knitsofacto

A teeny tiny ta-dah!

2012-03-06T23:58:00.021Z

Teeny tiny knitted shoes for teeny tiny newborn feet ... ta-dah!

I’d have shown them to you sooner but the all important button decision was still pending. Initially I thought mother-of-pearl, or maybe vintage milk glass, but they needed something with more pzazz, something more spunky, and so that’s what they got! A girl could really kick up her heels in red button shoes, don’t you think?

I’m really chuffed with this knitsofacto take on the traditional Mary Jane, if I do say so myself. But as with all of my baby knits these shoes were designed with a particular little lady in mind - a preemie with the teeniest tiniest feet* - and the pattern will need some fiddling with before it’s fit to publish. So watch this space!

Now, while we're talking ta-dahs, I've another I'm a little more coy about. Maybe you noticed the button that's appeared under the copyright info at the top of my sidebar? I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, to be honest, but I've decided to wear it with pride. After all, as my dour gym teacher Miss Minns once said to me, "You might as well blow your own trumpet, Annie, because no one else is going to do it for you". And I must admit that, though I'm chuffed about my mini Mary Jane's, I'm even more chuffed about what that button represents.

A little while ago ebuzzing, Wikio as was**, emailed me to say they would be ranking knitsofacto in their top knitting blogs this year, and lo, there I am, at an unbelievable number 9 in the February rankings! I'm in stellar company, the lovely Julie of Little Cotton Rabbits is up there in the top ten too. And so are Ysolda, and Kate Davies of needled, and the amazing p-hop. That I'm there at all clearly has far more to do with all of you than it does with me, and I'm struggling to find the words that will express just how grateful I am for your continued company here in my small corner of Blogtopia. Not everyone is convinced by the stats that underpin blog rankings, I know, but that incredible 9 is yours as much as it's mine and I wanted to share it with you. Thank you all, truly x

* The shoes are just 7cm long so they really are teeny tiny. Pattern details on Ravelry here.

** Wikio had been ranking knitsofacto since last August, but not specifically as a knitting blog.

Linked with 2012 Monthly Makes ~ March

Budding

2012-03-04T23:56:00.008Z

"I'm afraid there's not much to see at the moment" she apologised, as we paid for our tickets, "crocuses mostly, and the last of the snowdrops. But it's such a lovely afternoon that hardly matters, does it."

I wondered later if she was someone who walks with her eyes cast down, forgetting to look up, because there was so very much to see and it was breathtaking. Every tree in the garden, every shrub, was in bud!

Closed buds, opening buds, fat buds, furry buds, sticky buds ... "to bud like a March twig", is that Plath?

I just wish I had more pictures to share with you, but though the sun shone the March winds were working overtime and it's difficult to shoot such tiny targets when they're flouncing about. Doubly so when the only lens you have with you is a macro with a very narrow depth of field.

It was jolly cold on that hillside too, and taking photographs meant taking off my mitts, so I didn't dally over it. It may have looked like spring but in the wind it felt like winter. Mostly we just walked, quite briskly, and simply breeeeathed.

And then we came home, to Earl Grey tea and Eccles cakes, and my knitting and his book. And soon I shall show you a teeny tiny ta-dah that just needs some buttons. Happy day!

All the photographs in this post were taken on the Wirral at the University of Liverpool's Ness Botanic Gardens, Ness.

Eva

2012-02-29T14:17:00.007Z

My Grandma Eva - Evelyn Nelly Rodgers, nee Hall - born 1904 in Mells, Somerset, pictured here aged 17. I know so much about her, and yet there is so much more I forgot to ask. She had a sweet tooth - a bar of Fry's Chocolate Turkish Delight and a tube of Polo mints were always to be found in her handbag - a fiery temper, a sharp tongue and a quick wit. She delighted in knockabout comedy - Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Keystone Cops - but she didn't like to dance. Clothes mattered to her, but she was no seamstress. She taught me to knit.

Here she is aged 20. She was working as a nanny and 'walking out' with my grandpa, Garnet Russell Rodgers. He was a decade older than her, had been apprenticed in the printing trade, joined the Royal Horse Artillery in WW1 - think War Horse - had been badly injured in a shell blast that all but deafened him, and was working as a typesetter for Butler and Tanner of Frome when he met the love of his life.

