finish

I’m working on something at the moment that is relatively simple in design. Lots of plain knitting, but now the fun begins, since its devil is definitely in its detail. This garment is all about the finish, and I’ve re-worked the bottom hem and its edging several times to get it just right. Despite ripping out, and working back, and fashioning acres of time-consuming i-cord, this process has been a genuine pleasure — for there is nothing more pleasing than the perfect hem. The me of just a few years ago would be astonished to hear me say that: for I was once definitely of the mind that it really didn’t matter what your hem looked like, or how neat your finish was, as long as it didn’t really show too much.

My ma tells a story which combines one of my (many) fashion disasters with my generally slip-shod attitude to finishing. While a student away at college several aeons ago, I had found a 1970s wrap-around skirt in a charity shop: one of those nice, naturally-dyed Indian cotton hippy things with generic elephant design. I really liked the fabric, but I wasn’t that keen on either the mumsy length of the skirt, or the potential of the wrap-around to display one’s underwear in a breeze. (This last is rather ironic, since the use I later put it to ended up being far more ‘revealing’). I decided I would transform the knee length skirt into full length trousers. But they would be no ordinary trousers: they would be glorious, enormous flares. Indian elephants would proudly march around each of my legs and I would look the business. So I simply chopped the skirt in two, and hand-sewed each half into a gigantic cone. The top of each cone was the width of my thigh while the bottom edge was over a metre in circumference. These were going to be fantastic pants! But hang on, at the moment they were only fantastic pant legs: I had merely created two ankle-to-thigh-length leg cones with no actual trouser part. No matter, for I had an excellent idea. I chopped off the legs of an old pair of leggings, put on the resulting stretchy shorts, then, with a handful of safety pins, attached the elephant cones to the raw edges of the short-legs. My pants were complete! Brilliant! Now I just had to make sure I wore them with a nice, long sweater that disguised my unusual tailoring solution.

When mum and dad arrived for their parental visit, I was clad in a huge grey sweater, a pair of voluminous elephant legs, a ripped up pair of leggings, and 30 safety pins. What a fabulous outfit! Just the thing to buzz around town in with mum and dad! I thought my finishing secret was safe, but when I moved about or sat down, the sweater of course rode up, revealing several inches of my pinched, bare, safety-pin adorned thighs, and a hint of arse, uncomfortable in its torn-off leggings. The horror! I considered myself at the vanguard of style, but I was merely a figure of fun. I wore the elephant ‘pants’ just that once. I think they later became a headscarf.

Anyway, here is my hem from the right side. I wanted to have quite a plain, stark, i-cord edging, but found that the i-cord on its own wasn’t robust/ stable enough to stop the stocking stitch from curling. I am knitting top-down, so my eventual solution was to create a turned-up hem along a row of purl stitches, to pick up another row of stitches along the raised-purl bumps, and to bind them off in i-cord. It took a while, but I love it. So neat!

And just to prove that the wrong side doesn’t involve safety pins and raw edges:

I like the contrast slip stitches along the hem’s cast off edge — and keeping them at the same tension as the knitted fabric makes for a flat and a flexible hem. In fact, I have been foolishly admiring both the right and wrong sides of the fabric in equal measure.

is it possible to be drunk on i-cord?

green. and white. and pink. and blue

If you are wondering why I’ve not mentioned our allotment, this is because I was hoping that ‘the situation’ that has unfolded around the allotment would have resolved itself by now. This is ‘the situation’: basically the allotment man at the council managed to double book our plot, and it was assigned to someone else. We were then offered another allotment, at a site several miles away, but have decided to hold out for the plots nearest to us. As I may have mentioned, ‘our’ allotments are a short walk from our back door. Allotment man, having admitted his error, is apparently doing all he can, but the wheels of allotment administration move extremely slowly. Still no allotment, then, I am very sad to say. And, having stomped our feet both at allotment man and the council, there’s not much we can do but wait. But its very frustrating. The season is advancing, I am listening to gardeners question time, reading my veg growing books, and watching others getting on with the happy business of digging and planting with no small degree of wistfulness.

