Knitting Seaweed

Last week, it was the monthly meeting of the Huddersfield branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild, and we had a workshop run by a local member, Elizabeth Smith.  Some of her knitting and crochet is based on what you find on beaches - seaweed, pebbles, sea anemones,...  You can see one of her seaweed covered rocks here, along with one of her beautiful cushions in stranded knitting, based on local Yorkshire landscapes.   We didn't attempt anything very ambitious at the workshop - we just knitted strands of seaweed.   I have knitted quite a bit more of mine since the workshop.

     

The yarn is Jamieson's Spindrift, in the Granny Smith colour.  I've also experimented with another variety of seaweed, in Moss, with more complicated branching (but have run out of yarn.)  It's very satisfying to see how it develops, and I know from seeing Elizabeth wearing some of her knitted seaweed that it looks good worn as neckwear - she says it's surprisingly warm too.   The plan is to combine three strands in different greens, and wear them together.  

Death by Knitting

For Mother's Day yesterday, my daughter gave me this zine, Death by Knitting.  It's introduced as "The story of knitting needles used as weapons in films", and surveys several films in which people are attacked and killed by knitting needles.  Most seem to be horror movies, including Idle Hands (1999), where a young man's hand is possessed by the Devil, and he tries knitting as a way of keeping the hand under control.  Unsuccessfully, of course - otherwise the rest of the movie would be just scenes of him knitting.  A policeman gets stabbed with the needles when he tries to stop the young man knitting, and thereafter the film seems to be full of increasingly gory ways of killing people.  (It's a comedy, did I mention?)

Other films mentioned feature conventional knitting old ladies who either get mysteriously stabbed by their own knitting needles (The Old Dark House, 1963) or stab other people (The Crazies, 1973).

The cover of the zine looks amazing through 3D glasses - a pair was included.  It works on the screen too, if you happen to have a pair yourself.

The author is Kandy Diamond.  The zine was only part of her Death by Knitting project - you can find some of the rest of it on her web site, including the machine-knitted 3D posters she created for Idle Hands and The Old Dark House.  There are some other interesting knitting things on her web site too, that don't involve murder - worth a look.

For Instructing Children in Knitting

I can't recall ever seeing a mention of knitting in a church before - certainly not carved in stone.  But there is one in Abbey Dore church in Herefordshire.  In the church there is a stone slab inscribed with "A list of the Benefactions left to poor House keepers in this Parish to be annually paid out of the Estate under mentioned".  The slab was commissioned by the Church wardens in 1793, and lists bequests made between 1610 and 1720.  

One of the items on the list reads:  "1718. Rev. William Watts a School house & Garden with 5L. P. Ann.  now payable from Upper Cefen Bach for instruction of Children in Reading & Writing or sewing knitting & spinning the Teacher to reside in the said House the Church wardens & Overseers of the poor are to visit the said School & see that it be not neglected."

I think this means that Rev. Watts bequeathed the property at Upper Cefen Bach (a farm, perhaps) from which the sum of £5 could be raised annually, as well as the school building with its garden, and that the £5 was sufficient to pay the teacher's annual salary.   Reading & writing as an alternative to sewing, knitting & spinning is odd - perhaps reading & writing was for the boys, and sewing etc. was for the girls?  I assume it was intended to be a vocational curriculum, teaching children skills that would be practically useful to them, though it seems a bit strange to leave out arithmetic.   But it's interesting to see knitting listed as a school subject in the 18th century.   And was the teacher a man or a woman?

Les Maillots Jaunes

Two of our weekend visitors who went to Leeds on Saturday for the Tour de France Grand Depart brought back photos of knitting and crochet they had seen.  The lass in the yellow woolly is one of eight nymphs in Leeds City Square, holding lamps.  There are two different models, Morn and Even, (that's poetic for Morning and Evening, I suppose).  I think this one is Even, because some of the others look a bit more awake.  They often seem a bit chilly and under-dressed for the weather, and so she looks as though a warm jersey would be welcome, though frankly, the rest of her needs a bit of covering up too.

