmore and some of the other women in the series.  It would be interesting to see what those designs look like - I suspect that designs for women will look a lot more dated.

For anyone who wants to take a nostalgic look at Howard's Way, or see what it was all about, you can find clips on YouTube.  Here's the first part of the first episode:

For a Royal Baby

This week, we were sorting several boxes of Peter Pan patterns in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, and found several copies of this free pattern leaflet, "A layette for someone special".   It must have been issued around the time of a royal birth, so that you could make a set of baby clothes fit for a prince or princess, for a baby in your own family.  I'm guessing that the royal baby was Prince William (born 1982), because the booklet on the table in the foreground says "The Royal Wedding" and I think refers to the wedding of Prince William's parents the previous year.

It was a very timely find, since another royal birth was imminent, and the new princess, Prince William's daughter, has arrived today! 

More Knitting Patterns

Hayfield 1569

Yesterday, we were working at Lee Mills, where the Knitting & Crochet Guild's collection is kept. One of the other volunteers was sorting a couple of boxes of pattern leaflets into numerical order, and said that it seemed to be a never-ending task. As soon as we think we're nearly finished, another boxful or crateful of patterns turns up.  I said that wasn't so at all, and we are making progress, even if it's slow, and we aren't likely to get any more large acquisitions of pattern leaflets.

 I should have known better. Within the hour, someone came round from the next-door premises with four binders of Hayfield pattern leaflets that had been left for us.  They came from the cellar of the local post office, which is also a general store and evidently used to sell Hayfield patterns (and yarn as well, presumably) in the 1980s.   These patterns had been there ever since, and the man who kept the Post office was having a clear-out and passed them on to us.

The binders themselves were extremely grubby from being in the cellar, but the patterns were in plastic sleeves and so were still in good condition.   I have picked out a few;  I chose leaflet 1569, because I like to see a sweater with a landscape knitted on the front.  Even though I have never made or worn one, and don't plan to either, they are quite cheering.

Hayfield 1561

Some of the designs still look wearable, like Hayfield 1561.  That one has a slightly 1930s look to me, in fact, so it is not so obviously 1980s as some of the others.

My favourite leaflets, because of their cover illustrations, are a batch for a yarn called Gaucho.  The stylist appears to have thought: "Gaucho - Argentinian cowboy - American West - Arizona - Mexico - desert - cactus..."   Some of the designs do have a hint of South America, like the llamas on the jacket in no. 1611, though the Aran-style sweater in no 1610 looks a bit out of place.  

 But the best part is the setting.    It's evidently meant to look like desert, somewhere in America, but the leaflets give the location as Sand Quarry, in Addington, Kent.   The broom and laurel (both European)  give the game away, too.   That cactus is plastic, surely.  (I think there's only one of it, and it's being moved around.)  And the rock that the model is sitting on (no. 1620) doesn't look convincing either.

Hayfield 1611

Hayfield 1610

Hayfield 1620, with a cactus photobomb

This batch of Hayfield patterns is a welcome addition to the collection (even though they will have to be sorted...).  Most of the patterns in the collection came from the personal collections amassed by lots of individual knitters - patterns they bought because they planned to knit them.  What you get from that kind of source is a bit hit-and-miss, and stock from a shop will fill in a lot of gaps.  And of course the leaflets are unused - not creased, or worn, or with the little annotations that a lot of knitters (including me) make on their patterns as they are knitting.  We are very grateful to the donor.  

WIPaholics Anonymous

Still catching up with the week before last....

On the 17th, after we got back from Blackpool, I went to the Huddersfield branch meeting of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  The theme this month was unfinished projects - we all brought along an unfinished project that for some reason we were having trouble finishing, and talked about it.  Hence, the title of the meeting, WIPaholics Anonymous  (WIP = Work In Progress).  Marie, the convener, acted as a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous facilitator, and had even compiled a 12-step plan for us to work towards completing, or otherwise dealing with, our problem projects.  The stories of the unfinished projects were often very funny, and occasionally sad.

