Quiz

On Thursday, we had the January meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch.  As last January, we had a quiz set by Marie and Sarah - all the questions were on knitting & crochet, of course.  It was a lot of fun - especially as my team won this time.  (It was a lot of fun for me last year, too, even though my team came 3rd out of four, so it's not just enjoyable for the winners.) 

Here's my prize, in a tiny carrier bag made by Marie - a set of heart-shaped buttons from Sarah, a set of stitch markers, a 10g. ball of Opal sock wool, and a bracelet that you can use for counting rows.  The bracelet has nine beads in each of two colours, that you can slide from one end to the other through a loop in the middle, and so count up to 99.

Ann Kingstone was in my team, which helped a lot.  One set of picture questions was about some of the very popular patterns in Ravelry - patterns that have generated thousands of projects.  We had to give the name of the pattern and the name of the designer.  I did recognise the Hitchhiker shawl/scarf (over 28,000 projects), because I looked at it when I was choosing a pattern for a similar scarf in Louisa Harding's Amitola, but couldn't remember the name Hitchhiker, and had no idea of the designer.  And I recognised the Color Affection shawl (15,750 projects) because I have knitted that one myself, and knew that the designer is Finnish and her name begins with 'V', but  couldn't remember 'Veera Välimäki'.  So I would have done very badly on that section - but Ann knew most of the answers there.  I did much better on dating designs from different decades.  And as Ann said, if I didn't know where Beehive yarn was first produced, I ought to lose my job. (Halifax, by J. & J.Baldwin & Partners).  (And as someone else said, I haven't actually got a job as such - I'm a volunteer.)  There were other sections where the other members of the team stepped in - one on references to sheep, knitting, needles, etc. in popular culture, including Game of Thrones and Zootopia.  I was annoyed that I couldn't remember the author of The Friday Night Knitting Club, even though I have read it (Kate Jacobs) - I am very bad at remembering authors of books.  And Ann and I were hopeless at remembering the early branch meetings, even though we were both there.  We couldn't even remember the topic of the first workshop that we had, so it was a bit shaming to find out that it was on feather-and-fan - taught by Ann herself, and I wrote about it here. 

It was a really good sociable evening - thanks very much to Marie and Sarah for compiling the questions and providing the prizes.

Fluffier on the inside

On Thursday evening, we had the December meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch.  Our theme for 2017 has been Yarn, in all sorts of forms.  To finish the year we had a workshop from one of our members, Sarah Alderson of Aldersign Designs.  The workshop was on thrumming - a traditional technique from Canada for making very warm mittens and such like by knitting extra bits of unspun wool into them to make a fleecy lining.  (Search for 'thrummed mittens' to find some YouTube videos and articles - here's one by the Yarn Harlot.)

Sarah provided us with undyed wool tops to make the thrums - short lengths of roving folded into figure-of-eight loops.  And she had designed a pattern for thrummed slippers / bootees - the design is called 'Fluffier on the Inside'.   The sole of the slipper is thrummed, and there is another band of thrumming around the ankle.  Sarah's prototype was in dark blue, and looks a little bit like Doctor Who's Tardis (which of course is bigger on the inside).

We started with a slipper sole, and I finished mine on Thursday evening.  The photos show the outside, with a neat pattern like the lice in Norwegian knitting:

and the inside, which looks like an explosion in a wool warehouse:

Sarah says that after the slippers have been worn for a while, the thrums felt together into an even, very warm layer.

The next step in making the slippers is to pick up stitches around the edge of the sole to knit the upper (which isn't thrummed).   Before doing that, I think I should knit the sole again - the size needs some adjustment.  And before that,  I need to finish off some Christmas knitting - there's not much time left, but it may just be done by Christmas morning.  But I shall definitely finish the slippers - they will be so cosy.

Mitts in Twined Knitting

I said last month that I was knitting a pair of fingerless mitts in twined knitting - all inspired originally by somehow volunteering to do a workshop in twined knitting for the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild.  (I think I might have been hypnotised.)  I finished those mitts, which I intended to be for me, but then someone asked me to write the pattern, and I decided that if I was going to do that, I'd like to change it a bit.  So I gave the first pair to my daughter, and made another pair for me.

