Joined-Up-Knitting

Knitting for Heros – our diamond Queen at home during the Second World War

2012-02-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

Princess Elizabeth knitting

Last weeksanniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne reminded me ofthe collection of books about Royalty which have been gathering dust at the topof the stairs for a few years since I accidentally acquired them in a huge joblot of books I brought at an auction sale.

Taking fiveminutes off to have a little browse and picking up on one volume with a verystriking cover, The Royal Family inWartime, I came across this lovely picture of the Royal Family at home.Princess Elizabeth is looking so relaxed as she stands, knitting in hand, rightby the fire.

In ourhouse she would have been accused of hogging the heat, but perhaps the Palacewas just as draughty as our place used to be - so I wouldn’t blame her!

Home tonight telegram 1945

As I gotfurther into the book I started coming across little pieces of wartime ephemera.The front of a charming Christmas card, newspaper cuttings of children’scolouring pictures, hand written recipes for Eggless Cake, and Sponge Parkincame fluttering out. But my heart nearlystopped when a page opened to reveal a telegraphic envelope. Dreading thethought that it had born bad news, it was a relief to find it was in fact toherald a soldier’s homecoming in December 1945.

The youngPrincess may well have been knitting socks for the troops or even prisoners ofwar, it looks like she is knitting ondouble pointers. And I guess there is a double point to all of this in howclosely the Royal Family did stand by the people during the devastation of thewar and just how spectacularly something as simple as a little bit of knitting contributed by manyindividuals can create a significant difference where it is needed.

The Royal Family inWartime, Odhams Press Ltd., London 1945

Put a sock in it.

2012-02-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

Thinking about what would make a good bag for a sock knitter, I thought it was about time I had a go knitting some socks myself.

Put a sock in it - stop laughing!

Not having any specifically sock yarn to hand I set off with some doubled up, rather sparkly yarn of undetermined fibres from a cone; which I didn’t mind getting wasted if it didn’t produce the finished socks. By making a tension swatch and a rough lower leg measurement I followed most of James Norbury ‘s generic sock instructions from the good old Odham’s Encyclopedia of Knitting. It was all much simpler than I had imagined.

Undecided about the merits of circular needles compared with double pointers I switched around a bit. The circular needles I currently have are not the greatest but I gradually got into the swing of the “magic loop” however by the end of the second sock I was rather surprised to find that I had made much quicker progress with the double pointers.

Not the most stylish, I will readily admit! - but actually the socks fit remarkable well and look much better on the foot. Any how these will make a great pair of bed socks and they can come camping with me next time we are out in the tent. But next time I should now be able to create a sock pattern for any size with a bit more style.

Knitting short rows

2012-01-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

Small knitted bag curves knitted with short rows

Despite all the assorted yarn in generous amounts sitting around the place waiting for something to happen to them I have been taken up with looking for ideas of what to do with a small mountain of short lengths of rug wool from the back of the cupboard. They are warp ends from the woollen mill at Solva, near St. David's Wales, the colours are lovely but none of them are even a metre long. Great for pegging a rug but I really wanted to weave them. This hasn't happened yet but I thought I would just see how they knitted.
I have tried my hand a little at "free knitting" in the past and quite enjoyed the effect of knitting short rows, (turning back before the end of the row). As you can see you can get some lovely curves going so I put some in too. Eventually my little experimental pieces have become a small zipped and lined bag.

Knitting Feathers

2012-01-11T02:55:00.000-08:00

As ever I have spent the first week of the year tidying up last years accumulated bits and bobs which have found a temporary Christmas home or a more permanent lodging in my workshop. Had to do something a bit more radical this year to better accommodate the extra craft related gear I have also acquired. So have been shifting tool racks and making space for more shelves.

While moving things around I came across a little square of knitting I did on two feathers. I remember having a go at this after I read an item on the web about knitting on the West Coast of Ireland. I had been trying to find some Aran wool from Achill Island, the article described learning to knit on goose quills and other makeshift needles such as sticks of willow and bicycle spokes.

I didn’t have any goose quills but there are always pigeon feathers in the garden so I had a go on two of these. They worked quite well, smooth with just a little grip too and the curve made them easy to hold. Even less excuse now for not getting on with some knitting even when the needles have been left at home.

You can read more of the article about traditional knitting in

Ireland

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/aemblem/sweaters.html

A little sheepish - baby blanket auction for Save the Children

2011-12-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

Little baby blanket for Save the children

The troublesome baby blanket is finally completed and the finished article is rather sweet. A little image of Woolly Facade appears in the corner. The pure Shetland wool in cream and the super soft naturally coloured yarn spun from Cashgora and 30% Manx Loghton rare breed wool are rather special. It's made a lovely cosy little cover up for a small baby - just right for a first size car carrier/seat.

As Christmas is coming up I decided to auction it for charity via EBay. A 100% of the proceeds will be going to Save the Children. The auction is running now and until 11th December Item 290640589687

Knitting at the ready - a little reflection for Poppy Day

2011-11-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

I love old books. The other day I was searching the bookcases for a crumbling copy of Winnie the Pooh I knew I had somewhere. But when I opened a rather dusty book I had put my hand on it took me by surprise. Not A.A. Milne but a war time fictionalisation of real life on a RAF station in World War II entitled Readiness at Dawn by "Blake". I flipped through the black and white photographs peppered through the book - on the last page one paragraph caught my eye.