They married on May 1st 1926 - she carried a huge bouquet of irises and white tulips, her favourite flowers, and wore the ivory silk shoes that she later gave to me - but there was no honeymoon, on May 4th Grandpa Garn joined the General Strike. A year later their first daughter was born. That's baby Evelyn, Eva, her father, and her grandfather - my great-great grandpa - in the photograph below. She was 23. Widowed young hers was a long if sometimes lonely life, and her children, grandchildren - for whom she had to wait a while, her daughters came to motherhood late - and great-grandchildren were her joy. Happily she survived to see my youngest born.

What else do I remember of her? She always sang as she went about her day, hymns and music hall songs. She was thrifty but not penny-pinching. If you wanted her sympathy you'd wait a long time but hand her a crying baby and it would be smiling sweetly within moments. She was a perennial wearer of hats and a dedicated collector of hatpins. The jars and jars of jams and jewel-like jellies on her pantry shelves, and the scrubbed pine table in her kitchen that was perfect for building dens under. Dairylea triangles for Sunday tea, and the ebony and ivory dominoes we were allowed to play with afterwards, lining them up in snaking lines on the linoleum floor and then watching them fall. Harvesting fruit and veg from her potager, a cracked earthenware bowl for the blackcurrants, a green enamelled colander for the peas. Her 'blue' garden of hyacinths, muscari, and lavender. And that she was always knitting.

I think my mother was probably the first to put knitting needles and a ball of wool in my hands but Grandma Eva taught me what knitting was. All those locked together loops could be varied almost infinitely. Change the stitch, change the tension, change the fibre, and see what happens. Play and learn. If today I can know, without thinking, what kind of fabric a yarn 'wants' to be then I owe that to her. I understand spin and ply and ease because of her, and how to wash woollens and protect them from moths. In a way knitsofacto began at her side. I thought it was time you were introduced.

So, who taught you to do the things you enjoy most, I'd love to know. Oh, and don't forget to enter the giveaway will you, details here.

Follow your heart: a giveaway ♥

2012-02-23T21:39:00.022Z

Do you like my new header? I’m really rather pleased with it, it’s so very ‘me’, this mosaic of my favourite knitsofacto photographs. And on a day of crazily high February temperatures I’m enjoying its cool feel. Winter simply shouldn’t be this warm, ever! But I know not everyone agrees.

We’re all different – such a cliché, but we are – and isn’t our variety just the most amazing thing, although it sure makes planning a giveaway difficult! One person’s ‘must have’ is so often another person’s ‘would never want’. Even the right thing in the wrong colour is, well, wrong. So I got to thinking about how we’re the same.

We’re all here for a start, hanging out at knitsofacto, writing in my case, obviously, and reading in yours. Maybe you pop by often, or maybe you’re visiting for the first time – waves at anyone who’s new – either way the fact that you spend any of your precious time here is fantabulous, amazing, and something I never forget to be grateful for. And that some of you have been calling in for a virtual cuppa for nigh on a year now is truly awesome. Yup, a whole year*, hence the giveaway, to say thank you, with heart!

Looking back through my old posts, as a prelude to writing this one, I was struck by just how much knitsofacto has changed in the past year. I’ve been on a journey of sorts - taking the odd wrong turn, not always knowing exactly where I was going – and have met so many creative, inventive, inspiring people along the way. I wanted this giveaway to celebrate that, the journey and the making mojo we all seem to share.

First, the journey. Do you know the work of Pia Jane Bijerk? If you don’t, trust me, you’re really missing something. Pia is a photographer, a stylist, and an author. An Australian Francophile who has lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam. A dreamer who followed her heart, and then wrote about it. I have one copy of her incredibly beautiful book, My Heart Wanders, to give to the reader whose name is first out of the hat.

And that making mojo I mentioned ... what floats your boat? Making a home, making a garden, making a pot, making a patchwork quilt? Do you bake, embroider, knit, crochet, paint, sing, dance, travel? Where does your heart lead you? The lovely Fee at Chipper Nelly has come up with a customisable Follow Your ♥ block design just for us, and I have three blocks to give away, one to whoever wins the book, and one to each of two runners up. The blocks have Follow your ♥ stamped on one side, a single 'creative' word on the opposite side, with buttons, because buttons are always a good thing, and some gorgeously patterned papers on the remaining sides, and they are quite simply the bees knees. But then so are all of Fee’s designs!