Meanwhile, Spring comes on in all its crazy abundance. I was put in mind the other day of a singular moment a few years ago when, having spent a couple of months working out of the country, I returned to Scotland in early May. Everything was just so damn green — the whole world was singing with green, with that colour’s energy and potential. I remember thinking the obvious stuff– were things always this green? What have I been missing?

So while I have no part in the making of green things, I am enjoying the general green immensely. Over the past few weeks, the paths on which I walk have been completely transformed. Blank brown spaces have suddenly become ridiculously verdant. Weeds are pushing up through paving stones, and every hard edge I used to see has been softened by the lines of stems and foliage. And flowers. There are flowers everywhere, and I am enjoying them all: the blossom past its best on the straight lines of municipally planted cherry trees; resilient, fragrant gorse and hawthorn; bluebells lighting up the undergrowth with their almost neon glow. So while I don’t yet have my allotment, right now, the whole city seems like my garden. A poem of colour: of green, and white, and pink . . .

. . . and blue.

York Craft Tour

(Felix in Duttons).

I am busy. I do not find long working days particularly good for either body or soul. During periods of insane activity, one must always find a little time to spend in the restorative presence of friends, and it was great to meet up with Felix the other day. We spent a lovely, crafty few hours in York, highlights of which included a cake shaped like a cauliflower, and these amazing tea-cup buttons that Felix found in Duttons (of course).

(very Felix buttons)

After this, and my earlier button pilgrimage with Ysolda, I thought it might be a good idea to produce a map, linking together my favourite York crafty locations. You can click each map-marker to see my notes on each location, or click on ‘larger map’ to zoom in and see the full thing in much more detail.

View Larger Map

Each marker takes you to one of eleven craft hotspots. In no particular order, they are:
1. Duttons (for Buttons)
2. Betty’s (tea. baked goods. confectionery.)
3. Viking Loom (embroidery, quilting, beading)
4. Sheepish (best place for yarn)
5. The Japanese Shop
6. York Beer and Wine (and cheese and cider) shop
7. Priestley’s Vintage Clothing
8. Quilter’s Guild Museum
9. York Castle Museum
10. York Brewery
11. Monk Bar Chocolatiers

(Betty’s. Yorkshire delicacies indeed).

This list is entirely personal, and a bit idiosyncratic. For example, I like ‘Sheepish’ for Yarn, and the ‘Viking Loom’ for embroidery supplies, and I prefer both to ‘Craft Basics’ on Gillygate. On my list you will find beer and cheese, wool and cakes, the finest local produce and ingredients, and (perhaps incongruously) some lovely stuff from Japan. There are also two brilliant museums: the York Castle Museum (chock full of fabulous textiles and intriguing domestic objects), and the museum and archive of the UK Quilter’s Guild (now happily housed in their new home in St Anthony’s Hall). Check their websites for opening times and listings of current exhibitions.

(Ysolda by the River Ouse).

One of the best things about York is how compact and pedestrian-friendly it is. All of the craft hot spots on my list are within or near the city centre, and all are in in easy walking distance from each other. Walking around York is aided by two of the city’s unique geographic / architectural features: its rivers and its walls. The city is bisected by the rivers Foss and Ouse, the latter of which is lined by a lovely Georgian path known (then and now) as the “New Walk“. As well as being a genuine pleasure in itself, a quick walk along the “New Walk” takes you to the haven of refreshment that is the York Beer and Wine shop. A York organisation has produced this great guided tour of the New Walk, which I strongly recommend reading. (I used to live in the first location on this tour many moons ago when I was a student. Ahem.)

(The New Walk in 1756)

The Romans built the original walls around the city they named Eboracum. These defensive walls have been rebuilt several times since over the centuries, and today you can walk almost the whole way round the city centre along well-maintained wall paths which, according to York City Council, are tramped on by around a million people a year. Several of my craft hotspots are near to the bars (or gates) which form the stopping-off and getting-on points for wall-walkers. These include Monk Bar Chocolatiers (located, unsurpsingly, by Monk Bar) and The Viking Loom (close to Bootham Bar).

(Felix walks along the city walls toward Bootham Bar).

As I said, this list is entirely personal, but if any of you Yorkshire folk feel I’ve missed a really vital craft hot spot, do tell me, and I can make additions (or amendments) to the map. Hope you enjoy it! Thankyou!

