needled

A quick Sunday-evening post. Took my knitting walking this weekend — up Striding Edge to Helvellyn. Too cold to knit on the top, but here I am, after part of the descent, making yet another bootee near Grisedale Tarn:

As well as enjoying a superb day’s walking, some very good company, and fabulous surroundings, we also managed a visit to the wonderful Wool Clip women’s co-operative in Caldbeck, where I bought some undyed, handspun, Herdwick aran for a man-sweater, and some hand-dyed rasberry pink Shetland aran for me. Lovely!

These are such fun I just can’t stop making them.

Luckilly those around me are breeding at such a rate that they will never go to waste.

A short post this. I had been hoping to talk about several books, including Sabrina Gschwandtner’s KnitKnit: Profiles and Projects from Knitting’s New Wave, but the title is now annoyingly ‘unavailable’ at my usual suppliers. I must order it elsewhere. More soon.

have a nice weekend…

Considering that this is a very busy time of year, I am still turning out knitted items rather doggedly. I made one of these on my morning train, one on the evening train, and added the buttons after dinner. It is a great pattern, available from the talented Saartje de Bruijn here. The perfect last minute gift for a baby I had no idea was arriving (!) My only alteration was to knit the straps 4 stitches longer and add a 2 st buttonhole at the end of the strap, rather than making a crocheted loop for the button fastening. Knitting with this yarn at such a tight gauge produces a good solid bootee that is still alpaca-soft.

Pattern: Saartje’s bootees
Yarn: Arteseno Alpaca Hummingbird (mmm, lovely)
Needles: 2.5 mm

I made the larger size and they are quite wee. “Almost too wee” (as Vic & Bob would say).

Today I finished the cocoon-stitch stole which has been on my needles now for over a month:

It really transformed in the blocking. The stitch definition is great, and the yarn feels exceptionally soft and luxurious. Just the thing as the weather begins to turn.

Well, that’s the last time that dress sees the light this year.

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Alpaca-Silk (mmmm)
Pattern: cocoon stitch (see Martha Waterman’s Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls)
Needles: 7mm

My other exciting news is that Kristen at Knitting Kninja tagged me with one of these:

thank you so much!

I promised an account of the Whitworth, where we spent a lovely afternoon last week. I had really gone for the textile galleries, but we were distracted by a fabulous wallpaper exhibition. This showcased a wide range of examples from the Whitworth’s decorative arts collection, and you really got a sense of the range of ways in which wallpaper might define and transform an interior over four centuries. The displays paid careful attention to the history of technique, innovations in production, and the exhibition was very thoughtfully and intuitively set out.

Wallpaper often had surprising or unexpected functions and designs—for me this aspect of the exhibition was highlighted in the elaborate decorative schemes of the 1930s, in which ordinary middle-class parlours were transformed by being bedecked with paper vines and flowers hanging from ceilings and picture rails. But my favourite examples were the miraculously preserved wallpapers from the 1770s to the early 1800s:

I really think that the Jane Austen industry has left us with a version of the eighteenth century that is misleading in its pale muslin and Wedgwood-muted pastels. This anodyne, relentlessly tasteful, and terribly washed-out aesthetic is frankly more Nigella Lawson (aigh!) than Austen. This was an era of gaudy exuberance, when classical statues were enhanced with bright coats of paint, and interior decoration embraced colourful excesses. The busy patterns of this French paper seem completely alien to many popular conceptions of Georgian style:

but this is what the bourgeois Eighteenth Century looked like.

We also spent some time in the textile galleries, which were excellent. The Whitworth has one of the best collections of textiles in the UK, only a small fraction of which can be on show at any one time. What *was* displayed was arranged really judiciously. Rather than presenting a historical narrative, or separating the textiles by culture or locale, the curator had chosen several examples from different eras, places and moments to illustrate a particular function, theme, or idea. This approach worked well, allowing the viewer to get a sense of, for example the imperial aesthetics of British textiles by displaying Victorian shawls alongside the much earlier Indian designs on which they were based. The case displaying the original Japanese influences of familiar modern textiles (such as Morris & Co’s now ubiquitous willow bough) was particularly good.

