Scene shifting

The tectonic plates of my life have shifted. I seem to no longer to be a part of things but a spectator.  Sure my life is full of busy, I attend classes, of the sort other retired people attend to learn something new, when in reality who am I kidding? I have begun to volunteer, at a local school and as an advisor at the citizens advice bureau. I see the occasional friend for coffee or lunch, even have people over for supper but I seem not to be engaged as others are but an onlooker, and generally only occasionally included in things by others out of habit.

Despite all this I am still spinning, sewing and knitting

Spun fibre, skeined, soaked, and wound ready for knitting (Death to MRSA and Broad Bean)

But while others have moved on (or simply kept moving) I can only watch and clutch at friends' and family's coat tails as they fly by living their busy lives.  One dear friend is even about to move even closer to the centre and I already feel the sadness of loosing her back to the life we once both enjoyed.  I was going to say happy, not busy, lives but I know this is not the way it is.  Everyone's life (if they are lucky) is filled with good and bad but it's stuff they feel, both the anxiety and the joy, the laughter and the sadness. Somehow it all just runs past my eyes these days like a reel of silent film.

Perhaps I'm turing into a Miss Marple type of woman (without the crime solving) an onlooker sitting in a corner, knitting.  My latest finished object is this sweater, my own work from fabulous fluff to jolly jersey, begun during the Tour de Fleece and finally finished a week ago

I can already see that that neckline is a little too wide

When the Off The Shoulder shape stretched and became a little more Down The Arm I had to pull a thread and add a bit more on top!

Thread pulled just below the knitted hem, two inches added and re hemmed, the neck now sits at my collar-bone

Is it possible to regain that sense of involvement once it's gone? Once one has retired from the salaried world, children grown, parents died and the buffer zone lost? There was a time I felt involved, present at people's tables, in the conversation of their lives because I was as essential as the person I sat next to. I shared my thoughts, feelings and opinions as much as that other person. Now I have moved to the margins of the lives of people I love, in danger of growing invisible, going out or taken out, literally or figuratively when it is thought I have not been included for a while then returned to my box. Like so many pictures in an art collector's basement, still notionally valuable but just not enough space for us all at once.

In all this I still make plans. This beautiful skein of brightly cashmere and alpaca sits on a side table as I consider what it will be

400 metres of heavenly softness - a big squishy cowl perhaps?

I accuse no one of unkindness but I just don't feel needed very much any more. I wonder if other women feel like this?  Did our mothers? I seem to have followed mine in taking up spinning, it's very time consuming, it it displacement activity?

Although I am still not sure that it will be worth continuing to spin some chocolate brown fleece from a small local flock of black Welsh mountain sheep. 

Perhaps I should stick to the glorious colours of porpoisefur fluff

Dark Lady on BFL

But what shall I do? I think these thoughts but have nowhere to express them (except on here). I fear that to do more than hint to family and friends will just burden them, perhaps lead some to consider whether they feel the same and be the cause of spoiling their peace too. Or do I flatter myself? Do I already bore and worse depress others, are they already holding me at arms length? Is it possible, not just to fill the time but to feel life again and perhaps make a new life without loosing the old? And yet, I have husband, children grand children, home, a few friends, more acquaintances, it's not that. I just need to find my place, I've lost it somehow

Will it pass I wonder?

I just don't know

xx

c

Grateful

I'm taking a tiny break from my usual sort of blogging.   There will still be photographs of knitting, knitters too perhaps, I promise, but my focus will be a little different.  For the next couple of weeks this is going to become a photo blog as I record the things that bring me happiness. I hope you will excuse the blog becoming a bit me me me and sit back and enjoy the pictures

And here we go!

Sunshine

The first sign of spring in my garden

Finding exactly the right colour ribbon to back the steek in my new cardigan 

Earl Grey tea in my personal tea-for-one set

spending the evening knitting with friends

xx

c

Midsummer in Winter

There must be some keen knitters at BBC Radio 4 to come up with the idea of a knitting challenge to cheer up the grey days of January.  I certainly hope it does have a general cheering effect, it's certainly got knitters in a flurry.

The challenge is to knit an item that references R4, anything from bits of radio equipment, to characters and journalists, or even whole programs.  Now you might be forgiven for thinking that my new year's resolution to knit from stash this year, including a pair of socks a month, is quite enough for one body but how could I resist?  So I reposted the R4 Facebook plea on my timeline and asked my friends for suggestions.

