Historical and modern knitting design

Welcome to Retrofutura – a page about historic and modern knitting design. There is fashionable knitting design, and then there is knitting design that keeps coming back. This page is dedicated to patterns that just live on, to their constant reinterpretation, and to bringing them with us into the future. Retrofutura’s knitting design is biased towards a colorful linear look and stranded knitting. You’ll find patterns and kits in the shop, and a selection of yarn and design in natural materials. Our selection of yarn and design is chosen simply for its beauty, but also for its connection to knitting history. We carry yarns from natural fibers where sustainability is important in the choice of fiber and its processing.

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Latest posts

  • German Short Rows
    Short rows are the perfect technique for shaping knitting, and there are many different ways to knit short rows. Many of them are a bit fiddly, and some will even make a small hole in the […]
  • A Decorative Rib
    I am writing a pattern for a simple sweater with a simple shape and a gauge of 18 sts / 10 cm (4 inches). I’ll publish it as Cook a Wolf later. I usually knit several […]
  • Danish Tie Shawls
    The Textile Museum in Herning, Denmark, owns a collection of hand knitted objects from the area around Herning in Jutland, Central Denmark. The collection contains shawls, underwear, socks, and footless socks. I work at the Textile […]
  • Provisional Cast On
    Provisional cast on is one of my favorite knitting techniques. It is a cast on that you remove later, freeing live stitches that you can knit. I sometimes make a provisional cast on in the middle […]
  • Knitted Cast On
    The knitted cast on is a method to cast on stitches to the right of existing stitches or a slip knot. In Danish, one of the names for this cast on is a “school cast on”, […]
  • Splicing Yarn
    This technique for changing yarn makes life much easier, especially when knitting a thicker yarn where sewn-in ends can be bulky and easily seen. I am showing how to splice using href=”https://retrofutura.dk/en/product-category/rauma-vams-en/”>Rauma Vams, a thick 2-ply […]
  • Madrigal
    2021 is suddenly over. Another lockdown year gone, but also a busy and good year. For me the year where my pattern, Madrigal, was published in Pom Pom Quarterly 39. The pattern has different levels of […]
  • AC-increase
    This increase is used in my pattern Madrigal, but would also be useful for other stranded knitting where it fits in. I’ve called it AC-increase because the pattern colors in the Madrigal pattern are A, B, […]
  • Memory Vest
    Publishing a knitting pattern always makes me happy. This one even more so, since it is the first pattern I publish on this web page, and it is a pattern that I’ve been thinking about for […]

Tags

3 needle bind off 19th century 1970s 1990s annichen sibbern bøhn backwards loop cast on barbara walker cast off cast on chicken knitting cook a wolf corrugated ribbing cultural heritage fair isle folkvang folkvang vest german short rows judith harvest knitted cast on knitting tradition lace knitting lise warburg long tail cast on madrigal marianne isager memory memory vest mrs blacksmith shawl nalbinding old norwegian cast on oxo provisional cast on rib rick rack rib shawl short rows small repeat patterns splicing steek stranded knitting tie shawl twined knitting vest war knitting yarn ends