The wristlets I designed as the workshop project were knitted in two colours - you switch colours for (almost) every stitch, twisting the yarns each time.  For the mitts, I used two strands of the same colour, again alternating the strands for each stitch.  (That's the original use of twined knitting, I believe - it's called two-end knitting in Swedish, and  you can use both ends of one ball of yarn.)    

Here are my second pair of twined knitting mitts:

I'm calling the design Aspen, because the diamonds on the back of the hand and the cuff reminded me of the diamond shapes on the bark of aspen trees at Harlow Carr garden in the autumn - and aspen trees grow in Sweden, where twined knitting also comes from.  

Twined knitting gives a very nice texture.  Apart from the areas of pattern, it looks similar to stocking stitch on the right side, but actually it feels slightly ridged.  (Taking one strand across the back as you knit a stitch with the other strand pulls the fabric in a bit and makes the right side of each stitch tighter than the left.  At least that's what happens when I do it.)  

And the wrong side looks very different to stocking stitch:

 
Susie's mitts are only slightly different to mine:

 
They have chevrons on the cuff, and the border to the thumb gussets is a bit different.  I've taken the elements of the designs from the book by Birgitta Dandanell and Ulla Danielsson, Twined Knitting - A Swedish Folkcraft Technique, which is full of photos of original garments of all kinds. The English translation was published by Interweave Press in 1989, and is out of print, but I've been able to borrow a copy from a friend.  

The yarn for both pairs of mitts is Debbie Bliss Rialto Heathers, which is a beautifully soft merino DK. The colour is Pebble - a lovely silver-grey, very like aspen bark. (There's also a little bit of black for the cast-on, and the plaited braid.)  Twined knitting in DK yarn gives a very thick fabric - these mitts are very warm and cosy.

I've now knitted two pairs of mitts and two and a half pairs of wristlets in twined knitting.  (I wrote about the 'half pair' here.)   I made one pair of wristlets for the workshop - a refinement of a previous pair, which I haven't shown.  Here it is:

 
 I have a cardigan in the same dark teal colour, so I've worn these wristlets quite a lot - they really help to keep you warm.  For the workshop pair, I dropped the third colour for the cast-on edge, and the plait - I wanted to keep casting on as simple as possible.  

  
I think I've done enough twined knitting for now.   I like the effect very much, but it's slow to do (because you have to keep stopping to untwist the yarn) and you don't always want your knitting to be thick and wind-proof.  I'm doing the workshop for the Birmingham branch in April, so that might inspire me to take it up again, but at least until then, that's it for twined knitting.  

Advent Calendars

In November, a group of knitters from the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch decided to share two Opal advent calendars - these calendars have 24 doors for the days of Advent, like other Advent calendars, but behind each door is a 15g. ball of Opal sock yarn.  There were 8 members of the calendar syndicate and 48 balls of wool, so 6 balls each - sounds simple, doesn't it?  No.  They devised an extremely complicated scheme - before any of the doors were opened, the ball behind each door was pre-allocated to a syndicate member.  Then each member had custody of one of the calendars for 6 days.  Every day she opened the appropriate door and posted a photo of the ball door could see what she was getting.  Here's one of the photos, posted by Ann Kingstone.

 And after six days, the keeper of the cube met the next keeper, to hand it over.

Yesterday was the grand finale, when the syndicate met to distribute the balls of wool to their owners. I wasn't a member of the syndicate, just a fascinated observer, but I went along to see how it all worked out.  They met in Salt's Diner in Salts Mill in Saltaire, the other side of Bradford.

Every member of the syndicate was given a pair of socks with their balls of wool stuffed inside.  Then there was some swapping, so that people could get a selection of colours that they liked.  There was even some discussion of what they might knit with the yarn - the 6 balls will make a pair of (very multi-coloured) socks, though you could mix them with a plain background colour and make something bigger like a shawl.  And as far as I could see, everyone was happy with their share, and keen to do it all again next year.      

