peek

As I’m on a monochrome theme today, here is a sneak peek at a new design — the next in a series of creature-themed kids’ garments I’m planning — a menagerie, if you will. This one is made for a wee boy — can you guess which beastie inspired it? (Clue: it featured in the final episode of Life). Also, a quick heads-up that Lynne Barr will be here for a conversation about stitch and sizing on the 22nd. I’m really looking forward to it! You can follow Lynne on her blog tour over at Melanie Falick’s — and, if you are quick, those of you on the other side of the Atlantic can also enter a competition here to win a copy of Reversible Knitting — a must for every contemporary knitterly bookshelf.

nine

Lambs are seasonal, in more ways than one. I am not just thinking of cribs and mangers and nativity plays, but of the obligatory lambing-shed scenes on the Archers (ahem). Here is a sign in the Pentlands that always amuses us. Those speedy lambs are clearly out of control! (and intriguingly literate).

pleasing things

found cat

. . the last bean

. . . the first squash!

. . . and a new old thing.

psu

Hello, all — very nice to be back, but I had a really wonderful working-break at PSU. It was so lovely to chat with colleagues whose research and writing I’ve long admired, but never met. And it was particularly nice to meet Sean and Tina, who were incredibly kind and hospitable. As well as being the sort of academic who bowls one over with all-round smartness, energy, and good humour, Sean is also a connoisseur of fine ale, and introduced me to the delights of Stone IPA, which, in all its floral-citrus-y-hoppiness is my new favourite American beer.

I was very taken with the PSU campus at State College. Militant pedestrian that I am, I found it really well-designed for getting about on foot, and it has a truly beautiful setting in the landscape of Central Pennsylvania (particularly glorious at this time of year with the leaves beginning to turn). The campus is also full of wildlife: the smell of a skunk and the sight of a chipmunk occasioned much ludicrous excitement, and I was very intrigued by the lions which are to be seen everywhere at PSU. . .

(paw-cleaning)

. . . but the creatures I was most thrilled to spot were the birds which had appeared on someone’s sweater. . .

I’ve ‘known’ Heather online for a few years now, and it was such fun to meet her: she is sharp as a whistle, a superlative knitter, and is perhaps the only blogger whose writing about knitting regularly makes me laugh out loud (recall, for example, her skillful incorporation of the Mother Theresa bun into a post about the forest canopy shawl). The other patrons of the bookstore/cafe in which I met her last week may have been disturbed by our animated discussion about the sheer pointlessness of Alain de Botton, raucous laughter (from me), and mutual yarn hysteria. On the subject of which, Heather treated me to a delicious skein of the legendary socks that rock, and my new favourite shawl (the work of her own deft hands — details here)

Other PSU crafty highlights included meeting Garrison Gunter (I seriously covet the couch upon which Garrison is pictured, upholstered with fabric he designed and printed at Philadelphia’s fabric workshop. The very nifty pattern repeat is built around motifs suggestive of his own Hawaiian background). . . .

. . . And the art of Willie Cole in the Palmer Museum (a wonderfully curated collection at the heart of the State College campus).

Look closely at Cole’s amazing Harlem Rose: each petal is a shoe, and the flower is formed from the combined footwear of many women. The shoes still carry the ghosts of the owners’ feet inside them, and many are worn beyond wearing. Cole makes worn-out shoes bloom together in a gorgeous celebration of the ordinary acts and material lives of women — working women, walking women . . .

. . . and finally, while I’m on the subject of walking women — how was my talk about those of the eighteenth-century? Well, the feedback seemed positive, and the lecture elicited a few laughs from the audience, which I reckon is always a good sign. I proudly wore Heather’s shawl to accompany the frock, and confess to a certain amount of (quiet) hubris about my inclusion in the Weis seminar series. Its a really fabulous programme, and I wish I could be around for some of the other talks and roundtables which are taking place in association with it later this year (thanks, once again, to Sean). And if any of you are remotely interested in my lecture, or indeed any of the other great talks in the Weis “Moments of Change” series, you can actually download them from itunes. Just click here and open itunes at the prompt. (Warning: I do go on a bit).

best fest

There has been much talk over the past few days about the general handsomeness, and nobility of the ovine. Here is a supreme example. Just look at that marvellous phizog! So calm, so gentle, so self-contained, so . . .sheepy! I spent a long time admiring this fine herdwick at woolfest the other day, and find it hard to articulate for you quite how much I like him. He is a bit like woolfest itself, then, which has sort of left me lost for words.