The one I liked best was "Gardeners Question Time" based on the lines from A Midsummer's Night's dream

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine

with sweet musk roses and eglantine

And so I give you the Midsummer (in Winter) Hat

kindly modelled by TLM (who was wearing a high pony tail today)

This is how I set about making it

A dive into my stash for some suitable colours (in Drops alpaca), my book shelves for books on colour work and the internet for some photographs of the five flowers I need to represent.

 I decided that the thyme was well enough represented in words  and that I would knit woodbine (honeysuckle) and eglantine (dog-rose) in stranded colour work and oxlip (cowslip), musk-rose and violet in 3D

A bit of planning with pencil and paper

The lettering template is a free Ravelry download, the pictures from google images and my lovely notebook with squared ruling is by Clairefontaine the brilliant French exercise book company

Some messy swatching

The hat is for TLM so I needed a slightly smaller head circumference than my own and the stitch count needed to allow for the repeats in the flower motifs.  However perfunctory, swatching is a must when winging a design.  I got 30 stitches to 10cm with the Drops Alpaca 4 ply on a 2.75mm needle.  As always with such a simple shape (a tube sewn at the top into three points) I planned to go off piste for the most part but these are the instructions I gave myself

• Cast on 126 stitches and join in the round (I knit in the round with two shortish cable needles but the hat is just as easily knitted in magic loop fashion or with DPNs)
• Knit 2 cm in K
• 4 rounds P
• 1 cm in K1P1 rib
• 4 rounds P
• 2 rounds K
• knit the words the wild thyme blows over 10 rounds K (filling in the space at the end of the words with little flowers)
• 2 rounds K
• 4 rounds P
• 2 rounds K
• Knit the woodbine (honeysuckle) pattern over 15 rounds K

• 2 rounds K
• 4 rounds P
• 2 rounds K
• knit the words I know a bank where over 10 rounds K (filling in the space at the end of the words with dots)
• Knit the eglantine (dog rose) pattern over 15 rounds (I know that gardeners question time listeners will tell me the flower has 5 petals but knitters may agree with me that five is a tricky number in stranded colour work!)
• 2 rounds K
• 4 rounds P
• 4 rounds K
• cast off
• sew cast off edges together to make three points
• knit three flowers (Oxlips, voilets and musk-rose) and sew one to the end of each section

a bit baggy and bumpy

It is better when knitting in two colours to keep the work a little too loose than too tight.  It looks bumpy at this stage but it will even out when soaked and blocked

close-ups of the flowery top-knot

The flower stems are i-cords and the leaves and flowers are a combination of crochet and knitting.  I consulted the flower patterns in Knitted Edgings & Trims then rather heavily adapted them and the crochet petals of the (over large) violet and cowslip I made up as I went along

xx

c

Full Marks Saturday

What influences your decision on whether or not to take a knitting class? Content? Venue? Teacher? or, perhaps because a friend asked you to go with her and you just thought it would be a fun day?

On Saturday I scored 5/5  The class was on something very close to my heart - a technique with a complete absence of sewing up.

It was held at my favourite on line shop Purlescence.

So much more than simply an on line shop. They hold open days (the next one is 6 December), have a stand at almost every yarn show in the country, organise KALs and fab workshops.  And at the risk of sounding like their publicity officer (which I'm not, just a happy customer) they serve home made cakes at the events they host at their Wantage HQ.

Next time I'm there I MUST photograph some of the yarns they stock (which include Sweet Georgia, Fibrespates, Hand Maiden and Natural Dye Studio) but for now here are some of the totally beautiful tools from Lantern Moon that I have bought there in the past.

Cable needles, DPNs and 3.5mm straights (the only exception I make to my almost total use of cables)

But back to the workshop and our teacher the awesome Asa Tricosa (it's handy to remember awesome as her name, Asa, is pronounced Awe-ser!) super draftswoman, mathematician and knitter.  She says she is not a mathematician but how can that be so when her designs could only be created by someone with a highly developed ability to think in three dimensions and manipulate numbers while standing on her head (her designs are knitted from top down).