The year was 1941. It was the early hours of the morning in the operations room....
" The map was empty. The W.A.A.F. with the gasp was reading her poetry again. Two others were knitting service garments, and one a baby's jacket. The men sat and read, or wrote letters or just sat and smoked and did nothing. The hard light beat down on the scene. The telephones were quiet."

The power of a simple task like knitting to calm the nerves, to provide the bare necessities for war heroes and to add to the little tinge of expectation for a new life to come just struck home to me. These days you often come across great nostalgia for the 1940's vintage style but the tragic reality of the era is not one we should forget.

Back to square one with joined up knitting - don't forget to plan your knitting

2011-10-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

Baby blanket reverse side

Oh dear! Sometimes its just the basics that trip you up. I have a habit, not a very clever one I know now, of setting off with some random knitting without really knowing what it going to become. This happens most often when we are setting off somewhere in the car and I haven't had chance to organise some knitting to do while in the passenger seat. I often end up just throwing an odd ball of wool and some knitting needles in my bag and start casting on... Something like this happened a few weeks ago.

I had half an idea about making a baby blanket with little sheep motifs and I some nicely toning shades of cream, brown and grey. But I had already knitted a small mountain of 4" stocking stitch squares before I realised that adding a 1" border between all the squares was not going to be a very neat idea. And that the grey wool - an early attempt at hand spinning - was far too rough for a baby blanket. So three tone became two tone and half the squares had to be re-knitted.

Joining up the squares remained a problem. Montese Stanley's Handknitter's Handbook couldn't help me. She devoted a whole chapter to edges and joining emphasising over and again the particular importance of formation of the edge stitches on any piece of knitting. I tried several methods of joining with contrast wool but none were really satisfactory. James Norbury's single and wise suggestion was to begin and end each square with 2 rows of garter stitch and begin and end each row in the same way. Making it possible to join with a simple flat seam.

Joined up squares

Some progress has at last been made. I liked the idea of having ridges around the squares on one side and I have finally achieved this by using my linker and my sewing machine. But all those ends to sort out - what a chore and what a time waster!

I will never go down the road with small squares again or set off without a proper plan and preparation. My old Grandma, who knitted all those huge blankets, will be laughing her socks off.

Spare the rod! - first steps in natural dyeing with Golden Rod

2011-09-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

Golden Rod dyed wool with the very plants it came from

Its wool week in the UK and I have finally put some time aside to have a go at natural dying. It seems a long time ago now that I first came across Michel Garcia founder of Couleur Garance*, a botanical garden of dye plants, set in the Chateau de Lauris in Provence. I heard about this magical place via a podcast from the fascinating website of the MAIWA foundation** a Canadian organisation set up in 1997 by MAIWA handprints to help eradicate poverty in rural villages in poorer countries. Sadly I have not been there yet but it inspired me to see what I could do in my own back garden. Its taken me a while but I am pleased as Punch that I tried it out.

Looking round the garden for suitable plants earlier this year I was a bit miffed to find out that the massive yellow plants I had been trying to eradicate for several years was Golden Rod. A perfect plant for dying yellow it's really hard to control once it's on your patch. This years outcrop had to be spared and ideally I had to get it used while the flowers were at their best. I just made it.

I had been looking out for a suitable dye pot for quite a while. Dye pots must be either stainless steel, glass or enamel if you do not want it to affect the finished colour and I wanted it pretty big . I couldn't find anything in my usual haunts for second hand bargains. But a couple of weeks ago a chap round the corner was having a garage sale. He had some lovely antique woodworking tools which were hard to resist and while we were talking I asked if he happened to have any large stainless steel pots he wanted rid of. Next thing he has hopped off to his kitchen and I'm left in charge of the garage sale. He came back with a rather posh steamer complete with inner bowl, strainer and lid. Rather smaller, more complicated and more expensive than my original idea but he turned out to be a right salesman and I left £15 lighter clutching the said pot.

As it turns out the pot with all its extras is ideal. I managed to dye about 4 ozs of wool at a time and it would probably do more. I decided against throwing the wool in with the flowers and boiled up about 4 or 5 heads for 45 minutes or so before straining. I had forgotten about mordanting the wool so the dye was left outside in tub for a week before I found the mordant kit purchased from George Weil many months ago. The alum mordant didn't seem too scary, so another 45 minutes of wool simmering ensued before my white Shetland wool finally went into the dye pot for a further 25 minutes.

Getting the wool so hot for so long seemed counter intuitive but luckily I remembered reading that felting is caused by agitation and sudden changes in temperature. So you rinse in hot water first and gradually reduce the temperature of the wool.

I was really chuffed with the results, I was expecting it to be a bit murky but it came out a rich yellow. A second batch in the part exhausted dye pot gave me a lovely primrose.

Next up the onion skins, I have been collecting for a year.