By then it was dark, and we went into the village to see the Saltaire Advent windows, which are lit up every evening until January 5th.  Like any other Advent calendar, a new window was 'opened' every day in December until Christmas Eve, though they started with 10 windows on December 1st, so now there are 33 windows to see.   The windows are scattered all over the village, and I didn't have time to see many of them, but I did see some very well-designed and executed displays.  And the very first that we found was this:

   
It's all knitted or crocheted - poinsettias in pots, snowmen, paper chains, a gingerbread house,...

Knitted robins wearing woolly hats on a knitted snow-covered log:

Alpacas wearing woolly scarves (both crocheted, I think) under knitted mistletoe:

 (Alpacas are important in the history of Saltaire because Titus Salt, who built the village for his mill workers, made his money out of spinning alpaca yarn.)

So window no. 7 was a very good start for a party of knitters.  

Another favourite:  window 19, showing Father Christmas in his sleigh flying over the village.

And here's window 9, a display about Titus Salt's rules for the people living in Saltaire:

No pubs; No drinking alcohol; No hanging out washing; No animals in Saltaire.

You can read more about the rules here.  As far as I remember from a guided walk around Saltaire, the prohibition on hanging out washing was because Salt had provided a wash-house and he wanted the villagers to pay to do their washing there, but it wasn't popular.  Some villagers got around the rule by hanging out their washing on vacant land just outside the village.  And he wasn't against alcohol as such - the rules was really against being drunk, and he didn't want pubs where workers might meet and combine against him.  Philanthropic, but only up to a point.

The windows were worth seeing.  The Saltaire Living Calendar has been happening every Christmas since 2006, though I had not heard of it before this year - I'll go again next year, with enough time to see them all.  

Mice in Blackpool

Last October, a group of us from the Knitting & Crochet Guild in Huddersfield went to the Westcliffe Hotel in Blackpool for a Knitaway weekend.  We had a wonderful time, and immediately decided that we should have another weekend away this year.  (Chris Evans interviewed Paula Chew, the owner of the Westcliffe, on his Breakfast Show this week - you can catch it here for another few weeks.)

More people wanted to go this year, so to fit everyone in, we are having two weekends at the Westcliffe, The first was two weeks ago, and I'm in the second group, going next weekend.

As last year, we are running workshops ourselves, this time on lace knitting   Elizabeth Smith, who went on the first weekend did some practising beforehand and made some little mice, wearing lace dresses.  Elizabeth is a very creative knitter - she did a workshop on knitting seaweed for the Huddersfield KCG branch last year.  Her mice are in Jamieson's Spindrift, about 3 inches high (about 7 cm,) and are very mousey.  Their dresses are knitted in Rowan Kid Silk Haze, and are in the three lace traditions of our Blackpool workshops: Shetland, Estonian and Orenburg.  (The Orenburg lace dress is in the mouse paw pattern - Elizabeth says that she was thinking of using the cat's paw pattern until she realised that it wouldn't be appropriate.)   And as you might be able to see, the dresses are trimmed with beads - very splendid gowns for tiny mice.  They are altogether adorable.

Twisted Stitches

On Thursday, we had the first Huddersfield KCG branch meeting of 2016.  The plan for the year is to tour the world in knitting, and we began the tour with a workshop on Bavarian Twisted Stitch patterns.  Marie had devised several small projects for us to try, from fairly simple to quite complicated - the end result of each is a phone case.

I had already knitted something using Bavarian Twisted Stitches, it turned out - the Baht 'At mittens from Ann Kingstone's Born and Bred book.   So I decided I should try the most complicated project - which was a bit daft.  I should know by now that in a workshop I'm not usually at my best - I'm not as careful as I should be, I make mistakes.  I should choose something simple. But I've done some more work since the workshop (corrected a couple of mistakes) and now I'm making better progress.

I did at least make the sensible decision not to attempt Judy's magic cast on - I've done it before, but I can't remember how to do it, and it would have taken most of the evening by itself.  So the bottom of the case is open, and I'll need to sew it up to finish it.