These sweaters are crafted from a single cast on edge that runs from shoulder to shoulder across the back neck then around the front and down creating a perfectly fitting yoke and pair of set in sleeve heads before taking three directions, one tube for the body and two for the sleeves.  There are curves and shaping along the way and for the advanced knitter the shape is adapted into cardigans of various shapes, some with a modern take on the Wateau pleat down the back (the purist will tell me that a W pleat begins at the shoulders but you know what I mean!), children's sweaters and little sleeveless tops.

But on Saturday we learned the basic ziggurat or zigguratlet, a tiny three month size sweater, less knitting but all the shaping of the grown up version.  Here I have to confess that I had wondered if Asa's beginner class would be too basic for me - how arrogant is that? It wasn't. I ended the day feeling that my brain had had a vigorous workout.

There are lovely little details on the sweaters to denote seams

Add a roll neck

and provide ease at the back of a high neckline

How snugly are these sleeves on a child sweater? (also decorated with brightly coloured bobbles)

Finally, yes, it was a friend who suggested and, yes,  we did have loads of fun including meeting lots of other lovely knitters.

xx

c

my choice of yarn for the me-sized sweater, (now sadly discontinued ) Faery Wings* by Fibrespates

*but Hand Maiden create beautifully coloured yarns from the same base, Maiden Hair, also sold by Purlescence

Sending love to the people of Newtown Connecticut

Making christmas star and angel cookies  for the grandchildren this morning my thoughts were with those bereaved families whose children did not come home yesterday.  And that I have never seen a president cry before

15th December

xx

c

It's been a while

My holiday knitting is coming along just fine.

I've been away again to my favourite place for seriously unwinding.  Last year it was in Spring this year I had one fabulously hot week in August and then back again for two weeks of autumn sunshine.  It's the first time I have knitted with Norro and I love it.  First there is the self striping sock yarn effect, you know when you just have to keep knitting to see how the stripes will work out.  But also it is more random that the self stripe stuff so you Never Know What Will Happen.  You get bright thick stripes of turquoise and emerald one time around then just a teasingly thin stripe, marled with grey the second time. The texture varies a little too.  Mainly it's lace weight but every so often I come across thick bits - I just carry on knitting.  And the finished texture is wonderful, I cant wait to wear it, but of course I will as I still have to knit the sleeves!

I am aiming for as few seams as possible, knitting back and fronts together till the armholes, grafting the shoulders, and picking up the sleeves from around the armhole and knitting down to the cuffs.  The only sewing will be a short seam at the underarm and when I attach the front button bands.  Although I say I love the random effect I am trying to keep some symmetry as you can see from the fronts in the picture.  I am working out the pattern as I go (so a fair bit of frogging) but will post the pattern on Ravelry when its done and had its first test run (ie blocked, worn and washed)

But I didn't just knit while I was away I had lots of time for reading. I took four books with me all recommended by friends and I'm so glad I just took what they recommended and did not pick and choose which is what I usually do, just taking the novels and ignoring the rest.  The biggest surprise was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot  half biography and half  SCIENCE BOOK!!  I almost never read non fiction, except history and if a book I am reading has a lot of technical stuff I usually skip read 'the science bit'.  I think that is why, despite its banality, I always found that shampoo advert featuring Jennifer Aniston where she says, wagging her finger 'now concentrate, here comes the science bit'  funny because I always do the opposite.  I have always firmly believed that the world's readers are divided into Geeks and Dreamers - those who do numbers and scientific stuff and the rest of us who read about people , stories, and ancient civilisations.  But - no

I'm not really sure if this book will turn me into a Geek, somehow I don't think so, but it was a truly great read.  For years scientists had been trying to culture human cells in the laboratory, so that they could carry out drug trials and understand better how disease affects we human beings but every time they failed.  Then one day in 1951 the laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore USA received a sample of a tumour from a young woman, the mother of 5 children and wife of a hard-working but poor steel worker.  This time the cells grew.  They did not just grow, they kept on growing and although other cells have been grown since nothing, even to this day, grows as well as the HeLa cells. The book also tells the human story, of a young woman, who sadly died less than a year after her cancer was discovered, and her children and grand children.  I won't spoil a good read for anyone, but I cannot quite get over how beautifully written it was.  Rebecca Skloot is a scientist but she is also a gifted writer who is able to explain her craft in a way that this non scientist found fascinating and to write about the lives of others in a wonderfully sympathetic and sensitive way.

But you know what?  when I read her acknowledgements I found this 'My mother, Betsy McCarthy, has never faltered in her belief in me and this book.  She's kept me sane through pep talks, reality checks and the gift of knitting, a family tradition I treasure'.

