needled

Earlier today I crouched, covered in snow in an 80mph wind at the top of Arthur’s Seat, and felt a near-spiritual sense of thankfulness for my Walshes.

These shoes are deservedly a design classic (well, among the hill running community at any rate) because of their incredible combination of form and function. They are really one of the most favourite things that I own. They have a glove like fit, a feather-like lightness and are really, really grippy. You can scamper up a hill and zoom down it without worrying about where you are treading, for in the Walshes your feet will stay sticky as an insect whether on grass or mud or rock. They are shoes designed by hill runners for hill runners. The design is basic, unfussy, and entirely functional, and thus has stayed the same for more than thirty years. Many runners sneer at the Walshes ubiquitous blue and yellow, but I find the lo-fi look of the shoe rather pleasing. The pyramid-like studs produce a footprint that is as immediately recognisable as a rabbit’s paw when one is out in the hills, and I like this unobtrusive and temporary way that runners’ feet can add to the language of a landscape. And Walshes are also made in Bolton, not far from where I grew up, so I feel an absurd and meaningless sense of Lancashire pride as I pootle about in them.

They did some pootling today. Here is a view of the hills from my back window after I returned:

Arthur’s Seat is there, just behind the chimney. There were no walkers up on the peak at all. Visibility was nil, and charging off the top into a white-out felt strangely like insanity. But the Walshes did their job skimming over icy stones, through sticky bog and squelchy grass. In them, I hardly notice the grim conditions, for I am nimble as a weasel.

odd socks, who cares?

Don’t get me wrong, I love our flat, but did I mention that it is berloody freezing? There is one source of heat in the living room, and we have the cooker in the kitchen, but everywhere else is baltic. In winter we wander around the place wrapped up like woolly mammoths. I have been tempted on a few recent occasions to get out our RAB mountaineering sleeping bags. These are guaranteed ’safe’ to minus five, so will probably do the trick.

I have been buried under a pile of marking for several days and have been rewarding myself between scripts by making a patchwork blanket to warm us and the bedroom up.

A few months ago I visited Hinnigans in Selkirk and bought several offcuts of thick woollen fabric. As I understand it, these are waste lengths, produced when the makers are testing different patterns and colourways on the looms. I bought three lengths — bluish, pinkish, and brown — all about a foot wide. Out of these I’ve enough fabric to patch together a blanket six foot square. Here it is partly pinned and partly pieced together.

I am going to attach a back to the blanket (a burgundy coloured old cotton sheet), quilt the top (in a basic geometric fashion, following the diagonals) and edge it with bias binding. The wool is very thick and warm and already has a quilt-like squashiness which means no batting is required. Each of the long lengths of wool cost me 50p, so, with the recycled backing and the notions from stash, the materials cost £1.50 in total, which really isn’t bad. The fabric reminds me of the Welsh tapestry capes one so often sees in charity shops. Well, I often see them anyway — most usually in lurid 1970s shades of bright green and orange. The colours of the patchwork are a bit less lurid, but the dense quality of the wool is equally pleasing. While I love the fabric, there is little to say about the simple design, and the less said about the execution the better (!), but I shall post a finished picture when the whole hybrid patchwork-quilt-blanket is completed at the end of the week.

In other news, I am veritably basking in internetniceness, having been tagged with one of these by four lovely fellow bloggers.

I would have tagged Alice and Kirsty meself, had I got in first: they are both enviably talented crafters with two very distinctive creative styles, and they also write uberblogs chock full of wit and smartness. Leslie and Mick’s blogs are new to me, but their tag has given me the opportunity to discover them. Many of the blogs I read regularly are, on the surface, very different from each other but, thinking about it today, they do have one thing in common — and that is a particular, often idiosyncratic, aesthetic that colours everything they do. This aesthetic can be something I identify with on a personal level, as is the case with Estyn, who has an incredible eye for the chance lovelines of the everyday, or Helen, a talented knitter who also takes beautiful, evocative pictures of the landscape of the Borders and Assynt. But there are also bloggers that inspire me because their culture and creative practice is very different to my own. Flor and Lene come into this category. While I have never met Ashley I sort of feel I know her very well because of the warmth of her writing, as well as the lovely things she makes and an, um ‘real life’ intellectual connection. There is an artist’s intelligence apparent in all that Kristen, Felix and Jennifer do, and finally, Jude is endlessly inspiring on all counts. Indeed, hers is less a blog than a lived poetics of making.