Wooly
*You can get a flavour of the dye garden at http://www.frenchgardening.com/visitez.html?pid=12016936941558680
**http://www.maiwa.com/foundation/index.html

Come fly with me - butterfly slip stitch

2011-08-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

Gate keeper butterfly - photo Peter Morley

We seem to have had a lot more butterflies in the garden this year, maybe its the presence of the runner beans which are knitting their way up the old aerials, internet and TV cables at the side of the living room window. I had a few early plants in pots, intended for the allotment but other things got the better of me and before I knew it they were completely enmeshed. I put the roots in a big tub they are a bit muddled up but they are romping away.

Butterfly slip stitch

I have been having a little look at butterfly stitches. There is a lacy, quite fiddly one, but this really easy butterfly slip stitch pattern is really effective. I came across it in an old (1951) Foyles Handbook by Eunice Close. The stitch pattern for the motif is on the stitch pattern page.

What the Dickens was Madame Defarge really knitting?

2011-07-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

Madame Defarge

Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large ear-rings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way.

Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

It’s Bastille Day today which has reminded me of the time I took last year to read the Charles Dickens classic, A Tale of Two Cities, having been prompted to do so when I came across a great, 2005, online article “Top 10 men in knitting” by Anne Richards in Knitty .com http://knitty.com/ISSUEsummer05/FEATtopten.html

I wondered if there was any significance in the fact that the two most quoted lines from the book are actually the first sentence, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..” and the last, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done...” But to find out what Dickens actually did have to say about Madame Defarge and the knitting meant going cover to cover squinting along all 58 lines per page of my Victorian copy. Sadly not a first edition but printed just about in his lifetime.

I soon discovered that Madame Defarge was nothing like the little slip of a woman depicted in the line drawing in this early edition, she was a big strapping woman, well fed and well clothed, unlike her customers and wretched neighbours who were close to starving.

Dickens was a wonderful observer but I’m not sure he totally understood the business of knitting. I could be very wrong; but his suggestion that the women knitted useless things merely to take their mind off how hungry they were does not really add up.
"They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus; if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched."
If you were next to starving you would not be buying wool to knit to pass the time. More likely, as happened elsewhere, you would be knitting a merchants wool into hose for a pittance. Knitting none stop, day and night, while you walked, and while you talked. Polite knitting in the drawing room did not really happen until Victorian times.

Madame Defarge, however, took great care of her rather better income from the wine shop and room lettings. At one point she claimed to be knitting as a pastime, and later, more pointedly, to be knitting a shroud. In fact it was always her deadly knitted register of names marked for retribution - come the revolution. But at the end of the day the list “knitted in her own stitches and her own symbols” to be “always as plain to her as the sun” was of limited value once she “the tigress”, had met her comeuppance at the hands of poor little Miss Pross. No one else would be able to interpret it.

A pretty pattern, it was said – I guess it was multicoloured. but knitted in the round or just two pins?

Well it was all a bit more complicated, and metaphorical - but never the less a cracking good yarn!

Hats off! Fair Isle beret meets Tam O'Shanter

2011-06-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

With Sheila's admonishments still ringing in my ears I just felt I had to try harder at circular knitting. At the end of her book a spread of amazing knitted "tammy" hats in fantastic concentric Fair Isle patterns were said to be much easier to make than to describe. That they relied on a double slip stitch decrease was all the information given. I set off to make a small hat for a child and along the way I met some very interesting people.

As I began, I got curious about why these hats are called "Tammies" and who exactly was Tam O'Shanter? and I finally got round to reading the epic Robert Burns poem. Only half comprehending it, even in translation, I gather he was a bit of a lad for the booze and the ladies who got a bad scare to the detriment of his horse. His "good blue bonnet" apparently referred to a Kilmarnock bonnet, - heavy duty head gear from which a man would seldom be parted inside or outside.

O dear! by then I'm totally hooked into finding out more about the mysteries of these knitted Scottish bonnets. Historical hats were coming thick and fast from Glengarry's and Atholl's in regimental dress to berets and forage caps. Fascinating.... you can read more about how they were made at
http://futuremuseum.co.uk/Collection.aspx/bonnet_making/Description

Sally Pointer is also something of an expert when it comes recreating these historical caps and she has some interesting traditional tools too. See http://www.sallypointer.com/shop/

For this little effort I started off using trusty James Norbury's instructions for beret shaping. So this hat has a tight rim, rather than a rib and is increased out before turning back in for the crown. But then I discovered Ruskin on Ravelry whose splendid Greenvoe pattern explained that knitting a straight tube and then decreasing just within the central crown would do the job. The centre shaping is more Ruskin that Norbury and I completed the job by gentle washing and drying it to shape over a plate. I decided against a pom pom as this quite a lightweight little hat for maybe a two/three year old.

As Sheila said in her book making one is a lot easier than it looks or is to describe. I'll try to add an outline of how I made it on the patterns page as soon as I can.

Traditional Knitting by Sheila McGregor and a teeny tiny Fair Isle baby bonnet

2011-06-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

Premie size Fair Isle baby hat in yellow and brown

I had a stroke of luck this week when I came across a book about traditional knitting by Sheila McGregor. I had been on the look out for anything by her since I acquired "Michael Parson's Traditional Knitting" when I was on holiday in Scotland last year.