The Black Prince is also in City Square in Leeds (though I have no idea what connection he had with Leeds, if any).

And finally:  I know that there was a lot of knitted bunting in Harrogate, in the shape of little Tour de France jerseys, but there was also at least one stretch of it in Huddersfield too.

New York, New York

I haven't written recently because we were away the week before last and it's taken me a while to catch up. We were in New York with our daughter, on a cultural holiday visiting a lot of museums and art galleries. We rented an apartment in Brooklyn, in a lively neighbourhood - a good base for exploring.

We spent a day at the Metropolitan Museum - all three of us seeing different things, because it is huge.  I saw one of the current exhibitions there, Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity,  full of wonderful impressionist paintings of women dressed in the latest fashions  - some paintings of men too, but since the men's fashions of the time were understated and rather dull by comparison, I didn't spend much time on that gallery.  My favourite was a portrait of his wife by Bartholomé, from 1881.  She was wearing a splendid outfit in white and purple (you can see it here)  and the outfit still survives and was also on show.  You can get an idea from the painting of how it looked to contemporaries - light, fresh, summery, elegant - and you can see from the actual garment how complicated and intricately constructed it was. 

We also went to MoMA - Susie and I spent the whole day there, though John  left at lunchtime to go to the Green-wood cemetery in Brooklyn (did I mention that he likes cemeteries?)   She even persuaded me to try to appreciate an abstract painting by Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis.  It is a huge canvas painted in  a matt bright red, interrupted by thin vertical "zips".  (Barnett Newman was in the news that week, because a painting of his had just sold for a record price of $43.8 million.)   On another day when John was at the cemetery again, we went to the Guggenheim (disappointing because most of the galleries were closed), the Neue Galerie, and the Whitney.  The Neue Galerie was also partly closed (to install a new exhibition), but there were paintings by Klimt on display in the rooms that were open, including his fabulous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, intricately patterned in gold, apart from her head and hands.   At the Whitney, we spent a long time in the exhibition of works by Jay DeFeo, including The Rose, which is a huge piece, both in size and weight, and took years to create.  ("Monumental" is the Whitney's word.)  I'm not sure that it says much to me as a work of art, but the story of its creation and subsequent history is astonishing.

Anyway, knitting:  I took with me the infinity scarf I wrote about earlier this month here. I didn't knit any of it while we were away, but the main point of taking it was to show it to Susie to see if she likes it, because it is for her.  It is now more than 1m. long, so nearly finished, I think. We also came across something that looked like a huge piece of knitting, in Madison Square Park. It's an installation by Orly Genger, Red, Yellow and Blue. (I haven't shown a photo of the Blue piece.)

Orly Genger's Red, Yellow and Blue  - Yellow

Red

The information board says that "Genger explores the traditionally intimate and domestic activity of knitting..." and elsewhere says that it involves weaving and painting rope.  But it's clearly not weaving, and doesn't seem to be knitting either - I think it's some sort of knotting.   It was very attractive to small children, who wanted to climb on it, though the thick paint applied to the rope makes it much less tactile than it looks.

A small piece of Yellow

It was a really good holiday - we had a great time, and we'd like to go back. Below are a random selection of our photos. 

A view from the Empire State Building

And another one

We liked the roof-top water tanks in Manhattan

and the brownstones in Brooklyn.

We walked round the reservoir in Central Park one evening.

A Small Treasure

I said a while ago (here) that sorting publications at Lee Mills had progressed to the point where all the many boxes of "Patterns Unsorted" had now been through at least the first stage of sorting.  Although that was a good thing, a downside is that we are much less likely to come across unexpected treasures.  A box labelled "Patterns Unsorted" often contained a complete mix of all kinds of papers - magazines, patterns torn out of magazines, newspapers cuttings, etc. -  as well as pattern leaflets. And occasionally, something really special.   Now we have been through all those boxes once, so we more or less know what we have, and there won't be any more surprises.