It was the best fest because it was spent in the company of friends.

Felix & Monkl

Lara. (I failed to capture a corresponding morning-head-in-tent shot of Liz — seen below in her gorgeous hand-made halter-neck dress — crack of dawn does not capture how early she rose. . .)

From left to right: Sarah, Mel, Liz, Lara, Felix. . . and Frida Kahlo. Six great women, five great knitters (I don’t know about Frida).

Inside la fest there were so many people to meet, and I was particularly excited to run into Amanda and Lily, who was also sporting her paper dolls (Lily is absolutely lovely). It occurred to me after I’d seen her that the sweater I was wearing was made from yarn I’d got at last year’s woolfest: I acquired my bowmont braf from the man at bowmont braf. I was able to talk to him about the character of the breed, the properties of the wool, and the qualities of the finished garment it might produce. We also talked about the economic realities of small-scale yarn production, and the future of projects and flocks like his. I went away thinking about those questions, and inspired by both sheep and wool, designed and knit up my paper dolls sweater. These conversations are what makes woolfest so amazing.

(Shetland markings. Designed by Sue Russo and available from the Shetland Sheep Society)

The material and sensory impact of the interior of Mitchell’s livestock centre is completely overwhelming. Faced with all that bounty, its quite hard to stop oneself running around, shouting and cooing, squeezing yarn, fundling sheep, and throwing oneself at fleeces like a crazy lady. . . But I found an oasis of calm among the stands of the coloured sheep breeders, to whom I was repeatedly drawn. The proximity of the sheep themselves certainly had something to do with it, but I also really enjoyed chatting to the representatives of the different breed societies, particularly Joy Trotter, who keeps the Rivendell flock of Shetlands. After talking to Joy, I had a sort of moment concerning the sheer range of shades in the fleece of British sheep, and spent much of the rest of the day reflecting on this, and being inspired by these colours: the creamy blue-greys of the north ronaldsays, the choclatey browns of the jacobs, the soft, almost powdery ginger of the manx loghtans, and the breathtaking non-technicolour dreamcoat range of shetlands. These colours were everywhere: on the backs of lovely beasties, in the deft hands of spinners, in plump finished skeins of yarn, in beautiful knitted and woven items.

(Yes, that cake and those chocolates are fashioned from coloured Shetland. Delicious!)

It is fair to say that I am on a shetland roll right now, and that you will no doubt see and hear more of this in the coming months. If you are interested in quality natural-shade British shetland, I would warmly recommend getting it from Garthenor Organics. Chris King is such a thoughtful man who knows his wool, and this knowledge really tells in the finished skein. More of his yarn later, meanwhile, here is a picture of the only dyed stuff I took home:

I met the lovely folk from Artisan Threads last year when I was writing a piece in which they featured for Yarn Forward. Their sense of colour, and the feel they have for the process of natural dyeing is just fantastic. They have such a marvellous Autumnal palate, and I shall be doing something with their lovely muted shades this Autumn.

(Lara taking a fest-break with a swift pint of shandy — it was such a hot day!)

After the fest, we retired to the Bitter End in Cockermouth for some much-needed refreshment and de-briefing. Really, I can think of no better way to spend a Saturday evening than surrounded by yarn, in a good food-and-ale serving pub, in the company of friends, discussing the political economy of British wool. I will say it again: great women, great knitters. The excitements of the day were more than matched by a night full of stimulating conversation. When the menu came round, we all put our money where our mouth was, and chose lamb. I had such an amazing time and am still reeling and thinking — both about woolfest itself, and the conversations it provoked. I sort of feel like I spent the whole weekend following the narrative thread of John Dyer’s seminal 1757 Georgic The Fleece which traces the economic, political, material, and indeed intellectual journey of wool from the sheep’s back to the human’s. Perhaps I shall bore you with John Dyer — and the vexed question of how to produce poetry about “the care of sheep in tupping time” — on another occasion. But that’s me all fested out for now.

**Bee-bag competition winner will be announced shortly!**

seasonal

you can tell it’s Spring . . .

. . . Jesus’s plum tree is coming into bloom.

sweet potato?

So we cracked open the sweet potato kit-kat yesterday evening. It tastes curious, but not at all unpleasant. I could probably eat another. We spent some time — in much the same manner one does with whisky — determining how best to describe the flavour. Tom finally suggested it was like eating salted and sweet popcorn simultaneously, and this just about captures it.

