all change

Today I put away my summer clothes, and removed the winter ones from storage. I always find it a bit depressing having to encounter the berloody tights again . . . but it is nice to see warm winter dresses, sweaters, and coats. Anyway, before I pack the summer stuff away, I thought I’d show you various garments I sewed and knit myself over the past few months which, for one reason or another, I didn’t get a chance to blog about. You will note that there is something of a red theme going on — this wasn’t intentional! And apologies for what’s going to be a rather picture-heavy post.

1. Dotty Dress.

I was finishing the lining of this dress when I wrote this post back in June. I was reasonably pleased with how it turned out, so don’t know why I didn’t blog about the process more. It is a “very easy” Vogue pattern (V8319) and was reasonably straightforward — as I recall, it only took a few evenings to make. The only downside about the dress is that it came out slightly large. I was nervy about the rep Vogue patterns have of running small, so made myself the next size up. And then the dress was difficult to take in after I’d finished because of the precise way the body and cap sleeves taper together. But I am being pernickety – it is not too baggy, and I like the pattern very much. I may use it to make myself a winter dress –in the right size this time. I bought the pleasing dotty fabric from here — a site that I try not to look at too often as their stuff is just too damn tempting. Heres another picture. You can blame Tom for the hysterical gurning and throwing of shapes.

next up we have:
2. Boat skirt

I made this back in early June, using some Cath Kidston furnishing fabric I’d been given and some lovely red grossgrain ribbon I received in the badge swap (thankyou, Philippa!). I followed the basic instructions in this book, adding lining and facings to the formula. Its a good fit, quite sporty. I like this skirt very much and have worn it lots over the past couple of months.

And another skirt:
3. Summer swallows skirt.

I bought this Japanese fabric as a birthday treat to myself from the wonderful Rosa Pomar, whose stock is always so lovely — top quality and exceptionally well chosen. I like skirts like this with a lot of fabric — the width of the bottom is about three times that of the top. To make it, I just followed the instructions for a basic pleated skirt in this book, adding facings to the formula to make the skirt hang a bit better. I spent a long time matching up the waves and swallows on the pleats — this was well-worth the effort I think. Finally, I found some wide, black, broderie anglais edging on ebay, and added this to the bottom. Bingo! A skirt for wearing with a sticky-out petticoat underneath. And though its perhaps more of a summer garment, these swallows are going to hang around for winter too.

And finally:
4. Mary Traynor

I knitted this little top while hanging around in hospitals, waiting for surgeons and physiotherapists to finish doing what they were doing to Tom’s hand. The yarn is so lovely to work with — it was quite a comforting thing to have in one’s hands. Mary Traynor was my maternal grandmother — a champion knitter who spent every summer in lacy tops of her own making. She is to blame for my knitting, and lacy summer tops remind me very much of her.

The top is my own design: bottom-up, in-the-round raglan; spiral shell lace pattern; crocheted edging. It took just one skein of ornkney angora 4 ply. That’s right folks! Just 50g!

I love this yarn so much — so light and sugary, and it knits up a dream. The finished top turned out well, but it is wee — almost too wee. My thursday night knitting comrades laughed heartily at the size of it when they saw me making it — the combination of the lace pattern and a 40cm circular needle meant it looked contracted and near-dollsize, but it blocked out nicely, and does fit me — just. Here it is being blown around on the promenade near Funchal.

ye gods, was that really just last week? The weather is so crisp and autumnal here that Madeira seems a world away. So, anyway:

Design: Mary Traynor (my own pattern)
Yarn: Orkney Angora 4 ply. Red. One skein. Ysolda, and her lovely beret, are to blame for my yarn choice.
needles: 4mm addi turbos
ravelled here

Swapping round the warm- and cold-weather wardrobes has reminded me just how many berloody clothes I own, and that, aside from the occasional pair of tights (groan) that I really do not need to buy any more. I’ve found real pleasure in making and wearing all the things I’ve sewn and knitted so far this year, and am looking forward to revamping my wardrobe with handmade items this winter — tweed suits and knitted dresses, here we come.