If it had been her "Complete Book of Fair Isle Knitting" I would have been over the moon, still I am pretty chuffed to have laid my hands on this 1983 Batsford Paperback - "Traditional Knitting" for just 25p. While only quite a short book Sheila's take on the history of knitting is well researched and written with some wry humour.

I'm fascinated by the different theories surrounding the development and spread of knitting techniques and patterns around the globe. There seems to be very little hard and fast evidence and the folklore surrounding "traditional" patterns varies according to where you are asking. Do we owe Fair Isle knitting to the Spanish or the Vikings? Sheila suggestion is that the source was more likely to have been Estonia.

One thing that stands out from the book for me is the importance of felting. It had never occurred to me that not only hats but most of those hand knit stockings were felted. The book reminds us that knitting is basically a circular technique and Sheila's parting paragraph says very much about what I think of as "Joined Up Knitting"

"....knitting is in many ways an ideal craft for today. It is no longer true that it has to be economically worthwhile; it is sufficient in itself. The varying levels of skill can explored (if knitters would only lift their eyes from their paper patterns and read a little about the basic). Not the least thing, the end result is useful as well as beautiful and, we would hope, unique."

The are lots of fascinating colour pictures in the book, but here we will have to make do with an image of my own first attempt at Fair Isle hand knitting last year. I started off at random really, trying out some circular knitting on four pins and some contrasting oddments and just trying to make changes as I went along. It turned out as a very small hat about right for a premie baby, so I sent it off to South Africa with some knitted blankets. squares.
Woolly Facade

Knitted stripes at the double

2011-05-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

Childs top in knitted stripes

Two colour knitting in single row stripes can be a pain. The yarn for the next colour change is always at the wrong end of the work! But an easy solution is to use two needles with points at both ends.

I recently inherited some one's lifetime collection of knitting needles containing many double pointers in various lengths so I was able to set about this little dazzler of a child's knitted top inspired by a man's vintage sports shirt I had seen in one of my favourite old books, Modern Knitting.

Jane Koster and Margaret Murray's 1940's book Modern Knitting Illustrated is an other knitting classic published by Odhams Press. The images are just so evocative of the time and a lovely reminder of how to go about making the most of limited resources. If you ever see a copy; - spot a little lamb tugging a tiny truck laden with wool knitting pins and book on the cover, do not fail to buy it.

I made up this pattern for a four year old, but you could replicate it in any size, taking a standard stocking stitch, round necked jumper as a basic guide. The button opening is started just above the point where the sleeves come in by leaving six or so stitches on a holder and completed one side at a time. I reinforced the button band with cotton tape. The collar is a simple straight band in rib knitted up on the stitches around the neck.

The original man's sports shirt was knitted in two yarns one cotton and the other wool, this one is somewhat similar being knitted in the remainders of indeterminate cones of yarn. The red being quite soft and the yellow a little finer and harder they are quite nicely balanced and dare I say?....it turned out quite nifty but thrifty!

Woolly Facade

Royal Wedding Day Gifts in Swaledale handspun

2011-04-27T04:16:00.000-07:00

Voila! The first few skeins of the second helping of my handspun Swaledale, almost ready for knitting into the Achill jacket - it just need winding into balls before I can take it down to my sister Katharine (aka the Queen of Knitting). Hopefully she has been to busy to knit the first few ounces yet...these look a little better spun.

Despite her title I understand she has not been asked to the Palace on the occasion of the marriage William and Kate as the names could be confusing around the table and her title is one of repute rather than noble birth. But this is of no real concern as it has been arranged by her family for her to hold a royal wedding day party at the Croft. Barbecue and burgers, fun and games for forty. I'll take it with me but she will deserve a rest before she starts any knitting of this complexity.

Wooly Facade

Out for a spin

2011-04-05T02:21:00.000-07:00

Achill Jacket knitting pattern c.1963

In the early 1960’s we had the Beatles and, shudder my father’s timbers, The Rolling Stones. About the same time I was at Grammar School and old enough to be left with my older siblings while mother and father went on a jaunt touring

Ireland

with old family friends.

They went as far as Achill Island just off the west coast of County Mayo. Amongst the trophies they brought back were hanks of hand spun wool and a local pattern for an Aran style garment, the “Achill jacket”.

My sister Katharine was volunteered to do the knitting and she produced two wonderful jackets, one in donkey brown for Mum and one in a lovely slate blue for me. The wool had quite a unique character and the complex arrangement of traditional stitch patterns had such a timeless quality that I wore the jacket for decades. Fashions came and went, but like Mick Jaggar, the Achill jacket just went on and on. I can not remember exactly when I finally gave in and let it go but there was quite a lot of it missing by then; it was worn to destruction.

Sadly there had not been enough wool for Katharine to have a jacket of her own in this yarn, by the time a return trip to Achill came about the hand spinners had gone and the wool could not be found again.

