Lucetting Workshop

On Saturday I went to the October meeting of the Sheffield KCG group - the topic was lucetting.  I had barely heard of it, though it is a very old craft, dating back to the Vikings, I'm told.  You need a gadget called a lucet and some yarn, and you make a braid. 

It is slightly reminiscent of French knitting (or i-cord) but the braid is square in cross-section. I found it tricky to get an even braid - whenever I stopped for a while, the next few stitches were noticeably  irregular. But after a while you get into a rhythm and then the braid grows quite fast.  Interesting - not sure when I'll find a use for a square braid, but it's nice to learn such an old craft.  

Before the meeting I went to the Steel and Light exhibition at Sheffield Institute of Arts Gallery (running until  November 3rd).  The exhibition is about the work of David Mellor who grew up in Sheffield and designed cutlery, metalwork, traffic lights, street furniture, etc.  I am especially interested in the cutlery designs, because I have had a set of David Mellor cutlery since before we were married (and before that it belonged to my sister).   We eat with it every day - it is really good to use, very simple and functional.  

Minim or Thrift?

I have always thought that the design was called Minim, but it is extremely similar to Thrift cutlery, designed by David Mellor in 1965 for the Ministry of Public Building and Works.  Not quite identical, I don't think.  (And our cutlery wasn't filched from a hospital canteen, in case you're wondering - my sister bought it from Walker & Hall, a Sheffield cutlery firm that David Mellor designed for.)   So maybe they are the same and I've got the name wrong, or maybe they are subtly different, to distinguish the commercial Walker & Hall design from the government design.  Our cutlery has lasted extremely well, but then I suppose stainless steel cutlery should.  I have noticed lately that we are short of a knife, though -  it must have got lost somehow.       

Double Knitting in Sheffield

Last Saturday, I went to a meeting of the Sheffield Knitting & Crochet Guild - I don't know why I hadn't thought to do that before, because Sheffield is not very far away, and it's my home town, so I enjoy visiting once in a while.

The Sheffield Guild meets once a month, and has a topic for each meeting.  On Saturday there was a class on double knitting.  In case you don't know, it's a technique for producing a double thickness of fabric, with the two layers linked together. You knit with two colours of yarn: each layer has a design in one colour on a background of the other colour - but the colours in one layer are the reverse of those in the other.   I managed to produce a tiny sample during the meeting.  It's not very well done - the tension is uneven, and the edges are untidy.   (It would have looked a bit better if I had decided in advance that I wanted to do a design over an odd number of stitches, and cast on an odd number in the first place - then at least the design would have been in the middle.)   But if I tried again, I'm sure I would produce something better.

    
It's a nice idea  - you get a thick fabric that is equally presentable on both sides, plus the intriguing effect of a 'positive' and 'negative' two-colour design on the two sides.   But it's slow - at least as slow as knitting the two sides separately, I think.  So I don't have any plans to knit anything in double knitting, but I'm pleased that I now know how to do it.  And I'll go to meetings of the Sheffield Guild again - it was a good afternoon.  

Later, I found a tutorial on double knitting by Ann Kingstone.  She describes a good way to get a neat edge in double knitting - my sample would definitely have benefited from it.  
 

Mrs Patrick's Wool Shop

I was working at Lee Mills yesterday.  It was a very cold day, below freezing outside when I got there, and like a fridge inside, so I worked upstairs as much as possible.   (Putting hat, coat and fingerless mittens on whenever I had to go down to the ground floor where the magazines are.)  So I was mostly sorting pattern leaflets.

A lot of the pattern leaflets are stamped with the name and address of the yarn shop that originally sold it, so there are shop names from all over the country.  I was musing that all of these yarn shops probably closed long ago.  The local yarn shops that exist now have almost all opened over the last ten years or so and have no connection with the earlier ones. 

Some of the shop names sound quite quaint and antique, like "Edythe", The Wool Shop, Norwood High Street.  Some are slightly odd, like A.W.Brown - Oriental Goods of every description - 16 Crown Lane Morden.  And the descriptions of what they sell are nicely old-fashioned:  Wools, Art Needlework, Hosiery, Etc.;  Art Needlework and Linens; Drapery and Knitting Wools.     

 And then I spotted one that I recognised:  "Patrick's", The Wool Shop, 16, Crookes Road, Broomhill, Sheffield, 10.  That was my local yarn shop when I was a teenager!

It was a tiny shop, converted from the front room of a small terraced  house, though I guess there was a stock room behind it.     It closed a long time ago, probably in the 1970s, when Mrs Patrick retired.  It might then have been a hairdresser's for a while, but then became a pet shop, and still is.      

Broomhill is a busy area with lots of little shops and restaurants (Patrick's/Paws Here is on the very edge of the shopping area).  It seems to be thriving, with so many university students living in the neighbourhood.  Everybody knew, when I lived there, that John Betjeman  (the Poet Laureate) had described Broomhill as "the prettiest suburb in England", though I never understood which bit he could have had in mind.  Now that I can ask Google, and find his poem "An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield",  I see that it was the large Victorian houses and not the shopping area that he was thinking of, although they are not very typical of most of Broomhill - the small terraces like Mrs Patrick's are more common.  Poetic licence.       

