I Declare The James Norbury Annexe…. Open!

How to keep this place warm whilst I work on a paeon to the late, great James Norbury?

Thought you might enjoy these lads. Not a Norbury pattern – so far as I’m aware! Although he did get everywhere in the 1950s!

Something marvellously camp about them.  My husband spotted this first, rummaging in a charity shop, and he wanted it for his avatar online. I’m not sure what that says about him – other than he likes archery and comes from the 1950s… And many years of being married to me might do that to a man.

I often think male models in old knitting patterns are doing consciously ‘macho’ things, to dilute the apparent campness of wearing something your mummy/wife knitted for you.  Which somehow makes them look even camper. A bit like the film ‘300’.

This is my modest attempt at a tiny, underfunded and neglected UK annexe of my favourite online haunt, a pale and pasty imitation of the great original;  the Museum of Kitschy Stitches, whose hallowed halls I have trod for as many years as the Museum’s been open.  Stitchy McYarnpants  is “Creator and Curator of the Museum of Kitschy Stitches, an online gallery of the best of the worst in handmade fashion.”

And I once bought the campest knitting bag ever from her Etsy shop which bizarrely featured strange 1950’s sausage dogs inserted into what might be flower arrangements.

Stitchy has a new book out, ‘Knitting It Old School’. Which I will review for you soon!