But there are still a few treasures that have been forgotten.  Last week, one of the other volunteers was looking through a bundle of letters and found a  postcard, inside the letter from the donor.   It's a birthday greetings card and was sent to a girl called Mildred by her "Auntie and Uncle" in 1933.  Presumably, Mildred liked to knit. Or wear stripy jumpers.   (The original photo was black and white, or rather sepia, and was coloured by hand, so the lurid yellow, green and orange colour scheme may be just the colourist's imagination.)  And she must have kept the card, probably for a long time - it was eventually bought by the donor at a fair some 70 years later.  

I know that Montse Stanley collected postcards with a knitting theme.  (Her collection of all kinds of objects related to knitting is housed at the University of Southampton, while the publications in her collection are a component of the Knitting Reference Library at Winchester School of Art - I visited the Knitting Reference Library while I was in Winchester for the In the Loop conference in September, but I have not seen the rest of her collection.)   In an article in The Knitter, Linda Newington (librarian of the Knitting Reference Library)  explains that Montse's  husband Thomas Stanley had a postcard business, and she started her own collection through going to postcard fairs with him.   But as far as I know, this one is the only postcard in the Guild's collections.  We shall certainly treasure it. 

A Knitted Card

Friends have sent us a card (bought in the Lake District, I think) with a piece of knitting glued to it.  The yarn is Herdwick, in the natural grey colour.  Herdwick wool is not much used for garments because it is not very soft, but the sheep are hardy and able to survive on the Lakeland fells.   And it makes a nice card.  I wonder if the knitting was originally done on longer needles and transferred to these little ones to make the card?   They are about 2mm diameter, I guess, so it is only the length that is out of the ordinary.  You can easily knit on 2mm needles of standard length, but knitting on such short needles would surely be very fiddly.  

A Yorkshire Garland

There are two Art Deco statues in front of the library in the centre of Huddersfield.  Earlier this month, one of them had a garland of knitted white roses.  I assume that it was put there for Yorkshire Day (1st August), the white rose being the symbol of Yorkshire.    If so, it had been there for a couple of weeks when I took the photo, so was perhaps past its best.  And now it has disappeared.  A pity - it was nice while it lasted.   

Port Sunlight and Balaclavas

Last week we had a trip to the Wirral peninsula, between the Rivers Dee and Mersey, and Port Sunlight, on the Mersey. Port Sunlight is a garden village built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to house workers at the nearby Lever Brothers factory.  The factory made Sunlight soap, amongst other products, and is still operational - now part of Unilever.  The village is very open and spacious, and the houses are built in  a wide range of Arts and Crafts designs.  It's all very attractive.

The war memorial occupies a prominent position in the village. It was built to commemorate the hundreds of people from Port Sunlight and other Lever Brothers sites around the world who were killed in the First World War.   (As you can see from the photos, it was a very gray day, with frequent heavy showers. And it was cold.)

Around the plinth of the memorial there are four bronze panels with scenes of men in action. One shows a machine gun crew, with a spotter (with binoculars),  the man handling the Lewis gun (who also has a revolver rather than a rifle), and an ammunition carrier.

The panels are carefully modelled to show a lot of detail, and I noticed that the third man in the team is wearing a Balaclava under his helmet.  A Balaclava must have been recognised as something that a lot of soldiers wore in the trenches.  No wonder that so many knitters made Balaclavas again at the start of World War II.  (And then the Army decided that they didn't want them - see here.)  

 

In between the panels of men in action, representing those commemorated, are smaller panels showing children, representing those who lost their fathers, presumably.  One of them shows a boy wearing a (knitted) cricket sweater.  

It was interesting to see these examples, though it seems a bit frivolous to focus on the knitting shown in a war memorial.   The details of what the men and children are wearing are presumably included to suggest that these are depictions of real people in real situations.  The scenes of men in action don't really convey the realities of the war, of course - the impression is very calm, quiet and clean.  And in the scene of a wounded soldier being carried off the battlefield, he seems to be undamaged apart from a small tear in his trousers.  Even so, it's an impressive memorial to an enormous tragedy. 