Now my dear sister has offered to make me another jacket, - a labour of love bar none! She still has the pattern and I have spent weeks trying to find a yarn which might have the feel of the original and that could do justice to the work involved - without breaking the bank.

I rather fancied grey as a colour and nearly tried my hand at natural hand dyeing some Shetland yarn I had got hold of, but it would have been a big quantity to do in one go and I hadn’t got any really big pots to do the job. Finally I came to my senses and realised I could have natural grey wool from a grey sheep which I could hand spin myself!

I settled on grey Swaledale and ordered a kilo of combed tops from R E Dickie Ltd. in Halifax. They have great ranges of British fleece and yarns which you can see and buy at http://www.ephraimson.com/redickieltd.php The eagerly awaited parcel has arrived and I’m very, very happy with the contents. All I have to do now is peddle until its done…watch this space. Anyhow it beats going to the gym.

The longest day – Odd Sox

2011-02-26T14:24:00.000-08:00

Odd Sox-Frenchie the stripe

Those who have to put up with me around the home are well aware that on occasions I will appear in odd socks or with my cardigan on inside out. Usually they have sorted me out before I have left the house. But some times it gets worse. I’ll never forget the day I got half way through a morning at work before realising I had odd shoes on my feet. Not wildly dissimilar, they should have been a pair of classic court shoes – plain black slip ons with a small heel. But one was definitely round toed and two years younger than its pointed and well battered companion.

The initial shock horror moment passed without me shrieking out. No, there wasn’t another “pair” in the car or in the staff room. This was it for the day. There was nothing to be done except quake. Should I let on to my colleagues, or could I avoid open views across the office? If challenged what could I repartee? Worse still, had I already been clocked? I was supposed to be a professional with letters to put after my name. Would this count in my annual assessment? The longest day ensued.

What brought all this to mind was getting news that one of my knitting bags had been featured on a blog http://thesockgarden.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/knit-club-folksy-friday/

So I was off to the Sockgarden, the home of Odd Sox at a rate of knots. I can honestly say these cute and crazy hand made creatures made by Shaz are absolutely terrific. Do take a look, they are really special.

If I get the chance I’d love to see them in the flesh at Sock! Sat. 26^th and Sun. 27^th March, Loughborough Town Hall. It’s hard to choose… but I think my favourite just now is Frenchie the Stripe and I’d like to be six again.

Seeing Red - P.S. Knitted pleats for little girls are back again

2011-02-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Slip stitch knitted pleats

Having got quite nostalgic about Grandma's knitting I was a bit miffed to be reminded recently of one less well remembered knitted Christmas present given to me as a child. I think I must have deliberately made the effort to forget the hand knitted jumper initialed on the chest with the letters P.S. due to one of those little Christmas jests that meant no harm but left a little sting.

Strangely I had remembered the matching skirt which came with it quite fondly. It was worn so long it became too short! Overtime Grandma had knitted little sets for all the Stillman girls with embroidered initials on each. So there was KS, HS, MS and finally PS all kitted out in little knitted pleats and a top to go over.

To understand the impact of opening the Christmas parcel in question you will have to know something of the Christmas Day ritual at Oakfields. The family gathering at our house was huge and included all Grandma and Pam Pams’ children and their children and in later years their children. Now little PS was about five years behind all the others, so at the time I was the baby of the family and the audience packed the room.

Christmas 1956

It was always a late start. Grandma and Pam Pam refused to leave their home, some miles away, before the Queen's speech at three o'clock. There were so many to cater for; much of the day was taken up with “final” preparations for the giant spread. No presents were opened until after a huge buffet tea of turkey, roast beef, ham, trifles and jellies, mince pies, chocolate log, meringues, éclairs, batten-bergs, other assorted cakes and six gallons of tea had been well and truly consumed. All presents from everyone were piled high around the Christmas tree. The ceremony began when Daddy started to read out the labels on each and every gift and I was dispatched to pass it over. Every present was opened with eager anticipation while we all looked on and cheered the emerging socks and books, bath cubes and handkerchiefs. It went on long into the night.

Then came the parcel containing the said monogrammed knitting.

"Oh! Thank you Grandma" said I,

"Oh! P.S.! - well she was a little afterthought” said another.

Laughter ensued.

I was not happy and let them all know.

Somehow it didn’t stop there - endearing references to little P.S. taunted me for sometime. No wonder I'm still shy!

Pleated effect knitted skirt sewn
on to stretch fabric bodice

Never the less, the skirt was a hit, and similar ones were knitted for the next generation too. So it definitely qualifies as a family favourite. I didn’t have a pattern, but with a little help from good old James Norbury, I learnt that the key to the pleating effect is a slip stitch. So after a little experimentation I was able to reproduce it. Big sister (KS) assures me it is pretty close.

It’s remarkably simple to knit and it’s easy to make a skirt for a pre-school little girl in just one piece. You can elasticate the top or if you put on to a little bodice it will never droop. You can find the stitch pattern here and instructions for making a little skirt here.

Knitting hero – James Norbury 1904-1972

2011-01-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

James Norbury knitting hero

I’m still looking for a royalty free image of James Norbury, my first knitting hero, until then we will have to make do with my own feeble sketch of the man to whom knitters today owe so much.