And for those of you who were kindly asking after Tom: things are starting to improve. Madeira really did wonders for the healing process: he was told the other day by the woman we call “badphysio” that he was doing remarkably well “for his age”. (Note: we only call her badphysio because she’s rather dour and hardchrist, not because she’s at all bad at her job). The poor hand is still incredibly painful–now the tendons have healed, they have to be stretched and punished to prevent him having a claw. He has no feeling in the fingers, and the injuries are still rather fragile. But the evil splint can now be taken off during the day, and he is allowed to go running and hill walking again. This is very good news indeed.

bordado Madeira

Madeira has distinctive textile traditions. I had a vague sense of these from my grandma (who taught me to knit), who visited Portugal several times, and who owned several beautiful pieces of Madeiran table-linen. I particularly remember a very fine cloth, decorated with Richlieu-style cut work in pale brown against white. The Madeiran traditions of hand-embroidered whitework and cutwork are still very much alive, and I was able to find out more about them at the IBVAM museum (their super website is available in both Portuguese and English) and the Bordal embroidery workshop in Funchal.

(Nineteenth-century view of Madeira. Library of Congress).

Like other colonial communities, Madeira’s first Portuguese settlers brought and developed their own traditions of embroidery for domestic use and trousseaux. But by the eighteenth-century, the island’s nuns were also successfully producing and selling textiles for an international market. In the letters I’ve read, there are many references to the nuns’ roaring trade in artificial flowers, made by hand from cambric and linen. The fine embroidery of Madeira’s rural women also drew the admiration of the English commercial families who had settled on the island, as well as the many wealthy tourists and travellers who often came seeking rest-cures from the island’s restorative climate. By the mid-nineteenth century, English families who had prospered in the wine trade also saw the market potential of Madeira’s hand-embroidered textiles. And after Madeiran embroidery received tremendous acclaim in London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, it began to be successfully exported to foreign markets.

In a particular way, Madeiran embroidery flourished on the failure of the other commodity for which the island is famous: wine. During the mid-nineteenth century, Madeiran vineyards were ravaged by blight and entire agricultural communities were put out of work. Rural women’s domestic and decorative labour — the fine white-work and cut-work embroidery for which they were famed — then came to provide an alternative source of income.

(Madeiran embroiderers of all ages)

Cross-cultural comparisons are perhaps all too easy to make, but the story of Madeiran embroidery puts me very strongly in mind of that of Shetland lace. Here are two liminal island communities; two increasingly impoverished agricultural populations; and two groups of women producing decorative work of exceptional fineness and quality. Both Madeiran embroidery and Shetland lace were displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851, after which both acquired prominent aristocratic patrons and a certain international cachet as luxury products. This cachet had several components, but a large part of it, it seems to me, was about the work being produced on an island, by several generations of talented women who lived in isolated, rural communities and who were also of course, exceptionally poor. Like the women of Shetland, the Madeiran embroiderers worked from home, with the quality and sale of their work largely overseen by commercial agents from the export houses. While their work was sought after and commanded high prices, they were very poorly paid — until the welcome advent of 20th century unionisation, and the protection of Portuguese (and later, EU) employment law.

A final point of comparison with Shetland lace is the fineness, delicacy and incredible beauty of Madeiran embroidered textiles. You can get some sense of this from an amazing nineteenth-century matinee coat on display in the IBVAM museum, whose intricate scallops flow all the way from the neck to the floor like the delicate crests of waves. (You can see it by following this link and clicking on the images. The matinee coat is on the far right, on the second row from the bottom of the page).

(Madeiran Embroidery pattern from Dillmont’s Encyclopedia of Needlework (1884))

The IBVAM Museum was very interesting, but even more so, in some ways, was the embroidery workshop at Bordal, because you really got a sense of the whole process of the production of Madeiran hand-embroidered textiles from start to finish. We saw exactly how patterns were transferred to cloth (with a speedy pin-pricking gadget, indigo and paraffin) and how the cloth was cut and prepared. The embroiders largely work from home, and several were there to drop off their completed work for washing, ironing and finishing. One showed me a large, circular table-cloth of unbelievable beauty. It had taken three women a whole year to embroider. We saw one room piled high with several decades worth of paper patterns, and in another, women sat sewing hand-embroidered bodices onto skirts to create gorgeous little girl’s dresses. When the items are finished, they are taken to IBVAM (a short walk away) who check the quality and authenticity of every single embroidered item, which is then given its own holographic seal. This protects the tradition of hand embroidery against the machine-made imports with which it has been threatened for the past half century. The women who worked at Bordal were just lovely, and very tolerant of my impertinent questions, and broken Portuguese. Being able to see them at work was incredibly eye-opening and inspiring.