Oddities

It was a beautiful day today with clear blue skies and sunshine, and it was warm.  I was working at Lee Mills sorting knitting patterns for most of the day, and the store only has north facing windows, so we aren't really aware of what the weather is doing outside - the internal temperature varies over the year between cool and very cold.  But it was warm today enough to sit outside to eat our lunch-time sandwiches - astonishing for March.  The surroundings aren't very beautiful - it's a rough stretch of tarmac with our cars and the skip parked on it, with a backdrop of various large bits of metal that belong to the other businesses on the site.  Even so, it was lovely to enjoy the sun.

Most of the pattern leaflets in the collection were produced by spinners and other companies who published lots of them - it was part of their normal business. But I also have a file of "oddities" - knitting patterns that were produced by companies or organisations that normally had nothing whatever to do with knitting.   Several oddities turned up today.  Three of them are "oddities: subsection soap" and were published by manufacturers of soaps and detergents, to promote use of the product.

INO Knitting Leaflet No 38

Knitting pattern free with Dreft

Stergene Elephant Sweater Knitting Pattern 

I suppose if you want to persuade knitters to use your product to wash their hand knitted garments, it makes sense to offer a free knitting pattern.  It is an idea that has occurred to several manufacturers over a long period.  The INO Flakes pattern dates from the 1930s, and was one of a series - this is no. 38. The Dreft pattern is from the late 1960s, I guess (before decimal currency was introduced in 1971).  The Stergene pattern is more recent, from the era of picture knits.   (Why the elephant?  No idea.)     

The final oddity is just very odd indeed. What's the connection between British Coal and knitting? Was the pattern free with a sack of coal, or what?

The Furry Friends Jumper - Only a Real Coal Fire Will Do

"The Killing" Jumper

Knit Your Own Sarah Lund Jumper!

On Saturday, the BBC started broadcasting The Killing II, the second series of the Danish crime thriller. This week's Radio Times has a feature on the series, including an interview with Sofie Grabol (or Gråbøl) who plays Sarah Lund, the main character.  And a knitting pattern.  It's a 'tribute' to the jumper worn by Sarah Lund that also seems to play a major role in this series. 

I have not yet seen the first series - I missed the first few episodes and never managed to catch up.  But I have of course heard about The Jumper.  That is, the Faroese one that Sarah Lund wore that became so popular.    It was written about extensively in the newspapers, for instance here, so that even if you were not watching the series and not particularly interested in a jumper that you hadn't seen, it was hard to miss.


The second series jumper is also Faroese, plain red with a textured yoke. You can find the Radio Times pattern on-line here.  I don't plan to knit it, although it looks good on Sofie Gråbøl.  But I do intend to watch the programmes this time.  And I will knit something while I'm watching - an uncomplicated pattern so that I can read the subtitles.
   

A Knitted Great Auk

I read in today's Guardian that Margaret Atwood has knitted a Great Auk, for the Ghosts of Gone Birds  exhibition.  Isn't that wonderful?   Actually it is not news, except to me - there have been several reports on the exhibition and her contribution over the past few weeks/months, all of which I have missed.  You can read an interview with her, and see a photo of her knitting, here.

While I was looking around in the interwebby universe for details of the knitted great auk, I found several reports that Margaret Atwood has joined Ravelry and that the Great Auk will be her first Ravelry project.  I have managed to find her username and profile, but unless she is using an extra layer of pseudonymity, she hasn't yet posted any projects.  Pity - I'd like to know more details and see the finished auk.

Venice

Last week we were in Venice, with our daughter and her girlfriend.   The weather was perfect - bright and sunny, but not too hot, and we had a wonderful time.  John and I had a holiday in Venice 30 years ago, and I was afraid that it wouldn't be as good this time - but yes, it was.  Of course, some parts are very crowded, especially around San Marco and the Rialto, but it's easy to get off the main tourist routes.  We enjoyed just wandering around exploring the alleyways and squares, finding an amazing view at every turn.