(tree of knowledge on the doorway of York Minster).

eggsacting

We were excited. My Ma had given us a basket of treats, chief among which were some KAKE BRAND moulds, exactly the same as those we had when I was a kid. She found them on ebay (where she finds everything), complete with their original foil wrappings and instructions.

I cleaned the moulds.

Tom was the Master Chocolatier (said in Lindt voice)

and I formed chocolate creations to the same exacting standards I’d used when eight years old.

ahem.

B of O

Tom and I have been together for ten years. We don’t really do anniversaries, but this one seemed worth celebrating. We spent the weekend camping, walking, and eating at the Bridge of Orchy (B of O), one of my favourite places. It is hard to explain quite why I love the B of O so much, but I really do. Perhaps it is that it boasts a welcoming hotel serving excellent food, and good beer, including one of my favourite ales of all time. Perhaps it is that one can pitch one’s tent by the actual Bridge of Orchy, and be in said hotel, consuming said fine food and ales, in mere minutes. Perhaps it is its position among spectacular West Highland scenery. Or perhaps it is just that it has been a camping and walking oasis for us since we moved to Scotland. Anyway, for me, the B of O never disappoints.

(view above the B of O)

So we celebrated our decade with a lovely dinner at the B of O, a night in the tent, and a two munro walk. The B of O sits underneath Beinn Dorain and Beinn an Dothaidh — two straightforward and interesting munros which, together with their several associated tops, make for a fine day’s walking.

(Beinn Dorain)

We had a lovely day: the weather was kind to us with sunny intervals and fantastic visibility — we could see Buachaille Etive Mor to the North, and the beautiful hills of the Black Mount all around us, shifting in and out of the light as the clouds sped by above. In the next photograph, Tom is pictured (in the middle of the red circle!) above snow-filled Coire Daingean.

If anyone is at all interested, I can certainly write up this walk with a route map — we made a good day of it — climbing up Beinn an Dothaidh first, and then picking our way to the summit of Beinn Dorain along the leacann (fun! we could see walkers plodding slowly along the West Highland Way a thousand metres below us!), before coming back down along the ridge.

The full walk is just over nine and a half miles, with 1800-2000 metres of ascent. It took us around five and a half hours, after which we were more than ready for another celebratory pint.

(a pint of bitter and twisted in the B of O hotel)

In ten years together we have written doctorates, songs, and books, taken several different jobs, and lived in six properties in three cities. Its been a decade of curious haircuts, shifting political and personal perspectives, old habits, new obsessions. Many things have changed, and in many ways, we have grown up together. Now we intend to grow old together.

1999:

2009:

here’s to the next decade!

familiar paths

(March 13th. Familiar path)

Time for some observations on my 2009 walking project. Since the days have happily become lighter, I have been clocking up around 40 foot-miles per week. This has had some interesting effects. 1) I have calves of oak 2) I no longer make time to go swimming. 3) I have ceased to wear shoes with any kind of heel. This last makes me a little sad, as I dearly love shoes with an elegant heel, but I have found my attitude to them has drastically shifted. I now look at my available pairs and ask: can I walk in you at 4.5 miles per hour? If the answer is no, then they are no good to me. But it was still with some regret that I purchased yet another pair of comfortably cushioned Clarks ‘airs’ yesterday. I saw a certain something flicker in the shop assistant’s eye. Yes, I do walk quite a lot. But perhaps I’m also getting on a bit.

(March 6th. Fish supper)

Tom and I often talk about our radically different attitudes to walking and running. He finds it remarkable that I enjoy traversing the same paths over and over again. For him, today’s path will never be the same as yesterday’s. Variety is, of course, an integral aspect of his running training, but for him, there is also a pleasure in finding new or different trajectories. Now, it is not that I don’t like to explore. But I do love to run and walk along familiar paths. For the familiar path has a mental as well as a physical geography which I particularly enjoy. To me, these walks are not repetitive, but accretive: each one contains the memory or trace of those that went before. And those traces are not just about location, but about the remembrance of encounter: it looked like this when; today I feel like this; how very different this day is to that day. There is also the human weirdness of these familiar walks, in which daily path-crossings swiftly become relationships with coercive aspects–that is, with rules: today I said good morning to this person, I must speak to them again tomorrow, and every subsequent day. For me, there is always a niggly something, reminiscent of Nabokov’s Pnin in these exchanges. But I have also discovered that they are curiously important to me, and that I must embrace their vague discomfort.