Inside-Out Fair Isle

When we were in Sheffield, buying a Henderson's Relish apron, my sister and I did a circuit of the John Lewis fashion floor, to see what's on offer just now. Lots of jumpers this year.  We saw several Fair Isle jumpers, including some in which the Fair Isle is (deliberately) inside out. In other words, it's the floats that are on view.  Sometimes the effect is quite pretty, as in a cardigan from East which is knitted in very fine wool.  It gives a nice blurry effect, with the colours blending together (though I can't help feeling that right side out would be prettier.) 

Another case was a dress with a Fair Isle yoke, where the wool was not so fine and the floats were much longer.  Being boringly practical, I thought that the floats would easily snag. 

It does altogether seem a strange idea to make a garment with an intricate Fair Isle pattern, and design it so that the detail doesn't show, but only a blurred version of the pattern. I can't imagine that a hand-knitter could ever do such a thing.

I did buy a very nice jumper for myself while we were there.  It's in very fine cotton, with wavy horizontal stripes.  (For some reason, I really like tops with horizontal stripes.)   Not the sort of thing you could hand-knit, because the stitches are tiny.   The pattern is kind of inside out, again - it's reverse stocking stitch, to give the rows of little spots when the colour changes. As far as I can tell, the waves are created by blocks of heel stitch, or something similar involving slipped stitches, in the stripes of black yarn.  The slipped stitches have the effect of contracting the fabric vertically and so pulling the white stripes together.  Very clever.

 
I wore it when we went out for lunch to celebrate having been married for a long, long time - 33 years and 4 months, or a third of a century.   That's not an anniversary that is recognised much, though I think it should be - we celebrate quarter and half centuries, so why not a third?

Henderson's Relish

Last week, my sister was visiting and we went to Sheffield, our home town, to do some shopping, including a trip to the headquarters of Henderson's Relish to buy an apron.  Henderson's Relish is a Sheffield speciality - a spicy sauce based on vinegar and tamarind, amongst other things.  I remember it from my childhood when a favourite meal was hash with relish.  (Those were simpler days when 'hash' just meant 'stew'.)

 

The headquarters  is in an old house, now surrounded by university buildings. The 'shop', which sells aprons and similar merchandise,  is just a corner of the office, next to a display of old relish bottles - I think most of the sales are over the internet and they don't really expect people to arrive on the doorstep.   (You have to ring the doorbell to be let in, for one thing.)  

Henderson's Relish marginally appeared in the national press a few years ago when The Guardian recommended it as a vegetarian substitute for Worcestershire sauce (which contains anchovies).  Even so, most people who don't come from Sheffield have never heard of it.  So a Henderson's Relish apron tells people in the know that you have Sheffield connections.

A table decoration in a Sheffield bar

Slow train to Sheffield

On Monday, I went to Sheffield - I had some errands to do in the John Lewis store.  We usually go by car, and  it takes about an hour.  There is a railway line from Huddersfield to Sheffield, and a train about once an hour, so as I was going by myself, I decided to go by train.  You would not go from Huddersfield to Sheffield by train if you were in a hurry - it takes an hour and a quarter, although it's only about 30 miles.   But the train journey allowed me to get lots of knitting done. (I can't write about the knitting yet, because it's for a Christmas present).  It was a brilliantly sunny day, and the line goes through very pretty countryside of woods and fields (and over two viaducts that give you spectacular views).  It's not a bad way to spend an hour or so, as the train trundles slowly along.

Sheffield is my home town, and so I feel that I know it very well, but I haven't been through the station for a long time.  The area in front of it used to be dingy and unattractive, so I was astonished to see a magnificent water feature there.    

It's a clever design - behind the long silvery wall of water on the right is a busy road, which you are hardly aware of as you walk up to the city centre.

I spent some time browsing in the yarn department in John Lewis, which has an extensive range of Rowan and other yarns.  Lots of very enticing things.  But I am practising going into yarn shops and not buying any yarn.  (Unless I really need some, or it's a terrific bargain, of course.)   I ought to start practising not buying patterns as well, to be honest - I bought the book of Rowan Studio Knits by Sarah Hatton, which has several really nice, wearable, attractive designs. But do I need more patterns?  No. I already have quite enough plans for things that I want to knit to keep me busy for a long, long time....

Steel City

This has nothing whatever to do with knitting.....

On Saturday John and I had a shopping trip to Sheffield, my home town.  We had lunch in a cafe on Division Street, across from the old fire station, where thousands of years ago I had several training sessions for my Girl Guide Emergency Helper badge.   It was a beautiful day, and the sun was picking out the arms of the city of Sheffield high on the facade of the fire station.  I had never noticed them before - back when I was a Guide, the stone was probably black with grime.

Sheffield is known for steel making, and especially for its cutlery, which has been famous for centuries  - one of the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales had a Sheffield knife.  Sheffield people are very proud of its steel and cutlery industries, and when I was a child, the city arms were seen everywhere - not least on every bus and tram.  We all knew that the sheaf of arrows and the three sheaves of corn on the shield are a reminder of the River Sheaf, that runs though Sheffield.  (The river itself is not in fact an important feature in the centre of Sheffield  - it's a very small river and much of it runs underground  these days.)  And the supporters are Thor and Vulcan, the gods of metal working. 

Thor and Vulcan are often shown in the Sheffield arms resting an elbow on the top of the shield, though they aren't usually quite as casual as here. They look to me like a pair of old men in the pub, standing at the bar -   they've just taken a break from smiting things, and are discussing the finer points of iron working and how no-one appreciates proper craftsmanship these days. It made me proud to be from Sheffield.