The Biennale art exhibition was still running, and we went to the main sites in the Arsenale and Giardini, as well as to several of the collateral exhibitions that are scattered all over the city.



I didn't take any knitting with me, because I knew I wouldn't have time to do any.   Knitting didn't really feature in our holiday at all, in fact, although I did see one shop in Venice selling knitting yarn.  (It was next to a bridge over a canal, so it should be easy to find again....)

 

But there was a sculpture in front of  the main pavilion at the Biennale that looked like an arrangement of giant knitting needles, so knitting was not entirely forgotten.   (Although actually they are flagpoles and not knitting needles.)

 

Weekend in Cardiff

Modern Weekly, 1927

Last weekend  I was at the University of Cardiff for a Knitting and Crochet Guild meeting.  There was a day of workshops on Saturday, and the AGM on Sunday morning, as well as lots of talking, knitting and crocheting in between.  On Friday evening I gave a talk on the Lee Mills periodicals collection, or at least the part of it that deals with hand-knitting.  It was an interesting challenge to tell a coherent story about hand-knitting in this country since World War I, just based on the magazines that I have catalogued so far.  I talked about women's magazines as well as the more specialised knitting and needlecraft magazines.  Lots of pictures, of course, of magazine covers, and a few knitting patterns from the magazines, some that still look quite attractive and some that you could only wear to a fancy dress party.

There were three workshop sessions on Saturday, but I only went to one of them - a workshop on knitting with wire, given by Mary Graham.  It was fascinating.  I thought beforehand that it would be quite hard work to knit with wire, but it is not.  Mary provided us with very fine wire in a range colours, and ordinary metal knitting needles.  An advantage is that you don't have to bother about tension, and the final shape of what you make depends a lot on how you tweak the piece afterwards, so there aren't too many rules.  I was really pleased with the piece that I made.  I didn't have any plan in mind when I started - I was just knitting a rectangle to get used to the material, and then incorporated a dart (in pink) using short rows, which was one of Mary's suggestions for starting to make a three-dimensional shape, and another in the silver wire.   Then I bent it into a 3-d shape  - a butterfly? a bow? - and I think it's rather pretty, and wore it as a brooch.    Of course, it's technically very inept compared to the pieces that Mary showed us - her knitting is much more even and they look as though they were meant to turn out the way that they did, unlike mine. She has made some beautifully shaped pieces - I especially liked one that she showed us in which she used rapid increasing to make a ruffle.  But I'm pleased with my first attempt, and I plan to do more.              

For giving the talk on Friday, I got a voucher from the Guild to spend at the traders' stalls, and exchanged it for some beautiful laceweight yarn.  So the next lacy scarf I knit might be for me.  I also did very well out of the raffle - I won  6 balls of Rowan Damask in a pretty pale blue colourway and a book - Contemporary Classics by Jean Moss, signed by the author (one of the Guild's patrons).

Altogether it was a very successful weekend. It was great to meet so many enthusiastic, knowledgeable and expert knitters and crocheters.  A disappointment was that we didn't have much time to see Cardiff, apart from a couple of hours at the castle at St Fagans - must go back.

A Scarf for Your Fridge

I am still working at Lee Mills, to sort out the periodicals collection of the Knitting and Crochet Guild.  By now, most of the periodicals are sorted and listed, but we still occasionally find surprising things.

Here's a pattern leaflet published in 1950 - not in Britain, obviously, as it's priced in cents.  The patterns are for crochet motifs that can be made into mats of various sizes, to cover chairs, tables and the electrical appliances around your home - including the fridge, from the picture on the front cover.  It's a revival, I suppose, of the Victorian idea that you should embellish everything around your home, and leave not a bare surface anywhere - though even the Victorians I think would have drawn the line at a decorative mat for a fridge (supposing that they had had them).  At least televisions and radios were made to look at home in a living room, so if you were the sort of person who made a crocheted mat for every chair-back and table, it was probably quite natural to make one for the television too.   But making one for a fridge, which is designed to look functional, clean and streamlined, seems a bizarre idea.   