(Feburary 17th. Lost cat)

For me, my daily walk is not the same walk. It is a different iteration of the same walk. The joy of traversing the familiar is similar to the one I feel when reading the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth or Gilbert White: in both, there is the pleasure of observing the wonder and ordinariness of a closely-known world, with all its transformations. Such transformations can be subtle. . .

(February 18th. Bruntsfield Links.)

. . . but quite amazing at the same time. And there is always something good about viewing the known from a different angle.

(February 16th. Feet).

. . .or just finding it mildly amusing.

(February 24th. Both sterile and jolly)

now available

the owlet pattern is now available on the designs page and through ravelry.

Included in the download are two separate patterns for the baby and kid owlet, covering 10 sizes from 6 months to 12 years. I’ve written the baby pattern in an aran weight, and the kids pattern in chunky weight yarn. When test knitting a number of yokes I found that while chunky owls rather overwhelmed a toddler-sized sweater, the sheer number of aran-weight owls did the exactly same for a kids sweater. Thus both the baby and kid owlets feature between 12 and 16 owls, which is plenty for a wee person, particularly when one considers sewing on all those button eyes. Both sweaters incorporate much more positive ease than the adult o w l sweater, so that they can be easily worn over layers of vests and t-shirts. They are also designed with a shallower yoke depth, and a wider neck than the adult o w l s, to allow for proportionately larger heads and smaller chests/shoulders. I’ve also included some (optional) gentle waist shaping at the top end of the kids owlet size range, which you may want to use if knitting for a girl.

Thanks for all your kind words about the general unpleasantness with which I’d rather this pattern wasn’t associated. I’d also like to thank Clothkits (with whom I was working on the intended owlet kit), for being so incredibly supportive. Yesterday, I had to write yet another formal letter of complaint to yet another company (based in Germany, this time) who were distributing the adult owl pattern from their website. My last word on this tedious little farrago is that, having taken some advice, I’ve decided to move the code of the adult o w l s from my site over to ravelry, where it will still be available as a free download. This may at least deter people from just nabbing the pdf and reproducing it elsewhere.

cheers, everyone, and enjoy the wee o w l s!

happy birthday, Doris

Doris is one year old tomorrow. She has really made my day. Thankyou, Doris, for providing these lovely, sunny pictures which will illustrate the imminent owlet pattern. And hearty thanks, too, to Abi and Alby who were kind enough to pop out and meet me this lunchtime. These photographs were taken in the small pavilion that forms part of the Queen Mother’s Memorial in Edinburgh’s Botanical Gardens. I love this tiny grotto-like building, and in this instance, my fondness for shell-lined interiors supersedes my antimonarchical tendencies. The pavilion is built of Caithness stone and while its interior walls are lined with mussels, scallops and spoots, the ceiling is decorated with highland fir-cones. It is a very beautiful and distinctly Scottish space.

Many happy returns to Doris, and many thanks, again, to Abi!

coast

We were down in St Annes for the weekend. While Tom ran the Blackpool half-marathon in a speedy personal best, I spent my time as I like to do on the Fylde coast — pootling about, camera in hand. Not to big up my photographic skills, or anything, but I am quite pleased with the pictures I took this weekend, and particularly like the image at the top of this post. For me, it captures the essence of St Annes: stark light, Lancashire red brick, and a strangely unforgiving landscape, all salt, starr-grass and wind. While taking these pictures, I had a sort of revelatory moment when I realised that the best way to photograph the Fylde was not to photograph it, or rather, not to photograph its more obvious landmarks directly, but to allow them to be (as they are in reality) integral to the landscape, and its bigger picture. On previous occasions when I’ve photographed the Lytham Windmill, for example, I’ve been bothered by the presence of the adjacent car park — which seemed to interfere with the subject of the image I was after. But this weekend I felt just as keen to photograph the car park – - which is, after all, as much a part of Lytham’s visual feel as its windmill. Perhaps this just means that I’ve been to Blackpool, Lytham and St Annes so many times that I’ve finally stopped taking pictures like a tourist. Or perhaps I’m just being over analytical. Either way – I am quite pleased with these photos.

