A Treasure Trove

Every so often I’ll see a tip on social media that is worth the hours I’ve wasted to scrolling. Today I learned that if you google “the magazine rack” it will take you to a section of the Internet Archive (or Wayback machine) that has tons of old magazines available for viewing. Including those pertaining to machine knitting! Here is a link to that search specifically:

https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?tab=collection&query=machine+knitting&page=2

You can find some of these on other sites, but this is a really nice layout and it’s got a lot that I haven’t seen before.

My favourite part of these old magazines is the ads. I can’t imagine a time when you could just walk into a store stocked with knitting machines and their various parts, accessories, and coned yarn. I know it existed, but it feels like another planet. Although if I had to go through a dealer I probably would never have bought one. I’m more of a “pick it up on Marketplace when it’s 30 years old” type knitter.

It’s also quite heartwarming to see hand-drawn diagrams, and really basic magazine layouts. Today with two clicks in Canva I can make something that is virtually indistinguishable from a professionally-published layout, but it wasn’t so easy back in the late ’80s or ’90s. Cue the fond memories of rubber cement and hand-chopped photographs we used to make the yearbook in my middle school days.

Anyway, it’s a great little resource if you haven’t seen it before. Enjoy your trip through the past!