So what was my unfinished project?  It featured in this blog in 2011 here, and it had already been unfinished for more than 25 years (!) at that point.

I had kept it for all that time - the piece I had already knitted, and the rest of the yarn.  When I wrote the previous post, I couldn't find the pattern, and thought that I had lost it, but I've since looked harder and found it.   So in theory, it could be completed.

Patricia Roberts' Dolly Blue design

But the previous blog post was right in explaining why I didn't go any further with it all those years ago - the back turned out far too small, and there's also a problem with the cables:  when the white and yellow cables diverge from each other, they pull a hole in the background fabric, and I can't see how to avoid that.

I have had this project hanging around for a serious chunk of time, but I think it had just become one of the fixtures in my life - I rarely thought about it, and never thought about it hard enough.  But it was an obvious project to take to the meeting (and would have won the prize for the oldest WIP, if there had been one).  And in listening to other people talking about their unfinished projects, I got to thinking properly about mine.

The photo doesn't show the design very clearly because of the jacket over the top (it's a sweater with a collar and a buttoned front opening).  I can see why it appealed to me at the time, and I still like it.  I love the colours that I chose, too, though I don't wear black as much as I used to.  I showed everyone the pattern, and what I have knitted so far, and there were lots of helpful suggestions for completing it, and general encouragement to do that.

However.  If I wanted to finish the sweater, I would have to start again, and rip out what I have done so far, and I hate doing that.  I'd have to figure out why it turned out so small the first time, and fix that - maybe adjust the pattern.  And there would still be the problem with the cables dragging holes in the fabric.  And most of all, I now realise that it just feels totally stale.  I don't even want to use the yarn for anything else - it would just remind me all the time that it should have been this sweater.

So I am abandoning it.  I left what I've knitted so far with someone else at the meeting who wants to try felting it, and I'm going to give the rest of the yarn away.  And I think I feel better for having made that decision.  For me, it was a very helpful evening.

Of course, I've got a few other unfinished projects too.....

Cherry Brandy Sweater Found

More than a year ago, I found a knitting pattern for a sweater designed to look like a bottle of De Kuyper Cherry Brandy and wrote about it here.  I knew that there should be an actual sweater knitted to that pattern in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, because I had seen a photo of it taken several years ago, but it hadn't been seen recently and we didn't know which box it was in.  Then yesterday the cataloguers got to box 39, and found it.

I think it's wonderfully quirky, in a 1980s kind of way, and it's very satisfying to have both the pattern and the sweater (and to know where they both are).  The knitter has adapted the neckline from the original - it should have a stand-up collar with "Extra Fine" in red and gold around it, but this one is a more practical crew-neck instead.

The pattern for the Cherry Brandy Sweater 

If you go back to my original post, you can see the TV ad which featured the model on the pattern.  Be warned - you might find yourself singing the song in your head for the rest of the day.  I am, right now - but I've had "My name is Morgan but it ain't J.P." playing for several days, so I don't mind.

Modern Technology

I have been sorting out magazines this week - I keep thinking that the magazines in the Guild collection are pretty much sorted, and then I find they aren't.  On Friday, I discovered that there were two separate boxes of Knitter's magazine, covering the same range of dates.   In sorting them out, I spotted a special issue on Aran knits, from 1989 -  next month, I am doing another re-run of my talk on Arans, so I brought it home to read. 

Aran Vest by Meg Swansen

One of the Arans in particular caught my eye  - a vest designed by Meg Swansen, with panels of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Sheepfold pattern and its mirror image either side of the central cables.  It's still a very wearable knit, I think.  But it was the photo that really grabbed my attention - and that phone!  

I suppose that it is intended to give the impression that the woman is in a high-powered job, using cutting-edge technology to keep in touch with her colleagues wherever she is - even in the street!  (Wow!)  But now, you think: "Why is that woman holding a brick to her ear?" 

Fourth Anniversary

I started writing this blog 4 years ago today.   I feel a bit amazed at that - that it's been so long, that I've kept it going, that I still have an endless supply of things to write about.