Isn't the plural of scarf "scarves", anyway?      

Knitted Royal Wedding

Apparently there's a Royal Wedding coming up shortly.  If you have been wanting to knit a tableau of the royal personages in the wedding party, now you can do it.  Fiona Goble has just published a book of knitting patterns for a set of dolls, Knit Your Own Royal Wedding.  It should appeal to ardent royalist knitters everywhere.  So not me, then, though the corgis are rather cute.  

There was an article about the book in last Friday's Daily Telegraph. And there is an animation using the dolls on YouTube, which is very wonderful.

Horse Cooler

I know that a lot of knitters knit coats for their dogs, but that's a bit unambitious.  Think big - knit for a horse! 

 

The cooler is actually supposed to be worn underneath a blanket rather than by itself, to allow the horse to cool off after exercise. And it is "Particularly beneficial for nervous or excitable animals."  The pattern has the usual warning that when you are buying cotton, you should buy enough to complete the article, as dye-lots vary. Obviously, it is important to avoid a stripe of a slightly different shade at one end of the cooler, especially if your horse is excitable.

 And if you do have any yarn left over, you can make yourself a health vest.

I want a Knitting Clock!

I was browsing through the Crafts magazine in the library yesterday when I came across a piece on this clock, designed by Siren Elise Wilhelmsen.

 It is based on a larger version of a French knitting/ Knitting Nancy toy, I think, with 48 prongs instead of the common four.  The clock knits a complete round of 48 stitches every 24 hours, and over the course of a year it produces 2 metres of knitting.  At the end of that time, you change the yarn and start again - each ball of yarn is labelled "Mehr Zeit", or "More time".  And you can use the clock's knitting as a scarf, or else hang it up to symbolise Time Past, I suppose.  Probably not very practical for accurate timing, but isn't it cool?

Fun guy

This week I bought a birthday card for a friend.  It has green glitter, an awful pun, and hand-knitted mushrooms.  What more could you want?

It's from the Knit  & Purl range by Mint Publishing   - "Lovingly hand-knitted for you by Avis and Aileen and all the ladies from the Harborough Ladies Knitting Circle."  I like the "HA PEA BIRTHDAY" card from the same range, too -  I'll leave that one to your imagination.

Visiting Rochdale

Yesterday we went on an expedition across the Pennines, mainly to look for two buildings designed by Edgar Wood, an Arts and Crafts architect who designed several buildings in Huddersfield, but who came from Middleton, near Manchester, and did most of his work in that area.  We didn't have much success in finding them - one we could not find at all, and the other (a pub) was boarded up and had apparently been closed for a long time. But the journey was not wasted.  We visited a cemetery (one of J's interests) and two war memorials (ditto).  One was the splendid Rochdale memorial designed by Lutyens.  Those flags, folks, are painted stone.

Rochdale War Memorial

We also visited the Rochdale Museum and Art Gallery, which is inexplicably called Touchstones.  (What's wrong with "Museum & Art Gallery"? At least people know what that means.)   It's housed in a purpose-built Art Nouveau building with some beautiful stained glass.

Rochdale Museum & Art Gallery

 And we found some knitting too - over the entrance to the museum was a stripy piece of knit graffiti, made by artist  Sophie Horton for an exhibition of  contemporary knitting and crochet. I'm sorry to have missed the exhibition, but this piece (called Front Cover - get it?)  has been left in place. The Touchstones blog has a post about Sophie Horton installing the knitting, and her ideas in designing it.   

Front Cover - knit graffiti over the entrance

There is also a knitting circle called Knitty Gritty based at Touchstones that meets in the cafe once a month. I love their publicity photo - that cake looks good enough to eat.