My stitches aren't as neat as they should be (having to correct mistakes doesn't help), but they are getting better, and twisting the stitches does have a remarkably neatening effect anyway.   Many of the Bavarian Twisted Stitch motifs have evocative names like "Clover Leaf" or "Ear of Wheat", but this one is apparently called "Large Chain with Twisted Bands".  So far I've done one pattern repeat, and I think it's looking good.

Next month's meeting is on British Ganseys, and further ahead I am doing a workshop on Swedish twined knitting.  At the time this was planned, I knew almost nothing about Swedish twined knitting, but some progress has been made - a friend has lent me a book on it, and I'm going to start practising.      

Picture This

Last week's Huddersfield KCG branch meeting was a trunk show of picture sweaters.  I took a large suitcase full of picture knits from the Guild's collection, along with bag full of pattern leaflets, books and magazines.   I mostly chose knits I was already familiar with, and several of them have already featured on this blog - the Postman Pat sweater, with its pattern; the Cherry Brandy sweater (sing-along optional);  the Mary Maxim jacket; the Willow Pattern sweater.  Here are some more.

Most of the picture knits and patterns I showed on Thursday were from the 1980s - the heyday of the picture knit.   (Though the Mary Maxim jacket is 1950s.)   Around 1980, sweaters with landscapes on the front were popular - I found several patterns as well as the sweater below.

Sirdar 6109

A lot of elements appear in several similar designs - there's a blue sky with white fluffy clouds, often some hills or mountains in the background, often a few trees (usually conifers); maybe some water, and sometimes a few sheep.  I showed a Hayfield pattern in the same genre here.

I also showed a landscape sweater of a very different kind, by Sandra Inskip.  We have three or four of her Yorkshire scenes sweaters, all knitted in the natural colours of British sheep breeds. I think this one, showing the Ribblehead viaduct is the nicest.

The flower-vase sweater below is a bit later, I suspect - 1990s?  I haven't seen a pattern for it, and I think it might have been knitted from a kit.  (But see my PS below.)

It's worked sideways, and I guess is intended to be done in stranded knitting.  But the knitter has woven in the colour not in use.....

...which gives an uneven texture on the right side.  I think it's quite an attractive effect.

I like it very much - especially the unexpected touches of  bright colour, turquoise and pink.  If anyone recognises the design, I'd love to know.

I finished the show with a couple of seasonal knits.

The polar bear sweater is from a Scheepjeswol kit.  To me the polar bear has a rather odd expression - as though he is grumbling about a mild toothache.  In case you miss the wintry theme, the back reinforces it:

 
And finally, although we don't have any specifically Christmas sweaters in the collection, as far as I know, we do have a very nice one with a robin.

I guess the bobbles are meant to represent snowflakes.  The robin is done in intarsia, and the footprints are in stranded knitting...

-- and continue all across the back.  Isn't that charming?  Again, if you recognise the pattern, please let me know.

 PS Karie Westermann has suggested that the Flower vase sweater might be a Kaffe Fassett design.  And now I've searched though his designs on Ravelry  (should have done that before), I see that it's a design called Brocade.  I thought at first it was only very similar, because the main illustration on Ravelry shows a sweater knitted conventionally, not cuff to cuff.  But most of the Brocade projects on Ravelry are knitted cuff to cuff - so that more or less confirms it.  It's Kaffe Fassett's Brocade.  I would still like to know, though, whether the colourway in the collection sweater was suggested by KF or devised by the knitter.

It's An Illusion

Last week we had the monthly meeting of the local Knitting & Crochet Guild branch, with a workshop in Illusion Knitting, aka Shadow Knitting.  It was led by Ann Kingstone, one of our members, who had designed a square for us to knit, with a pattern of a star.  The star is more or less invisible when looked at straight on, lit from in front (or in a flash photograph) but appears when the square is lit from the side and/or looked at from an angle.

No star

Star lit from the top 

Star seen at an angle

I started my square with a provisional cast on, to allow for picking up stitches all round to add a border, as Ann suggested, but I haven't decided yet what to make from it.