I’ve been getting great value from my vintage copy of Odham’s Encyclopedia of Knitting and I have been trying to find out more about James Norbury, his books and to put a face to him. I can understand why so many people speak so highly of him, he just made knitting appear so simple and his knowledge and passion for the craft is contagious.

To date I have only come across one photograph and when I first saw it I was a little taken aback. I think I was expecting a version of the sort of suave fifties chap you see on vintage knitting patterns. It was not just the bald head and beard rather akin to the Philip Harben, Clement Freud look; it was the incredibly strong, pebble thick lenses of the glasses he was wearing which struck me most. Taken in 1951 he would have had much of his writing and broadcasting career ahead of him, I wonder if he had damaged his eyes with so much knitting or if he had poor eyesight from early on?

As head designer at Patons, for many years after the World war II he was a highly influential and engaging teacher and spokesman on the subject. Apparently equally at home delivering a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts (1959) or writing knitting books for children.

In the fifties and sixties he was the face of knitting on television. I have been trying to work out why I can not remember him. But now I know he was on the screen as early as 1951 when I would have been a baby in arms. We did not have a televison at home until 1958 but that should have allowed us to see him on BBC2 in the late1960’s but I don’t recall seeing him.

He must have been quite a striking character. Sir David Attenborough, talked warmly about him in 2009 to Jenni Johnston.

"There is a telling moment when he tells me of one of the few times in his life where he found himself in a job he 'didn't much care for' - the stint he spent as controller of BBC2 in the late 1960s.

Even here, though, he found things to marvel at. 'The knitting intrigued me,' he says. Knitting? 'Absolutely. There was a chap called James Norbury, who had his own knitting show on the BBC. I sat in on some of the programmes, and good stuff it was, too. I learned lots of racy stuff about "knit one, purl one"."

Mailonline 15th January 2009

I can not wait to get my hands on more of his work. Last time I checked out EBay I had just missed a lovely copy of The Penguin knitting book (1957) by minutes. I know there are about 25 titles out there by him, one or two on embroidery and sewing too, which I will list on a page here as soon as I get time.

If you want to take a peek at the photo try

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/JG8198-001/Hulton-Archive

Woolly Facade

The yellow brick road

2010-12-29T07:44:00.000-08:00

Finally! the first recreation of an old family favourite is complete just in time for Christmas 2010 and a perfect fit for our youngest grand son, baby George, aged 10 months. This brings the simple brick pattern which my Grandma used to knit for us down through five generations and lives which span across three centuries. This is like the one I was wearing in the 1950's photo on my earlier post “Down by the Sea”.

Looking at it with my sister she was relieved I had been able to complete it with just two yarns remembering how when yarn was in short supply after the second world war, the brick pattern jumpers might be randomly completed in different colours if enough of the original could not be found.

George’s jumper was put together from five strands of machine coned yarn wound together. The exact fibre content is debateable as both colours were remnants from a job lot acquisition. I don’t think either the brown or the quite lustrous camel is natural fibre but they have combined into a soft but fairly dense fabric, making a nice cosy jumper.

After a few false starts the simple slip stitch pattern was really easy as you only have to carry one colour across at any time and the alternate colour comes up the edge. There are loads of possible variations but if you would like to see how I did this one click the knitting stitch pattern tab to see the stitch pattern I used.

The house that Jack built tea cosy - charity auction for Crisis at Christmas 2010

2010-12-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

The house that Jack built

Its just so cold out there! The thought of people having to sleep rough outdoors is really worrying. When the Crisis at Christmas leaflet came through the door, gently floating on a stream of warm centrally heated air it really struck a cord. Crisis can offer a lot more than Christmas dinner to the homeless if they have the funds they can offer a real turning point and direction to a better future too. I thought I would put something together to auction as an EBay.for charity item.

I quite like making tea cosies as a way of using up smaller bits and pieces in applique and patchwork but I have never knitted one. Thinking on a housing theme, memories of those odd "Tudor" cottage patterns you used see in Woolcraft sprang to mind. I'm rather fond of nursery rhymes too... next thing I know I'm making "The house that Jack built" - what a lot of characters!

Anyway this turned out be lots of fun. I've had a go at felting or strictly speaking "fulling" a big strip of loosely knitted Shetland wool into a thick mat for the walls, I've taken up the warmest seat in our house right between the radiator and my knitting machine to make the roof, got out my fabric paints and done some free embroidery on a sewing machine. I added one of my little designs on leather for the cock that crowed in the morn.

It's up for grabs now, the auction ends Sunday 19th Dec. Item number: 290511734935 Fingers crossed it will find a new home and the proceeds will help some one out of the miserable cold this Christmas. A perfect present for "the hard to buy for because they already have everything they need"

The damsel all forlorn has perked up no end since she got kissed by the man all tattered and torn!

cheers
Woolley Facade

Joined-up-knitting has a Folksy shop

2010-11-23T05:53:00.001-08:00

Baby merino jumper 1-2 years

There's no stemming the flow of little hand knitted garments and baby shawls coming off my sister Katharine's knitting needles. So now there is a little selection offered for sale in the Joined-up-knitting shop on Folksy. If you are looking for a little present and haven't got time to knit one up yourself you might find one here....