The best thing about this intermewebnet thingy is, for me, it’s debates and exchanges. When I posted a review of Jane Brocket’s Gentle Art of Domesticity a couple of months ago, I was bowled away by the comments I received and the lively debate that the book engendered. There were several comments from individuals who did not share my opinion. I also received a number of emails from people with a different point of view to my own. I ‘approved’ all of these comments and I also responded to the emails. Without exception, I found these messages thoughtful and articulate. These people had an argument to make and wanted to express it, share it and put their name to it. However heated the discussion, there is something both stimulating and refreshing in this kind of exchange.

I have been away for a few days because of a family crisis. When I returned I discovered in my ‘moderation queue’ a comment of such laughable stupidity I thought I’d share it with you:

Perhaps if ‘poo’ had the balls to identify her/himself, or the nounce to express her/himself in a discourse other than that of the playground, we might channel our difference of opinion into intelligent debate.

Mr B knew there was something funny going on when I brightened up at the prospect of darning and patching the arse of his jeans. “I’ve seen you,” he said, “looking at those books. You just want to do some elaborate darning, like the stuff you saw in there.” I rolled my eyes and told him that darning was about use, not ornament, and was therefore never ‘elaborate’. But he kind of had a point . . . about the book at least:

I have had darning on the brain since I saw these wonderful samplers by late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century young Quaker women in a book I am now reading (more on this later). While the main purpose of these samplers is evidently the learning of a useful household skill, there is lots of showing-off involved too. Examples like this one are, to me, breathtaking decorative objects which, like other kinds of sampler, are obviously meant for display, circulation, and private appreciation. Indeed, many of the items of plain work or utility sewing in the book seemed to me to be stitched with large quantities of (entirely justified) hubris. The immaculately executed and minute herringbone stitch in this sampler really fills me with wonder. Unfortunately, I have no reason to be similiarly proud of my darning skills. For me, mending really is all about utility.

To fix Mr B’s pants, then, I darned the hole and reinforced the arse with a patch on the inside, as per the instructions in a book my sister got for me, which contains reproductions of WWII government-issued pamphlets. It’s absolutely brilliant. Though I don’t need advice on using anthracite in your boiler, or how to sew with parachute nylon, the sections on darning, and other things — moths, clothing alteration, making kid’s slippers out of old rugs — are really fantastic.

I have only darned socks before, and not very well, frankly. So I am thrilled to say I did a much better job with Mr B’s arse because of the instructions in this book. He’s not keen on my illustrating that here, so you’ll just have to take my word for it (ahem).

Anyway, the reason why my sister gave me the book is because I have decided to stop buying clothes. I plan to do this indefinitely, but until the end of 2008 at least. I have been very inspired by various bloggers’ refashioning pledges and Alex Martin’s Brown Dress Project and have been thinking about it for some time. But one of the many things that has really got to me of late is this advert for Tesco’s ‘affordable elegance’ range. Let’s wear dresses so cheap they are disposable! Let’s add to the world’s landfill a veritable mountain of garments so badly made, out of such poor materials, that Oxfam can’t re-sell or recycle them! Let’s exploit the lives and labour of third world women to clothe the women of the West in $5 dresses! Huzzah! Its utterly shameless. . . So its make do and mend for me for a while — no clothes, and no new yarn or fabric either . . .

It being a beautiful, bright day, we went walking in the Borders — around the cliffs at St Abbs Head.

The first thing we saw, in the thin winter light at the top of the harbour, was Jill Watson’s moving memorial to the Eyemouth fishing disaster.

During a terrible storm on October 14th, 1881, over 200 local men were drowned, many in plain sight of their female relatives who waited on shore.

After this sombre reminder of the human cost of Eyemouth’s spectacular landscape, we walked up over the cliffside. Out of the wind, there was just the whit whit of curlews calling inland and things were very still. It was so quiet, in fact, we could hear the jaws of these sheep steadily munching their way east:

The colours and textures of the wave-battered rocks in Starney bay were amazing:

And I was blown away by the sight of the criss-crossing coastal geology as we rounded the cliff head:

Against the stark winter sky, the tall marsh grasses we encountered by Loch Muir seemed almost exotic

There is something very special about a winter walk. A landscape can seem rather bleak at this time of year if you are passing through at speed, and particularly in the illusory bubble of a car. But on foot you find things of life and loveliness everywhere you look.