Oh!... The Gift of Knitting!

xx

C

Wool

‘Pass by the synthetic department, then, with your nose in the air’

Elizabeth Zimmermann 1972

Words from Elizabeth Zimmermann ‘A Knitters Almanac’.  Her patterns are classics and any one of her sweaters would be the warmest thing to wear on a winter’s walk with the dog or an evening in a chilly old house.  But I go to her books more for the joy of reading her prose and following her instructions for a specific technique (like grafting the toe of a sock) than making the signature sweater for the season.  However, I whole heartedly agree with EZ about wool and its supremacy as a fibre to knit with.  

I know there is a trend to use the more correct term yarn but wool is as much the generic word for yarn-you-knit-with as biro is for ball point pen.  The shops where we buy yarn are Wool Shops, even when in truth they sell every fibre known to woman (or increasingly man)

When you are going to spend six weeks of love and woman hours on  knitting a sweater, what is the point using the cheap stuff made up into a £9.99 jumper available in so many town centre stores? Surely not when there is such a choice of natural fibres available, the emperor of which has to be wool.

Keeping warm under a wrap of wool is the oldest form of clothing (I don’t count the leaves Adam and Eve wove, which had an altogether different purpose).  There is evidence of wool clothing being worn in Britain in 1,900 BCE (the bronze age) and of wild sheep being domesticated in other parts of the world in 10,000BCE.  Today we know that the finest wool comes from the sheep that live in the harshest conditions.  Sheep from the soft southern uplands provide good wool for strong durable cloth, but in the Shetland isles the wool is so fine it can be combed from the back of the sheep before being spun and knit into something so fine it can be drawn through the centre of a wedding ring

How did it all begin? I wonder, would early man have looked sideways as the night grew cold and see the woolly skin of the beast he had just feasted on and pull it over himself before going to sleep?  Or perhaps while burying his forehead into a sheep’s flank while milking would it have occurred to the early farmer that the sheep might have such an abundance of wool that she could share some of that woolly warmth and in no time grow another crop. 

© google images

Over the centuries sheep and wool have been improved, sheep breeding has achieved an animal that only grows the softest wool and wool processing has produced yarn that is superwash, crease free, will pleat at will and is stain and shower proof. But it is still essentially the soft woolly stuff that grows on the backs of the sheep on the hill sides, in every shade of white, through cream to browns and black

  

The Romans brought wool production and wool cloth to Britian but production of fine wool cloth waxed and waned over those early years.  After the Romans left, Britain entered the age of the Anglo Saxons and production declined but by the 8^th century woollen cloth was again being exported to the continent and for the next 1000 years never looked back.

The greatest wealth came at first from the export of raw wool.  Where later corn and hay markets would be the centre of local commerce, trading floors that led eventually to the stock exchange, there grew up at the beginning of the second millennium BCE wool markets. 

But in time as wool was grown and processed into yarn then cloth, it was not long before governments saw an opportunity to raise money by taxing and issuing licences

© google images

Another unintended consequence of the wealth created by the wool trade was the effect it had on our religious institutions.  When originally founded monasteries, communities of monks pledged to live in poverty, farmed the land and raised livestock simply in order to feed and clothe themselves with the most basic of necessities.  Although it is no secret that the actions of Henry VIII in dissolving the monasteries was as much to do with acquiring their wealth as to putting an end to their ‘profligate papist life styles’ the abbeys had a problem with money long before that.  A number of socio economic and demographic developments conspired to give the abbots a financial headache. 

There came a time, after more than 600 years of Spartan living in accordance with the Rule of Saint Benedict, when instead of simply having enough sheep for meat or to make the rough woollen monks’ habits the flocks thrived multiplied and the price of wool rose.

It must have been a little like winning the lottery today, what to do with more money than you had ever had before and so much more than needed?  Interestingly like many a lottery winner they built huge houses.  But bound by St Benedict’s rule and their vow of poverty, they built houses for God, including the abbeys of Fountains, Riveaux, Beaulieu and Tintern.  Most are now just hauntingly beautiful ruins, their stones plundered to build the nearby great houses but in the 13^th century what must they have seemed like when most buildings were singly storey thatched cottages made of wattle and daub?  Would people have marvelled and revelled in being able to worship in such magnificent buildings raised to the glory of God or would they (much as modern day folk will deride the lottery winner for his house with saunas, two bathrooms per bedroom and an indoor pool) think such a display of wealth was just rather vulgar?