If you are wondering what makes Madeiran embroidery so distinctive, it is the combination of raised stitches and cut work, usually in white, or sometimes in brown or blue. Flowing and floral lines in padded satin stitch, or long-and-short stitch, mingle with detailed cutwork, (cavacas, caseados), areas of removed threads, (escada, ilhos) and large numbers of raised dots (granitos, seguidos, rematados). You can see many of these distinctive elements — the ladder (escada), the scalloped edge, and the raised dots in this small and very beautiful piece of embroidery, which I bought. I think it may well be the most lovely piece of fabric I have ever owned.

I also bought a couple of other cloths as presents, and a less delicate, but no less lovely cloth for myself for wrapping bread. A four-cornered hand-embroidered loaf wrapper! I just love it.

(yes, I baked a loaf, then wrapped it up! Hurrah!)

Further information:
You can find out more about Madeiran embroidery in the book “Madeira Embroidery” by Alberto Viera, which is produced and sold by Bordal and which also comes in a slightly shaky, but nonetheless informative, English translation. If you are in Funchal, the Bordal embroidery workshop can be found on the Rua Doutor Fernăo Ornelas and IBVAM is on the Rua Visconde do Anadia.
On Shetland Lace I highly recommend the work of Sharon Miller , which I’ve recently been reading.

tourist

“. . .as this place differs so vastly from anything thou hast ever seen, I make no doubt thou will be agreeably entertained with the many romantic prospects, whimsical houses, pleasant cool gardens, and amazing precipices. . .” (Deborah Hill to her son Richard, Funchal, Madeira, May 1st, 1743)

My only previous experience of Madeira was through the letters of Deborah Hill and her relatives — eighteenth-century Quakers who, like many other merchant families of their class, made their fortunes in the transatlantic wine trade. Though they are more than 250 years old, Deborah Hill’s letters still convey an accurate impression of Madeira — both in terms of the insistent presence of the British on the island, as well as it’s “romantic prospects and amazing precipices.”

Our idea was to enjoy these prospects through some serious mountain and levada walking (the levadas are an incredible architectural system of canals criss-crossing the island and carrying water from the cloud-capped mountaintops down to the vineyards and plantations) but Tom’s accident rather scuppered these plans. So instead we engaged in some less precipitous but no less restorative activities — involving lots of sunshine, tasty food, low-level walking, and (for me) lots of swimming too.

We really enjoyed Madeira’s colourful fauna . . .

. . . and flora

. . .and I have a fondness, bordering on an obsession, with Portuguese cuisine. There are many, many things I like about it (tisanes, for example — the Portuguese make a fine cup of tea) but my two favourite things are grilled sardines and custard tarts (pasteis de nata). I tend not to consume these items simultaneously, (though who knows what I might do in a moment of gastronomic over-excitement) but I did manage to eat both on a number of separate occasions while we were away.

(tasty grilled sardines at O Barqueiro. So very good — I bored Tom with sardine raptures for days)

(you see here several varieties of pasteis — coconut, walnut, apple, almond– but the custards, pictured to the top right in the first photo, are my confirmed favourite)

The range and quality of fresh Madeiran produce is really amazing. I shan’t go on about the four different varieties of passion fruit we tried or the wonderful straight bananas, but certainly our Scottish neeps and tatties were made to seem rather dull and prosaic in the face of such abundance.

(farmer’s market in Funchal)

Being sedentary sunshine tourists was a new experience for Tom and I — our holidays are usually a bit more, um, strenuous, and are spent in Britain or Ireland. I am not really very fond of being a Brit abroad, and I find it particularly weird and difficult somewhere like Madeira or the Caribbean, where there is evidence of the British exploitation of local resources and labour everywhere you look (I’m thinking of eighteenth/nineteenth-century commerce as well as contemporary tourism). It is perhaps possible to assuage such cultural-imperialist guilt through an appreciation of – and engagement with – a foreign landscape, such as that which one gets from walking. But it is hard to throw off one’s tourist-ness when one cannot get up into the mountains. And it is well-nigh impossible to stop feeling like a guilty British tourist when one is surrounded by large numbers of other tourists — dare I say it — of a certain age.

I do not often spend much time with large groups of British octogenarians, and I don’t wish to sound churlish or mean, but there are a few observations about their group behaviour that unavoidably and repeatedly strike one in such situations. The first is just how berloody grumpy they can be. This constitutional grumpiness seems to lead them to assume that, even in the peaceful, beautiful and near-idyllic settings Madeira affords, that everyone else is having a slightly better time than they are. In a restaurant full of elderly British tourists you can literally feel the pairs of beady eyes darting about suspiciously: did those people get served before me? Are they perhaps sat at a better table? Another impulse, closely associated with the assumption that everyone else is having a Slightly Better Time Than You is to ensure that you are Having the Best Time You Possibly Can Under the Circumstances. This impulse leads individuals whose usual pace is probably under half a mile an hour to move at incredible speed when it comes to being the first on a bus. Normally, this would have amused me, but it was actually rather stressful when accompanied by someone with a still painful, serious and rather fragile injury. I was strongly put in mind of comments toward the end of this post in which a heavily pregnant person is repeatedly bombarded by a marauding elderly mob eager to get to the quilting fabric.