And then, as we tramped back towards the village we met . . . Nico!

Nico is owned by Peter Marshall, who runs Berwickshire Llama Trekking. You can book Nico for a breathtaking trip around the St Abbs cliffside!

On the way back down to the harbour, we made the fortuitous discovery of Woolfish. I swear I had no previous knowledge of its existence, but clearly I am able to sniff out a yarn shop at 50 miles. There was much woolly goodness inside but I only acquired 100g of some unyed DK from some local alpacas near Melrose.

It being twelfth night, and all that, this lovely walk marks the very end of our holidays and the start of (one hopes) a productive new year. . .

needled reviews:
Debbie Stoller, Son of Stich ‘n Bitch: 45 Projects to Knit and Crochet for Men (Workman, 2007).
Wendy Baker and Martin Storey, Classic Knits for Men (Rowan, 2007).

In the 25th anniversary issue of Vogue Knitting, Trisha Malcolm speaks of the “grief” she received in 2002 for publishing a special issue of the magazine exclusively featuring men’s designs. “For some reason,” she says, “books and issues that focus on men don’t sell.” If that was the case a few years ago, then several recent books and articles have sought to buck that trend. From Knitty’s “top ten men in knitting” to Michael del Vecchio’s Knitting with Balls, there has been a spate of publications either tapping into a new and vibrant market of male knitters, or seeking to provide contemporary patterns and ideas for women who knit for “Him.” The most prominent of these publications are Debbie Stoller’s Son of Stich ‘n Bitch and Martin Storey and Wendy Baker’s Classic Knits for Men, with its intriguing non-UK title of Knitting for Him: 27 Classic Projects to Keep Him Warm.

Whether or not you regard your “classic” man as a “him” in need of knitted warmth, it is certainly true that men’s tastes and interests have until late been rather poorly represented in the world of modern knitting and crochet. While different feminine preferences are addressed in a dazzling variety of ways, and women of all sizes and ages find their knitwear needs catered for in manners both stylish and contemporary, men’s patterns can often seem homogenous, oddly old-fashioned or just jaw-droppingly repellent. And though there are certainly many recent designs for women that do not speak to my tastes, I can honestly say that hardly any of these make me gasp in consternation, or induce mild hysteria, as is the case with so many men’s cardigan and sweater patterns. A large part of the problem are conventions of photography and styling which, where men’s knitwear is concerned, seem weirdly fixed in an aesthetic most usually seen in clothing catalogues circa 1979. For example, can you believe that this advertisement appeared in a prominent American knitting magazine in 2006?

Ye gods! Beyond the hollow horse-laugh of kitsch or irony, can this image hold any possible appeal for either man or woman? The facial expression of the model—which is perhaps meant to suggest quiet self-satisfaction with one’s own manliness and knitwear—rather speaks to me of near-physical pain. I can almost hear him imploring someone, anyone, to get him out of that oppressive faux-mahogany interior and the terrible, shapeless sweater.

Another problem with men’s knitwear (perhaps until very recently) was The Fassett, whose ubiquitous, crazed man-intarsias were guaranteed to produce a migraine-like reaction in any who dared to make. . . or indeed look at one.

Aigh!

My personal antipathy to intarsia, however, should not be an issue here. Because what’s really at stake is the paucity of good and interesting patterns for knitted garments that men would really like to wear . . . or, indeed, that they might like to knit for themselves. Do these two publications fill this gap? Baker and Storey introduce themselves by dividing the world into two gendered camps: the ‘guys’ who wear the knitting and the ‘womenfolk’ who knit for them. While the first, according to Storey and Baker, are immediately put off by anything too ‘gaudy’ the latter are rendered bored or restless by the 5000000 acres of monochrome stocking stitch perceived to be required for the average man-sweater. Baker and Storey describe their patterns as appealing to a notionally ‘classic’ masculinity, while offering concessions of stitch and colour interest for the ‘usually’ female knitter. And despite its inclusion of several patterns by male designers, Stoller’s book is also firmly addressed to women who knit for “Him” rather than to men who knit for themselves or other men. Though Stoller describes how all of the patterns in Son of Stitch ‘n Bitch were all carefully ‘road tested’ by men, it is still the female knitter who is the subject, and the man-in-his-sweater who remains the elusive object, of her book.

