Chinese Rose Jacket Redux

Once upon a time I shopped for yarn and spent $100 or so on a kit for Kaffe Fassett's Chinese Rose Jacket.  It was probably the early 90's.

This was, I believe, before Rowan put out those lovely outsized books, the ones that  I find hard to find the right spot for on my knitting book shelf.  This pattern was in leaflet form,  the sweater also appeared in Glorious Color, published in 1988. I still have my copy.  Actually I received two copies of Glorious Color in 1988 for Christmas, from two different people.  

This book has been reprinted at Glorious Color for Needlepoint  & Knitting.  As a former needlepointer, I still drool over the stitched cabbages.

I remember spending many many many hours on this cardi.  My gauge was off, and I was knitting at 7.5 stitches per inch:  too small, which was a good thing as it was/is a one size cardigan and I no longer wear oversized garments.  So, it still fits well.  The yarns were Rowan DK Fleck and Designer DK.

Various vintage Rowan kits are available at Amazon, pricing up to $300 from what I can see.  This website has a kit for sale for this particular sweater, price not listed!

Visit Kaffe at his website.

Rowan is well known for using romantic rural backdrops for their knitwear photo shoots, and often still is.  Along those lines...

I learned about Victorian Farm on Brenda's podcast last week, it was Episode 83 (I'm still catching up).  Real archeologists/historians work on a real Victorian farm using true-to-the-time farming and day to day living methods.  

I searched about online to find it: not on Netflix;  then found it at youtube today: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msw6jWhJocw

I suspect that this will help to deromantice the rural nineteenth century lifestyle as I view the episodes.  Well, I'm still allowed to romanticize about anything I darned well please...and Rowan and the BBC are  always happy to oblige.  Next... I hear there's also Edwardian Farm...