Still, being a tourist has its benefits — one of which is being able to acquire a couple of metres of some superbly cheesy, but also pleasing, fabric that only a tourist would buy.

Do you think I can get away with wearing a skirt made from this stuff? I do hope so.

More about Madeiran embroidery tomorrow.

thankyou, Suvi S

We have just returned from a lovely, relaxing couple of weeks holiday. Shortly, I intend to bore you senseless about where we’ve been — but first, the important stuff — some knitting.

You see here the arm cable of my new sweater Baby cables and Big Ones Too, by the wonderful Suvi S. Let me start by saying that I can’t recommend this pattern highly enough. It is incredibly well thought through; carefully and clearly written; and the finished garment is just amazing. I loved the pattern, I love the sweater, and am full of admiration for the designer. Thankyou, Suvi S!

This was an excellent holiday project. I began the sweater just before leaving, and finished it just before returning. Every part of the process was enjoyable.

As you see, I was so happy with the pattern I could barely stop knitting it. Despite the blue skies in the third image, the hood indicates that I am actually knitting in a howling gale. And though there are no other people pictured in image two, this is not because we were on holiday in some sort of poolside ghost-town, but because I had arisen at the crack of dawn — to knit, of course.

The sweater is a seamless raglan, knitted from the top down. Despite being an ardent admirer of Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top this was actually my first time making a top-down garment. I am completely converted to this method of garment construction, and Suvi S’s version of a top-down raglan has so many tasty details. Let me mention just a few of these:

1) Picking up stitches at the underarms. If I am making a bottom-up seamless sweater, I usually either cast off the underarm stitches (and make a little seam later) or attempt to keep the stitches live, and graft them. Here, because you are working from the top-down you pick up stitches around the gap instead. This is neater than the grafting method, and, satisfyingly, means the sweater is really entirely seamless. Nice.
2) the cables twist to the right on the right sleeve, to the left on the left sleeve. Neat!
3) The cables have both elegance and simplicity and the way they pass over from the garter to the stockinette parts of the sweater is very satisfying indeed.

Knitting an entirely seamless garment from the top-down has many benefits — the most significant being that you can make something that fits perfectly, and that has no finishing involved. This means that, when you have finished your last row, you can just stick your sweater on over your swimsuit and insist your companion take a picture of you in it right now.

And then you can put on some proper clothes and pose in a tasteful interior for a more appropriate picture.

Tom says it is his favourite out of all the things I have knitted. I am inclining that way myself.

A word about the yarn before I stop rhapsodising about my sweater: I used a grey shetland DK from woodpark wools. They have a flock of rare-breed sheep close to Girvan (that’s in Ayrshire for those of you who don’t know) and sell wonderful, springy, and completely unadulterated lovely stuff from their own Jacobs and Shetlands. The colour of their yarns are totally true-fleece — meaning that all the shades of grey and brown and black have a lot of depth to them — the pale grey shetland I used here is actually made up of many different coloured fibres, including several different greys and a lovely slightly fawn-y brown. It is a super wool that shows off the cables fantastically well, and suits this sweater perfectly. Woodpark wools are spun at the natural fibre company — there is absolutely no messing with their production process. In short, Woodpark Wool is another Scottish yarn company that I heartily recommend!

So heres the lowdown:
Pattern: Baby Cables and Big Ones Too by Suvi S
Needles: 3.5mm addi turbos (I am wee up top so knitted the smallest size at a slightly tighter gauge to give a 30″ chest measurement)
yarn: woodpark wool dk shetland (pale grey).
ravelled here

always a fresh egg a’piece

Let me start with a disclaimer. I do not work for Yorkshire Tea. I do not know anyone who works for Yorkshire Tea. I apologise for any unseemly brand promotion. But I heart Yorkshire Tea.