John in Fair Isle pullover

The photo is from my very first post. It shows John posing (with an invisible head and non-existent pipe) in a Fair Isle pullover I knitted for him in the early 1980s.  The pattern is from Fair Isle Knitting, by Sarah Don, more or less.  I used the colours she suggested, and the first three bands are as in the pattern, but then I followed the charts elsewhere in the book to make every band different.    

Pullover from Sarah Don's Fair Isle Knitting

I'm going to resurrect the pullover this week - the Huddersfield branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild is meeting on Thursday, and the topic is Fair Isle.    The pullover is more than 30 years old, so I suppose it counts as vintage knitwear by now.    (Though it's all wrong that something I knitted counts as vintage.  People will be saying I'm old next.  Oh sorry, forgot - I am old.)

 PS  Regular readers who visit this page twice may spot that I originally titled this post "Third Anniversary".  I'm an idiot.   

A Sweater for Beatrix

Beatrix was born in November and I knitted a sweater for her that was handed over at Christmas, via her grandparents.   I have not yet seen her in it, but I have seen a photo - it looks a little big for her just now, but will fit her better before the end of the winter.  It's knitted in Wendy Merino DK, so I intended it for wear this winter, to keep her cosy.  She wears it with the cuffs turned back, as they are shown on the cover of the pattern leaflet below - the sleeves fit her better that way. 

   
(It's actually a lovely greeny-blue colour - it's hard to get a photo that shows the colour at all accurately, which I have found before with green/blue shades.)

Patons 7957

The pattern is from a Patons leaflet that I have had for years - the leaflet has the date 1985 printed in it, so I assume I bought it then and perhaps I intended to knit it for my daughter.  But I never did.   The neckline is intriguing - the front and back finish in two long triangular pieces at each side, which overlap.  There are no shoulder seams or any kind of fastening at the shoulders, so there is plenty of room for it to go over the baby's head, but it should then fit snugly around the neck.  And there are straight seams to join the sleeves to the body.  

In fact, I didn't assemble it exactly according to the instructions - there was meant to be much more overlap of the back and front, but then the neck opening entirely disappeared, so I had to adjust it.  It's a nice pattern, though - I like the texture of the stitch pattern, made of little triangles in stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch.   And I like the way that the diagonal edges of the triangular overlapping pieces parallel the triangles of the stitch pattern - that is very neat. I hope Beatrix gets plenty of wear out of it for a few weeks, before she grows out of it. 

The World is your Sweater

Copley 376

 I found this pattern leaflet recently.  It's dated 1983, when picture sweaters were popular, and  I suppose you could think of it as educational.  You can decide which bit of the world you want on the front - Europe/Africa/Asia, or North and South America.   (Not much good if you live in Australia or New Zealand, though - they don't appear at all.)   Personally, I think it needs a "You are here" sign with an arrow, as well.     

Talking about Arans, Again

At the Knitting & Crochet Guild Convention in Derby,  I gave a repeat of the talk I gave to the Huddersfield local group, as described here, but with added PowerPoint. The theme was how Aran sweaters first became known to hand knitters in the U.K., and became very popular  from the 1960s on.

I took three sweaters from the Guild collection as props for the talk, as well as a couple of things of my own. I've written about my own vintage Arans before:  one is the Susan Duckworth sweater that I knitted in 1974 and still wear, and the other is  the Aran bobble hat that my mother knitted for my sister in the late 1960s. 

The first Aran sweater that I took from the collection is a replica of one that was bought in Dublin in 1936 by Heinz Kiewe, and illustrated in Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns, published in 1943.  

Replica of the 1936 Aran sweater in Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns

I don't know of any other Aran sweater that was written about in this country before 1943, so the original would be a historic garment, if it still existed.  But it seems that it doesn't.   Mary Thomas gave instructions for the stitch patterns in her book, but no details of the overall construction.  In 1987, Richard Rutt devised a complete knitting pattern from the printed photograph in the book, and it was published in the Guild's magazine, Slipknot.  We have two sweaters knitted from his instructions in the Guild collection, and it was one of those that I took to Derby. 