Knitting bag with interlocking knitting pins

I'm adding them as fast as I can but really busy just now getting out knitting bags in time for Christmas too.
cheers
Woolly Facade

Scandinavian Rhapsody

2010-11-13T06:42:00.000-08:00

As a first step in the attempt to recreate some of the well loved family woollies of yesteryear I thought I would have a go at a “brick pattern” jumper which was one of Grandma’s favourites. It was a good way of making odd ends of different coloured wools go a bit further.

I’m wearing one of these in the Down by the Sea photo (front row middle). I think it was probably getting a bit on the tight side by the time the photo was taken. But in those days everything had to last a bit longer.

My sister assures me Grandma used slip stitches rather than Fair Isle knitting. By way of a little research I delved into my recently acquired copy of Odhams Encyclopaedia of Knitting by James Norbury and Margaret Agutter (1956) and came across a very short entry for Bohus knitting which makes particular use of slip stitches to build up multi-colour effects.

It looked quite obscure, but I have since learnt Bohus was very significant. having been developed in a small area near Gothenberg, Sweden during the depression in the 1930’s to help provide an income for families when the local quarries they relied upon closed for business.

Led by Emma Jacobsson the work of the Bohus Stickning produced highly prized, couture quality garments in the finest yarns from the late nineteen thirties up until 1969. (This is going to be another great area to explore...more later)

As a warming up exercise I had a go at an example given by Norbury. I was only using miss-matched scraps of yarn - so not really representative of the original, very beautiful thing. But…Voila! my first attempt at “Scandinavian Rhapsody”

Down by the sea

2010-11-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Constance and Edmund Kimberley
and grandchildren c.1955-6
me between Grandma and Pam Pam

By the time of my first memories of Grandma and Pam Pam they were already "retired" and spent part of the year looking after their holiday seaside bungalows amongst the grassy fields and dykes at Ingoldmells in Lincolnshire. This was not long after the Great Flood of 1953 which caused havoc all along the east Coast and took the lives of 300 people. (Found some great images and accounts of this event in the Skegness Standard 50th anniversary supplements at http://www2.skegnesstoday.co.uk/sites/floods/floods1.html)

Billy Butlin had already built his holiday camp before the flood, up by the Roman Bank but it was still quite a sedate affair. Not all the roads had too much tarmac then and cockerels called the time of day at the farm next door - before Tommy Bingo arrived.

Probably only a quarter of an acre but with two bungalows, a chalet and caravan let out to holiday makers and another chalet for family accommodation and the “Waney” shed, it was another world, well heaven actually - when you were five years old.

Electricity ran to the bungalows but all else relied on bottled gas. The soft light from the gas mantles was not dissimilar to the low energy lamps of to-day but they were so much prettier. As for plumbing; the out door Elsan toilets may have had some resemblance to oil drums but were emptied on cue every week into a tanker wagon. Pam Pam wasn’t a smoker but he would carefully leave 2 Woodbine on the lid to reward the men from the council for their trouble. There was a water pump out in the garden but I don’t think it worked, I only remember using water from a tap. Flush toilets did come later.

You could still smell the sea air in those days, it would hit you as you got within a few miles of the coast. The excitement mounted in the back of the car, the only little misgiving was the knowledge that the scary steep downhill turn off the Roman Bank, with the dykes on either side, on to the unmade roads of “Beach Estate” had still to be negotiated. The dykes were big and full of reeds, one came right up to the side of the bungalows, they always fascinated me.

Inside, I remember being taken up too by the imitation stained glass made from some sort of translucent paper that decorated the back door of “Seaholme”. I can still sense the intense aroma of the sunroom at the front. It wasn’t damp but it was “woody”. It had earlier been a verandah. There were two levels but it had been built in and you could take your pick of large Victorian armchairs or just jump up and down on the steps or swing from the wooden pillars.

Much of the furniture was Victorian; the marble topped wash stands in the bedrooms were resplendent with fine pottery toilet sets comprising wash bowl, pitcher and soap dish with a matching “gazunder” parked within.

All this was complemented by two very important features. The hand pegged rugs which decorated every room and took the chill off the lino covered floors and the amazing knitted bed covers which bedecked every single and double bed.
All of these were worked by Grandma and Pam Pam and there were dozens of them.

The bedspreads were knitted by hand on fine needles in a silky yarn. Knitted in large sections, usually in two or three colours, the designs were often based on squares and joined. I have never seen others like them and unfortunately none appear to have survived. It would be good to try and replicate one while there are still some who can remember them well.

While Grandma knitted Pam Pam pegged the rugs from thrumbs. This involved not just pegging but coming up with an attractive workable design from a jumble of loom end threads which had to be cut. This was no “Readicut” man, a sign writer by trade, he was a craftsman. Today these items would command a high price if offered in an arts and crafts market. Then, they were simply a joy and a way of life.

Woolly Facade

Kimberley Connection

2010-10-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Harking back to family knitting memories... so much is owed to my maternal grand parents.