There are many anachronistic elements to my Yorkshire Tea obsession. The first is that I originally hail from Lancashire. In the past, my brand loyalty has been tinged with a nagging sense of regional guilt. When, a couple of years ago, I heard that Lancashire had launched its own brand of tea (wars-of-the-Roses, beverage style) I was fully prepared to switch county allegiances. I could not find any Lancashire Tea in Scotland, so I insisted that my Ma (conveniently placed in Rochdale) nip straight out to get me a motherload. But what disappointment! I really wanted to like it, but I just didn’t. It may have been blended in Newton-le-Willows. The packet might well have displayed a map of Lancashire’s ancient county boundaries. But it lacked both strength and maltiness. Yorkshire Tea it was not.

Another reason to be circumspect about Yorkshire Tea is its calculated and fantastical “like tea used to be” advertising. You know the kind of thing: All Creatures Great and Small, sheep, cricket, dry-stone walls, steam trains cutting through rolling limestone landscapes and always a fresh egg a’piece. Yes, this immortal phrase was actually uttered in a Yorkshire Tea TV advert and for me (and some other people I know) has long been the source of much tea-associated hysteria.

But the thing is, however much I laugh at the fresh eggs and the heritage fantasy, I also find all this stuff secretly appealing. I must do. For how else do you explain that I now have, in my possession, every single item in the Yorkshire Tea gift range?

Tea shaped dunking biscuits. Ah me.

To acquire these wondrous items you have to collect Yorkshire Tea Tokens. To collect the tokens, you have to drink an awful lot of tea. I find a singular pleasure in both activities.

Seriously, how can you argue with a jolly orange teapot, yours for only 36 tokens and a small postage fee? The points-collecting aspect of Yorkshire Tea recalls, for me, the heady days of youth, when packs of cigarettes came with similar tokens. Back in this simple, uncomplicated era you could smoke your way through the ‘gratis’ outdoor equipment catalogue, and no one saw any contradiction in exchanging guaranteed emphysema for a podometer, or a small family tent. In this former life, Tom smoked enough B&H to acquire many ‘gratis’ items, including a decent sleeping bag. Tea has now happily replaced nicotine in both token and addiction-related matters.

Anyway, the latest additions to my Yorkshire Tea collection arrived in the post this morning:

Joy! My Yorkshire Tea tea-towel and mug can now join my Yorkshire tea apron, tea caddy, teapot, milk jug . . . you get the picture. On the latest token collecting card, they asked for ideas for other gifts to add to their range. I had several suggestions.

The best thing about Yorkshire Tea is, of course, the tea. It is tasty, refreshing, strong and black. With the addition of milk it turns a pleasing coppery-orange colour. You don’t have to eat a fresh egg every time you drink a cup, but I do have a suggestion for something containing fresh eggs that makes an excellent accompaniment:

Border Tart!

Here, in a first for this blog, is a recipe — a recipe by me and baked by me. Excitement!

Border Tarts are another obsession of mine, and I’ve sampled many varieties both in Scotland and Northumberland. My favourite is the buttery, almondy confection known as an Ecclefechan tart. I’ve had so many good Ecclefechan tarts that I insisted we take a trip there — unfortunately we found the village singularly lacking in baked goods, which was (for me) rather sad. So here is my version of an Ecclefechan tart based on those I’ve enjoyed. Now, I am no supercook, or anything, but I can make decent pastry. And can I just say that I am as about as proud of these tarts as of anything I’ve made? And that, containing your recommended annual allowance of butter, they really are berloody good?

For the pastry:
200g plain flour
120g butter from the fridge
2 tbsp golden caster sugar
1 egg yoke

for the filling:
100g golden caster sugar
100g butter
1 egg, beaten
50 g ground almonds
50 g glace cherries, chopped
handful flaked almonds
handful dried fruit (currants, raisins, cranberries)
half a grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375f / 190c/ gas mark 5
Make sweet shortcrust pastry:
rub butter into flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, stir in the sugar and add the egg yoke. Combine to make smooth paste, adding a couple of tbsps water if the mixture is too dry. Stick pastry in the fridge to rest for half an hour.

Make filling:
In a pan over a low heat, melt the butter and sugar together, stir until melted. Take off the heat and add the dried fruit and everything else except the egg. Allow mixture to cool for a minute or two, then stir in the egg.
Roll out the pastry, cut into small rounds, and line a bun tin. Put a generous scoop of the mixture into each pastry case, and stick it in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the mixture has risen and is turning golden brown. Cool on a wire rack and eat, marvelling at the flaky buttery pastry and sheer almondy nutmegy wonderment of the tart.
Makes 24.

We are taking a much-needed break and are off this weekend, not to climb mountains or walk many miles, unfortunately, but to sit in the sun, which will at least be relaxing, and safe for Tom’s arm. See you in a couple of weeks.