The second sweater is one of the gems of the collection.  It is beautifully knitted, in a fine yarn - it appears to be 3-ply (light fingering).  

A 1950s Aran sweater in fine yarn

 I think that it dates from the 1950s - the neck is very close fitting, with buttons at one side, and that is typical of the 1950s.  The stitch patterns are not unusual, but all the details have been so carefully worked out - for instance, the welts and neckband have little cables in them, which merge neatly with the cables in the body and sleeves.  

Detail - welt and body stitch patterns

    
And my favourite detail is that the central horseshoe cable in each sleeve is continued as a narrow shoulder strap and then merges into one of the cables in the neckband.   It is all just perfect - in design and in execution.  It's wonderful.

Detail - neckband

The third sweater I took from the collection is not, strictly speaking, an Aran. It is the Wheatsheaf sweater, knitted from a free pattern in the Sunday Times Magazine in 1984.  It looks like an Aran at first glance, partly because it is knitted in the thick cream wool we associate with Arans, but actually it is quite different.  

Wheatsheaf Sweater

Although the Wheatsheaf sweater has cables and bobbles, the central panel is nothing like a typical Aran sweater - in fact, much of it is not even knitted, but embroidered.  The ears of wheat, for instance, are in blanket stitch - and in the Guild's example have been beautifully done to give a very 3-dimensional effect.  

Like the Susan Duckworth Aran, the Wheatsheaf sweater demonstrates that by the 1970s,  Arans had become so well-known and mainstream that just a few basic elements (thick wool in natural cream, cables, maybe bobbles)  would indicate "Aran", and designers could then deviate from the typical Aran sweater and produce something completely novel. 

And having done all the research for my talks, and closely examined the Aran sweaters I took to Derby, I'm beginning to feel that I want to knit another.   I've bought myself  Alice Starmore's  Aran Knitting (purely for research purposes)  and it is full of enticing patterns......  

Poppleton's Patterns

Last week, I sorted a box of patterns issued by Richard Poppleton & Sons, a spinning company which had mills at Horbury near Wakefield.   We only have the one box of their patterns - nearly 300 different ones.  (The company no longer exists:  it was taken over by another spinning company, I think in the 1990s when hand-knitting went through a difficult time in the U.K.) 

The oldest pattern that I found was number 824, which also appeared in the earliest Poppleton's ad that I have seen, in Vogue Knitting book in 1949.   

Poppleton 847

 I don't know whether pattern 824 was the first pattern they issued (but why would they start numbering there?) or whether previous patterns had only been circulated locally, and they were trying to become better known by advertising nationally.   It must have seemed a propitious time for spinners:  in 1949, clothes rationing ended in the U.K. 

When I am sorting patterns, I look out for the ones that we have the largest number of copies of - I assume that those patterns are the ones that sold best, and so are the ones that were most attractive to knitters at the time.  One popular Poppleton's pattern is a picture sweater, with a country cottage on the front - the leaflet was advertised in 1981.  

Poppleton 1647

But the most popular of all the Poppleton's patterns seems to be a leaflet from later in the 1980s  (I guess).  It doesn't appeal to me at all as a knitting project - almost all the interest is in the yarn.  But if you wanted quick results (and it was still the 1980s and so you wanted an oversize, loose sweater) you might like it.   

Poppleton 2242

 (In fact, a designer friend tells me that over-size, loose sweaters are coming back into fashion, which seems very bad news to me.  So you might like to keep an eye on Poppleton 2242 for future reference.) 

Poppleton may seem like a jokey sort of name, but it comes from a village near York (or in fact two villages, Upper and Nether Poppleton).  And anyone who reads The Times Higher Educational Supplement (or has read it at any time over the past 30 years) will be familiar with the University of Poppleton:  Laurie Taylor writes a regular column, The Poppletonian,  about events there.