Moth Heaven Julia asked about the "Golden Hands" books that I mentioned in a comment on her post of January 2nd, when she wrote about the Time-Life Art of Sewing books she was given for Christmas. I don’t think I could do this series justice without at least a few pictures, so I thought I’d write a post about it.
"Golden Hands" was a serial published by Marshall Cavendish in the early 1970s, not technically a book but a series of magazines, essentially, that you would buy as they came out. (My mom got hers at the grocery store. You could send away for binders to keep the issues in order — "$1.75 plus 25¢ shipping and handling" — and the index.) It was kind of like a home-study thing, a little "chapter" of two to four pages per issue on knitting, crochet, embroidery, needlepoint, dressmaking, beading, patchwork, tatting, and so on, and finishing and care techniques for the resulting projects. If you were a complete beginner, you could start at the "Knitting Know-How 1" chapter, for instance, which gives basics on yarn types, gauge, and abbreviations, then goes on to casting on and off, the knit stitch and the purl, with increasingly advanced techniques throughout the 74 chapters. I more-or-less taught myself to knit from here, studying the pictures and going for help to my mom when things didn’t go right. If you already knew the basics, you could start at a later chapter for new techniques, or jump straight into a more difficult project. Rae Compton was the knitting consultant for the series, and while I don’t recognize any of the names in other areas, I expect they were all equally competent and qualified, judging by the thoroughness of the instructions.
Many of the projects are more than a bit dated now, of course — macramé vests, ponchos the first time around — but the lace doilies, Shetland shawls, floral needlepoint handbags (with a chapter on mounting the needlepoint piece on a metal bag frame), ganseys, and such, are as timeless as they were in the 1970s. Some of the knitting techniques are a bit dated, too — psso instead of the now more usual ssk, for instance — but nothing that would really hold you back.
After the series was completed, they did one that went into more unusual crafts, like candle-making, millinery, costume-making, batik, some really interesting stuff, and then a monthly that as far as I know only went to two issues. They also did a few paperback pattern collections, with new patterns, "All You Can Knit and Crochet For Women/Babies and Children/the Home," and so on.
I started with the garter stitch scarf, and not much later (in my early teens, perhaps) made a lovely doll dress and coat, and eventually at least three different baby blankets. There was also a stunning bridal coat that I considered years later, and would have been high on my list if I’d been married in cooler weather than a California June. In fact, I’m seeing quite a lot of things here that intrigue me now!….
A Bluestocking Knits 
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