To introduce us to illusion knitting, Ann had brought a shawl that she was given by Steve Plummer and Pat Ashcroft  of Woolly Thoughts - it has a portrait of Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid in the Harry Potter films knitted into it.

Hagrid shawl, from http://www.illusionknitting.woollythoughts.com/hagrid.html 

At the workshop, we were wondering where the idea for illusion knitting came from - it seems such an unlikely technique to invent from nothing.  Later, I looked in Vivian Høxbro's book Shadow Knitting.  She says that first came across the idea in a translation of a booklet by a Japanese woman, Mieko Yano - a similar account is given on a blog by Mrs Petersson here, who says that Mieko Yano was teaching illusion knitting and other Japanese knitting ideas in Sweden in the 1980s.   But I don't know if Mieko Yano invented the technique, or whether it was developed earlier in Japan. Intriguing. 

Knitaway in Blackpool

Last weekend, I went to Blackpool for a knitting weekend with eight friends from the Huddersfield branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  It was great - we had a wonderful time.   Lots of knitting , lots of chatting,  and we were really well looked after by Paula Chew at the Westcliffe Hotel.   (Not to be confused with the Westcliff Hotel, Blackpool, which proclaims "we welcome stag and hen parties".)  

Paula runs knitting holidays where she provides workshops, yarn shopping trips and other knitty activities, but we did our own workshops.  Marie led a workshop on brioche knitting (a re-run of the one she did at the Guild Convention in July, since none of the rest of us had been to that one).  We worked through a small brioche project - either a cup-holder or a wrist-warmer.  Mine's going to be a wrist-warmer.

My brioche knitting, warming my wrist

Margaret taught us how to do entrelac, which I have not tried before. The project Margaret set us was a small pouch (for stitch holders, or whatever), though I haven't got mine finished.  I'm glad to have tried entrelac - I hadn't realised before that the individual rectangles are not square.  In the pattern we were following, they are 10 stitches by 10 rows, but stocking stitch is wider than it is long.  So the woven effect is partly because the rectangles don't want to lie flat.  Not a very profound observation, but something I didn't know until I tried it.

Entrelac in progress 

I did the third workshop, on slip-stitch patterns.  I had swatches of 8 or 9 stitch patterns, some in just one colour and some in two colours, swapping after every two rows, so that people could try any that they liked the look of. I had borrowed a linen stitch scarf from my friend Steph, with the colour changing every row, which looks wonderful. But although linen stitch can look very good, it is a lot of work - it is very compact and dense.

Linen stitch swatches and scarf

I also took my Old Moor sweater that I knitted four years ago, to show the bands of Woven Transverse Herringbone - another stitch that is a lot of work, but can look very good.

Detail of Woven Transverse Herringbone in Louisa Harding's Old Moor 

Some of the other stitch patterns I had found give a lovely thick soft fabric, and there are some nice effects in two colours.  Marie made a little bag (for her car keys?) in Slip Stitch Honeycomb - a very pretty pattern in two colours.
  

Marie's Slip-stitch Honeycomb bag

Slip-Stitch Honeycomb is one of my favourites, too - I wrote last week  about a test piece for a cushion, which in fact uses both sides of the stitch pattern.   One side looks better in two colours, but the other side looks better if you're only using one.  And I've made a lot of progress with the full-size cushion:

Slip-stitch Honeycomb cushion, in progress

 So we sat in Paula's lounge and knitted and chatted and were offered tea, coffee and food regularly.  And there are current knitting magazines to read, and knitting books everywhere. And Paula has a little shop at the front of the hotel, so that if you haven't got the right needles or need some nicer ones, or run out of yarn, they are right there for you.  (Four members of the party spent a lot of time discussing the Opal Yarns Advent Calendar in the shop, and finally devised an incredibly complicated way of sharing it, involving drawing lots for the individual days, setting up a Facebook group, and rendez-vous every week during December to pass it on.)