I was blown away by the beauty of the embroidered textiles–those of the Middle East particularly. There were some wonderfully elaborate Iranian and Turkish examples from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. But, loving crewel work as I do, I have to say that the best thing I saw all day was this:

A crewel sampler worked by Doris “AR” (acquisition details of this marvellous panel can be found here). I think this is the most superb take on the traditional Anglo-American tree of life that I’ve ever seen. I just love the spirit and audacity of it - her bold modern take on traditional embroidery techniques; the way that every flower head and leaf explores a different stitch; the vibrant blues and greens of the wool against the linen, and the overall sense that this is the work of an accomplished needlewoman showing off her talent. The whole thing is a sort of crewel fanfare, a big “ta-da!” It says “look at me”, “look what I can do.” And yet, because of the nature of the art (a decorative panel for private or social display) and its small scale (appreciated by women who might observe or handle it close to) Doris AR is speaking the language of an aesthetic community rather than her individual ego. It is really quite exceptional. I may take inspiration from this for the panel I am planning to produce for Christmas but feel at the moment, rather too in awe of the original to attempt a design.

I’ve been down in Manchester for a few days, where I found much food for thought among the textiles at the Whitworth Gallery (of which more later). But I spent yesterday afternoon with a lovely piece of fabric of my own:

I just adore those branches and butterflies. It is a furnishing remnant from John Lewis, and is satisfyingly sturdy. Ideal for the birthday gift I had in mind:

The “charming handbag” from Amy Karol’s great new book, Bend the Rules Sewing.

I lined the bag with pale blue polka dots:

and finished it off with a couple of buttons:

Very pleasing indeed.

I enjoy Amy Karol’s blogs and websites, and was looking forward to her book. I wasn’t disappointed - all the projects are extremely classy and simple, emphasising the natural aesthetics of fabric as well as ease of production. There is nothing stupidly fiddly here. For someone who (like me) is not the most confident machine sewer, her straightforward instructions are ideal. But I’m sure the projects would appeal to more experienced sewers as well, mainly because of Karol’s real feeling for design. Also, the projects are not merely written as pattern instructions to be followed to the letter, but as starting points for one’s own creative preferences. This is a book which enables you to enjoy — and make sense of — the sewing process, rather than just turn out discrete items. There are some neat tricks here too. I am particularly impressed with the transformative effects of constant pressing, which speeds and neatens things up immensely. No one ever told me that the IRON is almost as important as the machine when sewing, and I now feel rather stupid for not realising it before. Anyway, having sucessfully completed Karol’s handbag, I feel released from the ludicrous dictates of the school sewing class, where everything must be fanatically pinned, basted and zigzagged before one even begins to *think* about sewing. That kind of teaching really does produce a weird combination of guilt and horror — one is never able to do things correctly or carefully enough, and that inability to attain sewing perfection makes one afraid of the process itself. Well, it gave me the fear anyway. But now I shall throw away my pins — or perhaps stick ‘em in a home-sewn effigy of my ancient pedagogue — and abandon myself to the wonders of the steam iron. Huzzah.

It is dry! and the stitches have evened up nicely. So here is another quick pic of the blocked and completed crab apple:

Last night I finished the sweater I’ve been calling crab apple:

A name which suggests just how much it is a homely and unsophisticated version of the Bohus design that originally inspired it:

ring any bells?

I’m now feeling that my last post about knitting without pictures was a bit disingenuous. After going on about the importance of avoiding the false, illusory allure of the image, I now find that I have created a garment that is, in every way, the result of visual stimuli. I confess that the idea of making my own pared down version of a stranded yoke sweater arose after reading Wendy Keele’s Bohus book and being incredibly struck by the sheer visual wonder that is the Wild Apple. However, I’ve also, for the past couple of weeks, been wandering around Edinburgh looking at — and taking in — the stuff-ness of stuff about me, and translating that into ideas for the sweater.

After the terrible July and August weather, things here suddenly turned lovely and golden. And it was the visual stimuli of the STUFF of early September that really inspired the colours of this sweater:

Here is some representative STUFF that I saw over the weekend:

To me there is a satisfying material and visual relationship between these things and the finished sweater:

I can’t show you me in it yet, as it is spending today blocking but it is a lovely fit, as well as feeling very soft and luxurious to wear.

I made the sweater seamlessly in the round, following Meg Swansens’ updated version of EPS. It is knit in Rowan kid classic, which works up as a very light weight aran, at 5 stitches to the inch. I spent some mind boggling hours working out the dot sequence for the yoke. I’m sure a more mathematical mind than mine would not have found the design boggling at all - it is actually incredibly simple once you start thinking of the yoke in terms of rays, or isoceles triangles, rather than rows or rounds. This took me a while, but once it clicked, the whole sequence made sense.