Thanks for all your allotment good wishes. We are both very excited. Thanks too for the seed offers. I think I shall take these up. Several of the networks of eighteenth-century correspondence that I love to read have their origins in personal exchanges of seeds (sometimes across the Atlantic!) and there is something so pleasingly literal about the way these epistolary conversations grew and developed via vegetables.

One more thing: I saw my first bumble bee of the year today. At 6.15, and in Edinburgh. How I am enjoying the early morning light.

the grumbling hive

The title comes from Bernard Mandeville’s 1705 poem of the same name. Its only relevance here is that I have bees on the brain, and because, since I am feeling peaky (again) there’s been a bit of grumbling going on in this particular hive. Bees on the brain, you say? What’s that about, then?

(landing bee)

1) I heart bees. Whats not to like? Bees are brilliant. I will leave the precise beescience to Tom (who knows more about bees than I) but as creatures with a unique and intriguing social organisation I find them both mysterious and appealing.

(mancbee)

2) Right now, I am busy like the bee. And I find the bee a very pleasing symbol of purposeful activity. In the mid-nineteenth century, bees were often used symbolically in this way – on a a quick walk around Manchester’s city centre, for example, you will spot many bees carved into the gothic edifices of the city’s great Victorian public buildings, and bees still adorn what the planners refer to as ’street furniture’ in Manchester (such as the rubbish bin above).

My favourite British bee, however, has to be this one:

(the Whitworth bee)

This fabulously jolly creature, standing over six-feet high, was the gift of the people of Kandel in the Bienwald (bee-forest) to those of the town of Whitworth, near Rochdale, with whom they are ‘twinned’. I understand that these carved bees are a Kandel speciality — and isn’t this one just fantastic? I like the fact that its feel and style speak of craft methods that are so characteristically German, even as its union-jack colouring proclaims it as firmly British. I loved this bee so much when I read about it in the Rochdale Observer (or, in local parlance, th’Ob), that my mum found me a picture, and sent it to me. The Whitworth bee-photo now sits on our fridge, and is a very cheery addition to the kitchen.

The details are hazy, but I understand that a sinister bee-themed crime subsequently unfolded in Whitworth — the bee was apparently stolen from its civic home (just imagine the logistics of sneaking off with a six-foot wooden bee) and a replacement has had to be commissioned from the generous folk of Kandel. If anyone has any further information on the Whitworth bee mystery, or news of the secret whereabouts of the original bee, I would be really interested to know.

(brakspear bee. I highly recommend the ale.)

3) I am knitting and designing something involving bees. I *love* it. I really do. Everything about it is immensely cheering. More soon.

4) I am suffering with a terrible throat infection (really not good for delivering lectures – groan) and require the healing power of the bee. I need honey and propolis! Bees, fire me up with your tasty bee goodness! Allow me to buzz at the correct volume!

(beeswax. Don’t worry, I won’t eat it)

Erm, well, that’s all I can say about bees for now: the bees will heal me (one hopes); I shall knit like the bee and the the bee-thing shall emerge from my needles. And if you are really good, next time I’ll talk about the bees in Virgil’s Georgics.

In other news.
1) Today is the closing date for submissions to the parliament. You can send me your owls until midnight, your time (whenever that is). The grand winner of the competition will be selected at random, but I just love all the pics so much that there are going to be a few other minor prizes. I can’t say too much about this (don’t want to spoil the surprise), but will just hint that these lovely Edinburgh designers have generously donated something. More from them later in the week.

2) The Paper dolls pattern is nearing completion. I have entered mathworld. It’s strangely familiar and reasonably satisfying– reminds me of calculating student degree profiles when I was chair of examiners! Good to know that part of my brain still works.

3) Remember I was going on about Jane Gaugain, last summer? Well, I’ve written a feature about her in the new Twist Collective. Go and check it out! There are so many amazing patterns in the issue. It is probably symptomatic of where I am right now that Mary-Ann Stephen’s Sleepy Monkey and Luke’s Diced Vest by Mary Jane Mucklestone speak to me so. Just look at that colourwork! And the yarn for Luke’s Vest comes from lovely Carol Sunday! (Carol’s yarns really are gorgeous, and I am just one of her many Edinburgh admirers). Oh, and I also produced a knitting-walking tour of Edinburgh for Twist (in which you really can walk in the steps of Jane Gaugain), which will appear on their blog soon.