It has become far too easy to be snippy or snarky about Debbie Stoller, and I personally find much to applaud in all her publications, but there are a couple of things to take issue with in her introduction to this book. The first is its condensation of “800 years of men in knits” into four brief pages, which include several historical inaccuracies and the (perhaps predictable) prioritising of the history of Dutch knitting to the expense of other national and local traditions. It also seems odd that Stoller would use this space to reinforce questionable early-twentieth-century gendered myths in which women’s knitting is always represented as a labour of love . . . rather than as just labour. I am speaking, of course, of those over-sentimentalised accounts of wartime sock knitting (which conveniently ‘forget’ about the mechanisms and power of patriotic propaganda) or the often-debunked fables of the identification of drowned fisherman by their knitwear. (The reader will find an interesting source of the latter in JM Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1904) and a much more careful and accurate account of the debate surrounding it in Richard Rutt’s History of Handknitting than in Stoller’s brief and misleading ‘history’.)

I enjoyed reading the rest of the introduction with its lively and chatty discussion of the sweater curse and Stoller’s own experiences of knitting for men, but I confess I found something odd in her implication of an intractably gendered division of taste. Do women really need to be told that a bloke who wears brown is asserting an active colour preference? That men think about style ‘as much as we do’? Perhaps so. Perhaps Stoller is right to address her introduction primarily to female knitters, and perhaps some women really do need to be reminded that men are entirely capable of thinking for themselves where clothing is concerned. But because of her account of men’s tastes as particular and elusive, and perhaps also because there was so little sense of knitting and knitwear design as activities in which many men engage (box-insert of brief soundbites from male designers notwithstanding), I left Stoller’s introduction with the persistent sense that men were incalculable, strange, and alien beings: man-size doll things just sitting around waiting to be dressed up in our cosy sweaters. As in Baker and Storey’s preface to their patterns, then, in Stoller’s introduction there is emphatically a HER who knits and a HIM who wears; and while HE is acknowledged to possess tastes and preferences HE still remains less an active and integral part of the knitting process than an object to be lovingly adorned and proudly displayed.

But perhaps Stoller is just doing what she can: perhaps there is no way of getting around the unmistakeable fact that, at this moment, it is, indeed, mostly women who knit, and that these women will always tend to objectify an idea of the masculine, in one way or another, whenever they knit something FOR HIM. Indeed, I am prone to this myself. I confess that a man in a sweater, like a man in a kilt, is a thing of suggestive loveliness to me. And I find that my attitude to, say, a bloke on TV can radically alter if I see him in a nice or ‘interesting’ item of knitwear. Indeed, I found that when I was leafing through Stoller’s book of patterns, just one of them stood out for me (Lauren Lax’s Mixology). I showed it to Mr B and was surprised when he said he did not like it at all. I had convinced myself that I had selected this pattern because it spoke most to HIS tastes. But in fact, when I thought about it, what I was really admiring was an image of a man with flowing locks wearing a reasonably nice sweater that was an, um, much tighter fit than the rest of those depicted in the book. O bad objectifying female gaze! O shallow me!

Laura Lax’s Mixology.

This experience shows that I am clearly incapable of being objective when discussing men’s knitwear. I shan’t comment on the designs in Storey and Baker and Stoller’s books, then, except to say that in both collections it was, once again, disappointing to find no shaping at all. In women’s knitwear design, the shape of a size 0 is very different from that of a size 14, yet virtually all bloke’s sweaters are designed as if men came in ascending and regular grades of rectangle. Why not taper sweaters for a better fit? Also, in both books the sizing tends toward the (to me) ludicrously generous. For many of the designs in the Stoller book the smallest chest measurement is 42”. Do men start off that wide? Why not begin standard sizing at 38”?

