Vintage knitting patterns

On my last trip back home up to Scotland I happened to stumble upon an amazing little treasure trove of a vintage fair at The Hillhead Book Club just off Byres Road. One little stall had a whole folder full of vintage knitting patterns that looked amazing, I could't resist. Then when I got back home and told my Mum she said she had loads of them out in the garage. Woo hoo! So my collection grew again!

Since then I've been getting a bit obsessed with vintage patterns and gone a bit crazy bidding away on e-bay.


With lots of ideas I've picked a pattern to do and got the yarn. The pattern is in 3ply but I could only find baby wool in 3 ply (and I didn't fancy it in white and baby pink). So, with the advice of my Mum, I got 4ply and I'm going to use narrower needles. I've tried a tension square and it seemed to work so think I'll just go for it and see how I get on. My aim is to finish it by the end of the year but I feel like I've got quite a lot of unfinished projects around the house so I'm saving starting it until I've completed some other things.

Most of the knitting projects I've done so far have been either really chunky wool or required 4.5mm needles at the narrowest. To get a bit of practice in the littler stitches I knitted this cute hat for my friends little baby. Its in 4ply and knitted from a Patons pattern.

What is your experience of knitting with old knitting patterns? Does my idea of using narrower needles sound realistic?