What a miscellaneous post this is. Buzz buzz.

(madeirabee)

snowcat

Poor Jesus seems confused by the white stuff. But then, he is easily confused . . .

collared

“Collars have played a very important part in the drama of fashion, and today command the attention of dress designers of repute, as well as makers of simple dresses. Each realises and appreciates the value of the right collar. Each knows the scope given by their use to the expression of individuality.”
Elizabeth McCaskill ‘New Collars for Old Dresses’, Odham’s Big Book of Needlework (1935)

Collars now seem rather underappreciated things. Reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women’s manuscripts, one becomes very aware of the importance of collars. They are one of the most frequently discussed items of clothing, and (sometimes) they also form a sort of manuscript themselves. What you see above is a pattern for a collar that I found, complete with several pricked holes and one rusty pin, between the pages of a nineteenth-century album held in the Library Company of Philadelphia. The album dates from the 1820s — the collar seemed to be of a later date — probably the property of a reader at a couple of generations remove from the album’s original writer.

One only has to think of the trials of Mrs Forrester’s lace in Gaskell’s Cranford to realise the importance women attached to their collars. And they remained crucial items in women’s wardrobes until relatively recently — my new Odham’s Big Book of Needlework*, which was reprinted several times throughout the 1930s and 40s, has a whole section on collars, including a long essay about the virtues of collars in updating and brightening up items of clothing that are otherwise old and worn.

(black textiles really are impossible to photograph . . .)

Here is an old and worn collar, attached to a coat that needed updating. I bought this nice velvet coat about a decade ago. It has a faux fur collar (100% acrylic — aigh!) — one of those things that resembles a worn out teddy bear after a couple of years wear in the rain and snow. Because of the woefully ratty appearance of this collar, I’ve not worn the perfectly good coat for five years or more. It was time to fix all that with a new collar.

I unpicked the old collar, measured it, then happily threw it away. Then I made a crocheted mesh to more or less the same dimensions as the old collar with some black 4 ply. Along the vertical lines of each square in the mesh I crocheted long triple trebles up and down, in waves. I used a bit of black kidsilk haze I had left over from making this sweater, and a couple of balls of black kidsilk aura I had hanging around from when the yarn first came out last year. Man, that stuff is hairy. The idea was to create a dense, plush bobbly effect. In practice, the yarn was much more hairy than I’d imagined, and less bobbly than I intended, but still, it worked out fine, and crochet really is very fast. The new collar was made up over a couple of evenings. And today I sewed the collar to the coat. This was enjoyable. I got up early, sat in the good light by the kitchen window, watched the sky shift and brighten and the curlews arrive. Things were very quiet and wintry, I stitched meditatively, and drank about a gallon of tea. A very nice morning was had. The collar was finished. Then Tom and I went out for a walk and I got him to take a couple of pics. Here is a shot of the back of the collar:

The frizzled effect of the crocheted waves reminds me of a rolled wig. In fact, the basic structure of the collar — with the ‘hair’ laid down over a mesh — is not dissimilar to that of an eighteenth-century peruke. Hence I have christened it the bagwig collar.

You’ll have to forgive my penchant for black and white, and my vacant peering into what appears to be The Void. In actual fact, I was staring very intently at a bright wee feller in a tree two feet in front of me, and hissing at Tom to get a good shot:

How wintry does he look on those bare branches?
He’s just out of shot in this next picture

I had to lighten the whole shot so you could see the fabric and the collar. Shall I say it again? Photographing black stuff is a mare

Pattern: Bagwig Collar by me
Yarn: Kidsilk Aura, Kidsilk Haze, and some miscellaneous yarn (it may have been 4 ply soft).
hook: 3mm
ravelled here

3 posts in 2 days? What’s going on? The truth is, I am starting to feel well again, after being terribly unwell for several weeks now. Though I’ve been doggedly getting on with the big project I’m working on at the moment, I’ve felt so damn rotten that I’ve not had much energy for anything much at all of late. Today, though, I suddenly feel physically restored and stupidly enthusiastic. Much more like my normal self again. Hurrah!

And an owls update: I have written up the pattern. Someone who is far more experienced in these matters than I has kindly agreed to cast her eagle (or owlish) eye over it. Then testknitting commences . . . and then it will be available!

*delivered at lightening speed by Marsden Booksellers in Doncaster. Thankyou, Nick.