Good morning, and congratulations to Eileen and Rebecca who correctly guessed Polka Dots and Moonbeams as the sonic inspiration for today’s pattern! (For those of you who couldn’t access my Apple Music playlist yesterday due to a broken link, apologies, and here it is).
As you can see, today’s Making Light design is a pair of slippers, whose braids and colourwork bands echo those of Clanjamfrie (with the planetary dots scaled down to foot proportions).
Those of you who have made a pair of Pouzles will find this foot-envelope shape familiar. For those who haven’t, these slippers are knitted from the toe up, with an afterthought ankle, and a short-row heel.
Working the toes and heels in a single shade makes And Moonbeams a less fiddly proposition than Pouzle, making it much more straightforward to adjust the slipper length to fit your feet. . .
. . . simply stop knitting the motifs when the pattern reaches the beginning of your ankle, and move on to work the heel.
If you’ve not worked a braid before, and would like to have a go, it’s a much easier proposition around a slipper’s small circumference, than a pullover hem.
Slippers are one of my favourite small colourwork accessories to design (and knit), and this pair feels especially jolly, cosy and wintery.
Now, on to the sonic inspiration of Polka Dots and Moonbeams: a jazz standard written by Jimmy Van Heusen with lyrics by Johnny Burke which rose to popularity in 1940 as the young Frank Sinatra’s breakout hit.
The lyric (far more decorous and sentimental than those selected for the later “swinging” Frank) immortalises the encounter between the singer and a “pug-nosed” vision wearing one of the polka dotted dresses which were then hugely popular in the United States.
To quote Jude Stewart’s* excellent discussion of the 1940s craze for dotty fabrics, American women regarded polka dot prints as “upbeat and versatile”. “Clean and simple in its machine printed version, the pattern exuded a lively wholesomeness. . . . “
“… and yet it was recognised the the tiniest of tweaks – packing the dots tightly together, or letting them jostle and overlap — could produce an exhilarating disorientation . . . “
” Together, these associations fed the feminine aura of the polka dot”, writes Stewart, “sweet innocence and heady sexiness rolled into one.”
After the United States joined the global fight against fascism in 1942, polka dots rapidly became a pattern with what the Washington Post explicitly referred to as “social significance”: a print that declared the wearer’s patriotic commitment, while suiting all kinds of pockets, figures and proportions:
“What we mean by a print with social significance is one that most people can wear most of the time. Polka dots fall into that category, even if they don’t spell “Remember Pearl Harbor” in code.” The Post concluded.
I love these photographs of 1940s American women happy in their dotty attire. . . .
. . . and I also love Polka Dots and Moonbeams, although Frank’s version is a bit too twee, even for me.
Here’s my favourite, beautifully soulful rendition of Polka Dots and Moonbeams, recorded by Lester Young in 1949.
There are slipper kits in the shop, and the pattern will be distributed to all Making Light members very shortly. Remember that club subscriptions close tonight!
Enjoy your Sunday!
* Jude Stewart, Patternalia: An Unonventional History of Polka Dots, Stripes, Plaid, Camouflage, and Other Graphic Patterns (2015)
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