I am intrigued by these iron columns and do not know what their purpose is or was. They stand in a bit of fenced-off waste ground behind the carpark at Fairhaven Lake. Are they remnants of some long-gone bandstand? Functionless pieces of Edwardian civic street furniture? What? Any information gratefully received.

eborbutton

Ysolda and I have been pursuing our craft tour with gusto. It now appears to be extending out from Edinburgh in several directions. The other day, we traveled a bit further than usual on the East Coast Mainline, and hopped on a train to York. York is one of my old stomping grounds, and there are many reasons to visit. It is a great compact city in which you can literally walk through a whole millennium, admiring fine examples of British architecture from the Roman to the Victorian. It is home to one of the most important Gothic cathedrals in Northern Europe. And the light in York is always particularly beautiful — something about the flatness of the landscape and the soft colours of the stone. None of this interested us, however. We went to York for buttons.

In York, Duttons for Buttons is something of a local institution, and, if you ask me, it deserves to be a national one as well. For Duttons is so much more than a well-stocked haberdashers with friendly, knowledgeable staff, selling an excellent range of needlecraft and dressmaking supplies and notions. Duttons is, in fact, the spiritual home of the button, a palace, a shrine, a hymn to that tiny and miraculous combination of decorative form and function . . .

Duttons!

For Buttons!

Buttons exemplify the appeal of the numinous and miniature. They are ordinary things, neither jewels nor sweeties, but there is still something precious, sensuous, near-edible about them. And, unlike jewel-things, buttons have an important functional point to make. If fabric is the language, then buttons are the grammar of our clothing — openings, pauses, closings — as well the decorative accent of any outfit.

We all know the singular pleasure of poking around in a button box — the delight of handling, arranging, and admiring lovely button-things. Now imagine that box-sized pleasure magnified to the size of a shop, and you have some sense of just how great it is to be in Duttons. There is the satisfying knowledge that you have over 12,000 kinds of buttons to play with and choose from. Then there is the space of Duttons itself, with its medieval beams and wobbly floor. The shop fittings have stayed the same for forty years or more — the buttons are displayed, floor-to-ceiling, in worn, compartmentalised cardboard boxes, which you can examine on pleasing tables that pull out from the button-wall.

The sheer range of Duttons buttons is frankly amazing. There is glass and acrylic, wood and cloisonné, in an incredible array of sizes, styles and hues. And what makes some of this stock so precious, is that so much of it is discontinued. Many of the buttons sold here have their stylistic origins in the 40s and 50s and are literally at the end of the line. The nine buttons you buy for your coat or cardigan might be the last few available anywhere. Superlatives really cannot capture the sheer wonder that is Duttons. If you are lucky enough to live in West or North Yorkshire, you will also find branches in Ilkley and Harrogate.

Here are some of my spoils.

so tasty.

Oh, and by the way, York is brilliant for many crafty things other than buttons. These include Betty’s . . .

(the mere phrase ’selection of miniature cakes’ on the menu made me stupidly gleeful)

. . . and of course, beer

. . . the subject of other posts.

And just a quick a note about the owlet – - I was very interested in your comments, and in Franklin Habit’s remarks about the same issue, to which Lucette linked. After reading both, I was filled with a militant desire to chat to mums in the street, and ask their kids to wear my sweater. Over the past few days I’ve tried this with mixed results. Unlike Franklin, the problem I discovered was not the attitude of the parents to the weird-sweater-brandishing-person (all were interested, most were helpful) but simply the age and size of the kids on offer — I’ve just not been able to find any 1 year olds! In Duttons, for example, I got chatting to a lovely mum with an equally lovely toddler, but when we matched kid up to sweater the latter turned out to be much too small. And just when I was beginning to think that, since toddlers seem to be clearly the most numerous, or at least the most publicly available size of kid, I’d better just knit another sweater, I received an email from a someone and her just-one-year-old who may well turn out to be my owlsend. Hurrah! More soon.