And to get the full sea-side experience, Paula sent us off to a fish-and-chip restaurant on Saturday night, Seniors in Thornton, which won "Best Fish and Chip Shop in the U.K." in 2012.   (I don't actually like fish-and-chips, but it does other fish dishes too which are very good.)

We didn't see very much of the sea, although the sea front is only 100 yards from the Westcliffe, but I did go for a walk along the promenade on Friday afternoon, and set foot on the beach - if you 're at the sea-side, you ought to go on the beach if you can.  It was almost empty, apart from a man fishing at the water's edge.  

And of course, the Blackpool Illuminations were on.  They have been an annual event for a long, long time - I remember seeing them when  I was a child.  There are 6 miles of them along the sea front, though I only saw a short stretch near the hotel, with some of the tableaux  - moving images made by light bulbs going on and off.  Some of them seem similar in style to the ones I saw decades ago, though I remember them being all in white, rather than colour.  

The Blackpool trams run along the sea-front, next to the tableaux, and one or two of the trams are also illuminated.

Illuminated tram

It's a very popular event  - quite odd, in these days of amazing CGI effects.  There are slow-moving cars driving along the promenade all evening, as well as people in the trams and walking.  (Although most of our party preferred to stay in the hotel with a bottle of wine, knitting.)

The promenade, with Blackpool Tower in the distance

Altogether, it was a really good weekend.  We are already planning next year's Knitway at the Westcliffe.  Thanks very much, Paula.

Adventures with Grannies

Yesterday evening, we had the monthly meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch.   The theme was "Adventures with Grannies" - Sarah Alderson, who is a member of the group, led a workshop on Granny squares.  And also Granny hexagons, triangles, circles, stars,....

I got a square completed, reminding myself of making things with Granny squares back in the 70s, and then made a hexagon when I got home.
 

 
They were satisfying to make, and it was a good evening, well-attended.   But I'm not sure I have the patience to make something with a lot of granny squares (or hexagons) any more - there are so many ends to sew in.

I also bought Sarah's new book, An Elven Reckoning, full of delightful knits (and models with pointy Elven ears).  

An Elven Reckoning, Sarah Alderson

I especially like the sweater shown on the cover, on the left, with a yoke in stranded knitting - it's called Nórui, meaning Fiery.  Sarah was wearing it last night in different colours  (you can find a photo of it in Ravelry), and it looked really good.  (I think the sword and pointy ears are optional.)

Cast Away!

Last week, we had the monthly meeting of the Huddersfield Knitting & Crochet Guild branch.  The theme this month was casting on and casting off, hence the title: Cast Away!  (It works better in British English than American English, where the theme would be casting on and binding off.)  Angharad taught us some specialised methods, including tubular cast on.  That's a method that I have heard of and wanted to learn, but it sounded far too complicated.  But now I've tried it, and my cast-on edge is very neat - I feel quite proud of myself.

The first photo shows the tubular cast-on still with its provisional few rows of stocking stitch in waste yarn which you use as the foundation - the second row shows the finished edge after the waste yarn is removed.

   

I am sure that I have seen tutorials on tubular cast-on in magazines and totally failed to make head or tail of it, but with Angharad showing us how to do it, it turned out to be very straightforward.  And she directed us to this YouTube tutorial by Eunny Jang as backup:

It makes a very stretchy start for single rib (and that's what my swatch is).   And there is not a definite edge as there is with the usual cast-on methods - it almost looks as though you just leap into knitting single rib with no preamble.

I finished off my swatch with tubular cast-off - Angharad's instructions were based on Montse Stanley's The Hand-Knitters Handbook (which I have).   It's a sewn cast-off, and I found it not so easy to keep the edge even and neat.  Needs more practice.  

Angharad also covered grafting and three-needle cast-off, but I decided that successfully learning one new cast-on and (not so successfully) one new cast-off was quite enough for one evening.  In any case I have done a three needle cast-off before.  I was even wearing an example (the shoulder seams of my Boardwalk pullover) - although I didn't remember that until much later.

Altogether a very productive meeting.  Next month:  Granny squares.