The effect of working with colour in this way - which I’ve never done before - was also very interesting. As I imagined it, the the yoke was going to look dotty. After all, this is how the swatch I made appeared…but then, I was looking at the swatch closely, and never from across the room. The swatch was also made up of a horizontal series of dots, rather than mirroring the curve of the neck, which really affects things. I mean, if you look at the picture with which I began, the overall effect of the yoke is more of a series of stripes, made up of alternating triangles, than of a row of dots. At a distance the yoke looks much more angular and abstract, and far less boingy and dotty, than it does close to.

This doesn’t mean I like it any less, however. On the contrary, the fact that the sweater seemed to take on a life of its own while I was knitting it made it all the more intriguing. The colours of the yarn behaved very differently from how I’d anticipated - some standing out, and some retreating into a more muted state than I’d originally envisaged. I now see, for the first time, how working with colour could be so addictive and exciting. But this doesn’t mean I’ll be turning my hand to intarsia any time soon, or producing any of those Kaffe Fassett attrocities that some knitters find so mystifyingly appealling…

Making my own simple - nay, vulgar - version of a stranded, coloured yoke does give me a renewed appreciation of the the designers and knitters of Bohus and the Shetlands. The aesthetic of those shimmering sweaters is so beautiful, and the knitting so complex. I only ever used two colours in a row, the background colour never altered, and I was swearing like a trooper when it came to weaving in on the purl side. Maintaining an even tension over so many rows and colour shifts is also a challenge I have yet to fully master. My crab apple is truly humbled when set against the luminous originals that inspired it. But it will do all right for me.

Design: Crab Apple.
Yarn: Rowan Kid Classic. 4 x battle; 1 x tea rose; 1 x frilly; 1 x royal; 1 x victoria; 1 x tattoo.
Needles: 4mm (rib) 5mm (body) 4.5mm (yoke)

I have been thinking recently how much I enjoy knitting without pictures. By which I mean knitting something that exists in one’s imagination only. That rose coloured sweater I made a few weeks ago was so pleasing in process precisely because I had not seen it anywhere before I knit it into being. I picked out the yarn, spent a good while with the yarn thinking about what it wanted to be, envisaged the sweater, and then knit it, transforming the imaginary object into the material one. And it isn’t just that the sweater is an original rather than a copy. There were no distracting illustrations for it to measure up to or fall short against. No lovely willowy being in a carefully photographed Rowan landscape had either worn it or inspired it. Somehow, because its it-ness emerged solely and slowly in a narrative of knitting over time, rather than being inspired by a particular image, I have a different kind of relationship to it.

I was also considering the particular pleasures of knitting without pictures while reading Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top the other evening—which relies entirely on narrative to impart its wisdom. This is a book without photographs (excluding the one which adorns what might well be the Worst Cover Ever). In order to acquaint yourself with Walker’s matchless knitting insights, you have to read it carefully and sequentially. And of course, it is the pleasures of narrative that makes The Zimmermann so continuingly engaging. One is enjoying the writing while absorbing the particular sense of a technique. EZ began producing her narrative newsletters after being horrified when her original pattern for a circular yoked sweater was altered by the magazine in which it was published into knit-back-and-forth instructions. In her account of this incident in Knitting Around she also seemed a little perturbed by the way her sweater was transformed into an image with meanings beyond her control. The sweater was now there, she said, “to embellish the portrait of the beautiful blonde who had been summoned to model it.” (Knitting Around, p.16) This radiant creature with her cosmetic rictus grin indeed seems a million miles from EZ’s original intentions: “a dazzling and inspiring lure to cast on right away”—to make the knitter think I want that sweater. Precisely because they lacked alluring photographs, EZ and Meg Swansen’s newsletters inspired an entirely different kind of relationship between a knitter and a sweater. This was a relationship that did not rely on the appeal of a well-photographed model but rather emerged out of an engaging narrative. So instead of thinking I want that sweater, the knitter has to imagine the myriad ways in which they might make one of their own. You are being sold useful knowledge rather than an imaginary commodity.

However, these observations do not mean I now reject the false, golden allure of the image. On the contrary, I spent several hours the other day drooling over the Molloch of knitting photography that is Rowan 42 (a publication with no narrative pleasures whatsoever—the writing in that magazine is consistently terrible.) And here is an image of today’s knitting presented without any narrative accompaniment.