Tyne Tees Television Six Five news feature, originally broadcast on 1 june 1968, about a fashion show at the new Hilton Hotel in London held by the Darlington company Patons and Baldwin who produced wool, yarn and knitting patterns for home knitters. The fashion show promotes their new sales product, American knitting needles called “Supersonics”.  The reporter Phil McDonnell stands outside the new London Hilton Hotel holding an unusual pair of large knitting needles in his hands, an inch in...

Tyne Tees Television Six Five news feature, originally broadcast on 1 june 1968, about a fashion show at the new Hilton Hotel in London held by the Darlington company Patons and Baldwin who produced wool, yarn and knitting patterns for home knitters. The fashion show promotes their new sales product, American knitting needles called “Supersonics”.  The reporter Phil McDonnell stands outside the new London Hilton Hotel holding an unusual pair of large knitting needles in his hands, an inch in diameter, which have been called ‘Supersonics’. He explains that you can knit ten times more quickly with Patons Supersonics than with ordinary knitting needles. They are new in America and are being introduced into the UK by a Darlington firm of wool spinners who have chosen London’s newest hotel to stage a new approach to the old craft of knitting. Inside the hotel, McDonnell and British character actor Derek Nimmo are seated beside a trendy young woman who is busily knitting with Patons Supersonics. McDonnell interviews Derek Nimmo, who is holding a pair of the knitting needles, saying ‘Not only are you one of the few men here, but you are giving the ladies a few tips.’ Nimmo says he’s not really. He has been known as rather a big knitter, but he only really started knitting the night before when his mother showed him how to do a few stiches, especially with the large knitting needles he is using here. He jokes about the Supersonics and then shows off the young woman’s scarf. The fashion show takes place on a catwalk in the Hilton. Models in various knitted creations are grooving on the catwalk to groovy Hammond organ music. The reporter then talks to Patons and Baldwins’ representatives at a restaurant table. He asks why no one has thought of this before. One of the men says he thinks that it was thought up by a woman in the United States as a therapy for handicapped children. When they found out how easy and quick the results were, and the kind of colour combination they could use, it became a craze, which swept the States. Patons jumped in on this. He thinks it’s going to become international. The group acknowledge that it makes knitting so much simpler, shortens the time it takes to knit clothes, and makes it fun. The man says that one can knit a dress in as little time as 8 to 10 hours. An expert can do it even quicker. McDonnell asks what this is going to do to conventional knitting. The man doesn’t think it will affect ‘fine knitting’. But it will revolutionise thicker knits.