© google images

But there was also another similarity between the Abbots of the 15^th century and many today who suddenly come into great wealth.  They used their money for good, building hospitals and hostels, providing a place where the population could come to for help, medicine, shelter and solace. 

The trade in wool transformed the fortunes of whole countries, not just abbeys and monasteries.  It wasn’t just monasteries that got rich on wool.  From the reign of King Edward III until it was damaged in the bombing of the second world war The Lord Chancellor sat on a sack of English wool to remind him (and all the country’s rulers) that the nation’s wealth was once founded on the wool trade.  After the war the sack was remade using wool from flocks of sheep all around the commonwealth.  In 2006 when the role of Lord Chancellor was divided into two the wool sack became the seat of the Lord Speaker.

xx

C

On negative ease and learning from the past

It took me a little while to feel as comfortable as this in my new skirt and sweater but I got there in the end

When I made this skirt for the Titanic project the fit was so good that it got me thinking.  I wondered what it would look like made in a contemporary style.  When I say contemporary I mean short, there was no need to mess with the shape in any other way at all.  I made a few little modifications like using a zip fastener under the scallops.

I still did lots of hand stitching as I felt the skirt went together better that way.  It is made entirely with stash fodder, the gunmetal coloured linen was bought a while ago on a visit to Goldhawk Road and the ribbon left over from a previous project, rummaging around in my work-basket I found the right colour cotton and zip.

I loved the skirt it looks perfect in its 21st century guise, I expect to make it again and again and I love the little Tana Lawn shell top, Sorbetto, from Colletterie patterns (it is a free download at the moment)  But not together,

So delving into the stash boxes again I came up with three skeins of Manos Del Uruguay silk and merino blend in just the right colours.  A search on Ravelry came up with the perfect pattern from Ram Wools Yarn Co-op.

The largest size was a 36inch - too small for me so I swatched (yes I truly did) and added stitches to give me an extra 2 inches round.  I also decided to go for an all stocking stitch construction with curly edges.  This is when I discovered what negative ease is.  It was huge and only looked OK if I grabbed a handful at the back and smoothed out some of the curlyness.

It was just a Sloppy Joe and not the look I wanted at all (I should have learnt from the way Sorbetto was the wrong shape).  So I pulled it all out and made it up in the 36inch size, obeyed all the pattern instructions and VOILA!

So, negative ease - knit a sweater that you want to fit snugly about 2inches smaller than your bust size then it will fit not hang.

xx

C

At the halfway point

Its high time I posted about knitting again.  I have got so immersed in sewing (and I'm dying to tell you about my latest acquisition but I shall have to save that till another day) I have neglected to chat about knitting.  But I have still been working hard behind the scenes on my Titanic related knitting project

After some swatching I decided on using the two shades of pink in the Debbie Bliss Pure Silk for the lozenge pattern.  I like the different textures as well as the colour contrast.

As you know I have no pattern for this, only a good photograph from Vintage Fashion Knitwear by Marnie Fogg.  I am trying to keep to the way I think the sweater is constructed, which is not the way of modern patterns, but also I am looking at ways of streamlining the process.  I have no technical skills for creating knitting patterns, I rely on keeping to the tension of my swatch for measurements and otherwise a 'suck it and see' (or knit it and rip it) approach.  And for time to time pinning out what I have made and seeing if it looks anything like the shape I have in my mind's eye.

I knitted the front and back peplums separately first on their own they look like nothing on earth.

But things are now taking shape

Having knitted the peplums and crochet a row of eyelets along the top I began the main body knitting up from the bottom of the sleeve, This time I have knitted the bell cuff continuous with the sleeve and made the eyelets by the yfwd k2tog method.  I am going for dolman sleeves, hoping the inc1 each end of every knit row will give me the necessary ease for the armhole.  There is another row of eyelets across the yoke, so that I can get some ease in I am knitting the front and back separately then the yoke, I will hand sew the yoke in to get the ease.

At the moment I intend to knit the sweater in two halves casting off with the 3 needle method on the right side centre front and centre back but if that does not look right I will graft it like the toe of a sock.  All the edges are then finished off with several rows of DC.

I am note taking as I go along but I also change my mind a lot!

xx

c