But the real test is whether or not Stoller’s, Baker’s and Storey’s designs actually appeal to the men who are meant to wear them. So I gave both books to Mr B. In Son of Stitch ‘n Bitch, he felt there were far too many ‘embarrassing’ skulls, and didn’t like the assumption written into so many of the patterns that men were interested in booze, wrestling, and pole dancing (really, Debbie, what were you thinking when you included that hideous and repellent scarf?). Out of the eighteen patterns for sweaters, slipovers and cardigans he liked five. His two favourites were Jared Flood’s Smokin’ (though not in lobster red) and Drew Steinbrecher’s Ernie Sweater. Out of the twenty-one patterns (again just for sweaters, cardigans and slipovers) in the Storey and Baker collection he also liked five, his favourite being Wendy Baker’s Ribbed Cardigan, though not in the colourway depicted. To Mr B liking around one in four sweater patterns means, in his book, that both collections are a success. But most disturbingly for me, he found many of the garish argyle socks, scarves and slipovers in both collections very appealing. If he thinks I’m knitting intarsia, he can think again. So please, Jared, hurry up and publish a collection of lovely, tasteful, tweedy patterns by Him and for Him without the vaguest whiff of the golf course, or an intarsia skull in sight . . .

Among the lovely things I received:

A ‘ballerina‘ kit from Hanne Falkenberg . . .

. . . some fabulous vintage fabrics, of which these bellhops were my favourite . . .

. . . coasters made of Japanese washi and shaped like wee kimonos . . .

. . . and this wonderful quilted table runner, made by hand by my sister from several different recycled fabrics.

O lucky me!

The other thing I may have got recently is a taste for hill running, having begun the new year by dashing up and down Arthur’s Seat. I found the speedy 800 foot ascent and descent very exilherating and it was also interesting to reach the top and meet the amused looks of those who had ascended the hill at a more sensible and leisurely pace. Time to strap on the fell shoes, I reckon.

Over the past month or so I have been embroidering this:

A crewel-work cover for my parents’ old piano stool. The flowers that to me say thrift and yarrow have their origins in two different Katherine Shaughnessy designs. I combined them, added extra grassy stems and a wee bee.

the fabric is a linen mix with something slightly stretchy in it — good for upholstery. All of the stitches are very simple: chain, stem, running, split, seed, french knots for the yarrow and a little bit of satin stitch for the bee. I was very pleased with the end result — and the recipients like their new stool cover just as much as I enjoyed making it.

Other things I’ve made and given include this bag for my sister:

The fabric is from Amy Butler’s recent upholstery range and the pattern comes, of course, from the lovely Amy Karol. I squared up the bottom of the bag with some very stiff lining fabric and added a magnetic snap fastener to the inside lining. Sweeeet!

Then there was this:

and another pic:

A cosy wrap for my mum in a simple lace repeat and Rowan cocoon knitted on 8mm needles. The pattern, “Haven,” is from Kim Hargreaves super new collection. A very pleasing winter knit.

Also in cocoon we have this:

This intriguing looking item has been named The Wal-piece. My dad dislikes fussing around with a scarf, but still requires something to keep his neck warm when he’s out in the chilly winter garden. This was the answer — part polar neck, part scarf . . . indeed, part balaclava. I had a look at similar items designed for a similar purpose by Elizabeth Zimmermann in Knitting Around and came up with my own version, which accommodates the back of the neck as well as the front (unlike those made by EZ). It was knit from the top on one 6.5mm circular needle with increases between the ribs every second round to the desired width and length. When worn, it recalls those chain-mail thingies worn by knights underneath their helmets, viz:

Thankfully, my Dad does not look *quite* like that, either in or out of his functional and cosy Wal-piece.

As well as his sweater, Mr B received a scarf inspired by this one, sported with style byThe Wire’s evil and charismatic Stringer Bell.

his version came in lovely, soft, undyed shetland aran from Shilasdair:

Made in garter stitch with a slip-stitch edging, this was probably the most mindless knitting I’ve done since I was 7.

Finally, my niece and nephew each received a pair of target wave mittens in shetland aran:

I love Norah Gaughan and this is a super little pattern — I did make some mods, though — shortening the thumbs by about four rounds and knitting tighter than the recommended gauge, having read that the pattern tended to come out rather large for small hands. These ones turned out great.

I’ll post about things received shortly. Meantime, Happy 2008!