A Lacy Shawl

I finished knitting this shawl two months ago, in September, but couldn't write about it because it was a birthday present.  Maura had a significant birthday in March, so the shawl was several months late - but first the yarn was faulty and had to be replaced, and then I broke my wrists and couldn't knit, and then Maura was in Italy until last week.  But now she is back, and I have given it to her, and so I can write about it.

It's the Bosc Pear Shawl designed by Tetiana Otruta.  (A free pattern on Ravelry.)  I knitted it in Louisa Harding's Amitola, a lovely wool/silk yarn that I like very much - I have already knitted a cowl and scarf for myself in it, in other colourways.  Maura's scarf is in Elvira - mostly dark and muted colours, black and purple, with some brighter blue, and a dramatic pink-purple.  The Bosc Pear shawl has bands of stocking stitch, alternating with bands of lace - as you can see from the photo, even the stocking stitch bands are very light and translucent in the Amitola.  It was easy to knit, it looks good and feels beautifully soft.

     
So, very belatedly:  Happy Birthday, Maura.

Herring Lassies

We have a few old postcards in the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection that show people knitting, including these two of Scottish herring lassies.  Hundreds of these women left their homes every year for the fishing ports on the east coast, where large catches of herring were landed. Their job was to gut, salt and pack them.  At the end of the herring season they went home with their earnings which probably kept them and their families until the next year.

The first postcard here, "Scottish Lassies' Recreation" was postmarked Great Yarmouth in 1907, and I guess that the scene it depicts was also in Great Yarmouth.  The town was already a seaside resort and visitors were evidently interested in seeing the herring lassies, and buying postcards of them.

There are many other photos of herring lassies that show them knitting when they weren't working - it seems to have been their usual leisure activity.  I would love to know what they are knitting - the one on the left has what looks something like a Balaclava helmet in front of her apron, and the women next to her something that looks like a large sock (a sea-boot stocking?).

Scottish Lassies' Recreation

The other card is undated (and was never sent), but is probably about the same date. The women are both wearing knitted shawls around their heads.  The paler shawl seems to have a very open texture, and there are large holes knitted into the border.  (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

Herring Lasses off Duty

Herring fishing in the North Sea was disrupted by the First World War, and the herring lassies and their families lost a vital income. This report from February 1915 describes the work of the herring lassies up to the start of the war, and a scheme to pay the unemployed women to knit comforts for soldiers and sailors.  So knitting, which had been a leisure activity, became their main source of income.

(PS I have found a reference in the Dundee Evening Post, in October 1902, to the opening of a rest house in Yarmouth: "This season excellent provision has been made for the fisher girls, who last year numbered no fewer than 3000, by the erection right next to the gutting-grounds of a handsome bungalow residence, by the generosity of Miss Davidson, of the Church of Scotland, where the girls may go in the intervals between their work.  They will be also able to obtain hot meals, to avoid the necessity in times of pressure of returning to their lodgings in the town, and other arrangements are made for their comfort and convenience, such as attending to cut fingers, &c., in what has been named the Rest House for Scottish Fisher Folk".  This appears to be the building that is in the background of the first postcard.)

Mysterious shawl

I had some alpaca yarn left over from the Color Affection shawl I knitted two years ago, and so I have been on the lookout for another project to use up the surplus.  Then a few months ago I read something about a mystery shawl knit-along by Stephen West.  I haven't ever knitted any of his designs but I have seen some and they are very striking.  I read about the proposed shawl - at this stage there were no details, just some information about how much yarn you needed and how to choose suitable colours.  You needed a contrast colour that would stand out against each of the other three colours (which could be my left-over pale grey, orangey-pink (Poinsettia) and light toffee brown (Demerara).  It sounded intriguing and exciting, and I had just enough left over from Color Affection, if I chose a contrasting yarn in the alpaca to go with it.

So I bought an extra ball of black (Liquorice) as my contrast, and signed up for the knit-along.  The pattern arrived in four weekly instalments, and I started happily on week 1, which was just what I wanted - very dramatic and interesting to knit.   It has swooping curved wedges of garter stitch, getting progressively larger, in the three toning colours, and outlined in black. The shapes are created with short rows and the increases are kind of naturally built in to the turns of the short rows - very clever.  And the edge is finished with i-cord - very clever.

But I don't think I'm really cut out for a knit-along - by the end of week 3, lots of knitters could hardly wait for the final instalment so that they could finish their shawl, while I was still working on week 1.    

And then I hit a major snag - when I came to look at the week 2 section of the shawl, I didn't like it.  The week 1 section was all in garter stitch, but then it switched to two-colour brioche.  I didn't really like the look of it, and I didn't think that changing texture in that way was what I wanted to do. (Sorry Stephen, but it's my shawl.)   That's an obvious potential hazard of a mystery knit-along - you embark on a piece of knitting, hoping that you are going to like it, even the parts you haven't seen yet.

Also, by then I had decided that I wanted quite a small shawl, just to wrap around my neck.  I decided to do just a few plain bands of garter stitch, and then finished with an i-cord edging.  (Though actually, Stephen's final section, a zigzagging band of the contrast colour, looks very good   - maybe I should have skipped weeks 2 and 3, and gone straight to week 4.)      

So now I have finally finished it (I finished the knitting weeks ago,  but it was waiting for me to sew in the ends) and it's lovely. Very warm to wear around the neck.  Much more dramatic than almost anything I have knitted previously.  It's amazing how different the three colours that I used in Color Affection look in this shawl.    

And I should say that I am evidently in a small minority (of one?) in not liking the whole of Stephen's design.  The pattern has now been named Exploration Station (available for sale through Ravelry), and it has nearly 1800 projects listed in Ravelry, to date.  There are lots of comments from knitters who especially liked the brioche stitch section.  OK - I'm odd.

I haven't even succeeded in using up my left-over yarn.  Because my shawl is a lot smaller than intended, I've still got some of each colour left (though obviously less than I had), and now have some left-over black too.  So now I need another project that uses small quantities of three toning colours and quite a lot of a contrasting colour...   This could go on indefinitely.