They would have known good times and bad times but I think it was pleasure and a sense of quiet satisfaction as much as necessity which led to their lifelong creativity with wool. Hour upon hour, spanning many decades, spent
usefully yet contentedly and enjoying each others company.

Constance Taylor 1878-1975

Edmund and Constance Kimberley

This is Grandma, Constance Taylor, a young school teacher at the end of the nineteenth century. Is'nt she splendid? No wonder he fell for her.

Here they are just after Pam Pam, Edmund Kimberley, returned from the second South African (Boer) War at the turn of the twentieth century.

How close he got to the South African township of Kimberley I don't know. But interestingly this year I came across a knitting charity, KAS - knit a square, based in South Africa which is persuading knitters all over the world to knit squares for blankets to warm the millions of Aids orphans there. The runaway success of this simple family run project epitomises the power of little things done with love, knitting people together.

Mentioning this charity to a cousin she recalled how Pam Pam had told her about going to war in South Africa. The commanders not aware of the bitter cold nights that are the norm in South Africa stripped all the men of their great coats as soon as they disembarked, thinking they would be warm. Many men needlessly suffered badly and sadly today many, many children suffer too.

Woolly Facade

Would you Adam and Eve It?

2010-10-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

How old is knitting? I have been asking myself. Well who can really say? All I have found out so far is that there's quite a lot of evidence going back a few thousand years of knitting or very similar techniques with charming names such as Sprang and Nalebinding but actual evidence of the origins of knitting are unlikely to emerge, so speculation seems in order.

The suggestion that weaving would have been a precursor of knitting does not really wash with me. I tend to go with the idea that the simplest fabrics would come first. As an early man surely you would go for some simple tools, for example two sticks, before you got round to thinking of making a frame, stretching fibres, interlacing etc. And maybe before two sticks perhaps just one with a bent end, like a crochet hook, would have sufficed.

I am going back now - right to the beginning, Adam and Eve after the Fall finding themselves naked had recourse to fig leaves for apparal. Now one fig leaf (as so often depicted) would still have been very drafty, not to say impossible, without the means to hold it in place necessitating a length of something, maybe a vine or some sort of long plant fibre. This would quickly lead to the need to make some loops and a little hook would have come in handy. After all there are thousands such instruments on any tree.

To try and prove my point I spent a recent stroll in the woods around Sherwood Forest looking for suitable twigs to make a natural crochet hook. I have one lined up for the job and eventually I will get round to see if I can use it to loop up some vines.

autumn oak leaves

Now I want to make a knitted collar or little cape based on vine leaves or fig leaves. Just now the leaves are falling - I see it as delicate layers of Autumn colours, crisp brown on top of fading and still verdant tresses.

Just a few things to master first - like knitting lace and dip dyeing. I'd better press on.

Woolly Facade

"Listen very carefully, I will say this only once"

2010-09-26T04:13:00.000-07:00

A while since my last post, I have been a little preoccupied with some stitches, not in my knitting, but on my face. Not sure what they are made of but they are the sort that have to be taken out by a nurse and they will be gone tomorrow. They will leave a scar but then I have my Woolly Facade now.
The rich germanic accent of the matter of fact Doctor when he told me the BCC (Basal Cell Carcinoma - in case you are wondering) needed to be removed took the edge off the announcement. "We will do it in one day, it will leave a scar, sign here" I had to hold back the chuckles until I got out the door and convinced myself I had not been taken up into an unscreened episode of "Allo allo".

cheers for now

Woolly Facade

First Thoughts

2010-09-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

This is me and this is my Woolly Facade.

I have finally given in to the temptation of creating a blog. I hope its going to be fun.

A while ago some spare fabric gave me a great idea for a knitting bag. But I wanted to make a bag that really worked and was not just another bag you could put some knitting in. So I had to do some investigating. The more research I did, the more I saw just fantastic knitting, and a new breed of knitters with a slightly different approach to this age old craft everywhere. Intriguingly knitting is now sometimes about making a statement as much as it is about fashion, leisure or necessity.

All this set me thinking about how a piece of knitting can stir such great memories and how knitting had been a subtle but important factor for generations in our family as in many others. I hope some of these rambles will be about revisiting and recreating old knitting as well as starting new projects and techniques. I like history and am especially fascinated by how work and industry have affected people in the past so I expect I will blog about that too. It would be great to hear others knitting evoked memories.

Why "Joined Up Knitting?"

Maybe learning to knit is a bit like learning to write. You learn the alphabet, and you can write some letters, You get a bit better and you are great at copying and then you get to do "Joined Up Writing." Before long your handwriting takes on its own unmistakable style, you choose your favorite pens and different colored inks and start putting down your own ideas.

I was taught how to knit when I was quite small - before school I think, but I have only ever taken it up in fits and starts. Maybe knowing too many accomplished knitters I often lost heart or was simply distracted by the next skill I just had to try. Needles and threads were usually to blame, but now I am really trying to go back and start "Joined up Knitting".

So this blog is loosely based around knitting but inevitably it will get joined up with all the other crafty ideas I can not keep my hands off.

Cheers for now

Woolly Facade