All you have to do to enter the giveaway, wherever you are in the world, is leave a comment sometime before midnight GMT on March 9th, telling me what kind of making you ♥ most and the associated word that you think you would like on the front of your block. Don't worry if you can't think of a word just now, or aren't totally sure about the one you've chosen, I won't hold you to it, there'll be ample opportunity to choose or change your mind if you win, just remember that a ten letter word is the longest that will fit on the blocks. Oh, and you get to choose the colour too, because, well, we’re all different and not everyone likes pink! For a second chance to win just link to this post on your blog, or tweet about it, and then pop back and tell me that you have. Good luck ♥

Edited to add: there are already one or two entries from folk whose name links to a profile page or somesuch with no contact info, which is going to be a problem if they win. Please make sure I know how to reach you if your name is pulled from the hat. Cheers.

*You can read a little more about knitsofacto’s history here.

Pictures #2 and #3 courtesy of Pia Jane Bijerk, picture #4 courtesy of and copyright Chipper Nelly. I've been waiting for a new card reader for my camera which should arrive tomorrow. Once I have it I'll pop a few of my own photographs of the book onto this post.

Winter stitching

2012-02-21T23:57:00.014Z

Wood, flax, cotton, steel ... fine unbleached linen in a hoop, a needle threaded with perle cotton ... the simplest of rustic stitches, a homage to history, and to winter.

These little hearts found their way on to a Valentine’s card which, oops, was sealed into an envelope and popped into the post box before I'd thought to photograph it. And they really are tiny hearts ... the smallest stitches are worked over just two of the thirty-two threads, warp and weft, in each square inch of fabric.

The larger, voided hearts sit inside a traditional Hardanger 'tulip' motif ... spring flowers worked in wintry colours, because I really would like to hang on to winter for just a little longer please. I'm still hoping for a decent snow fall here, or a week of hard overnight frosts and glittering sunny mornings, for Winter to wear her diamonds as well as her drab at least once*.

In medieval times drab meant unbleached cloth, did you know? Only later did the word become synonymous with dull colours. But what's not to like about the purity of raw linen. And it's eco-friendly too, as far as is possible.

So, I have begun a larger Hardanger embroidery that echoes family heirloom pieces stitched by Mr. K's grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and probably all the grandmother's before them. I'll show it to you soon I promise. I'm having such fun designing it, in the same white on drab combo seen here, it's like stitching my own snowstorm!

Now, I have a question for you: do you think my little embedded copyright thingies are clear enough? Having carefully read all of your illuminating comments on my Pinterest post - gosh you had a lot to say, thank you! - and this and the articles it links to, I decided that I wanted to put my name on my work. Even if it will be as easy as pie to crop it off again I'm hoping that anyone thinking of misappropriating my images might just think twice in future. And meanwhile the 'Pinners' can happily pin away knowing that they will always be crediting the source.

Ooh, I nearly forgot! Drum roll please !!! I'm planning a rather special giveaway for the end of the week so do please pop back then.

* There have been only a few flakes of snow here this winter, and just a handful of frosts, and they were during the recent cold snap when everyone else was fearing a new Ice Age ... I'm positively longing for some proper get-toasty-by-the-fire cold weather instead of this endless, damp gloom.

Linking with 2012 Monthly Makes ~ February and the Making Winter February Blog Hop.

2012-02-17T23:48:00.032Z

Source: knitsofacto.blogspot.com via Jeannette on Pinterest

I think I need a lie down. I’ve been reading and thinking and thinking and reading, dotting about the blogosphere checking facts and ideas, finding answers to questions I didn't know I had, and blaming this Sue, or maybe this Sue. My head hurts!

Everyone’s talking about Pinterest today, so I thought I would too.

I trained in art and design, I’m used to working with mood boards and mood books, still do, and that’s kinda’ what Pinterest is, isn’t it? A communal mood board of unprecedented dimensions? Shared inspiration? Harmless fun?

But the Sues, along with many others, me included, are rightly concerned that Pinterest content doesn’t always link back to the copyright holder. Clean up your pins they say, and if the source can’t be found then delete them. Don’t pin unless you’re sure that the originator of the image will be credited.

This is what Pinterest has to say about that: always credit your sources and don’t pin unless you own the rights to the stuff that you’re pinning, or have been authorised to pin it by the person who does, or know for sure that it's no longer copyright*.

And that’s not all they say that might surprise you if you haven’t read the Terms of Use, which are hidden away in the Copyright section of About. This is the scary bit: pinning your stuff indicates your acceptance that worldwide, irrevocably, perpetually and without payment of royalties your images, and often by extension your ideas, can be used, copied, adapted, modified, distributed, licensed, sold and ‘otherwise exploited’ by Cold Brew Labs – the company behind Pinterest – and you can do nothing about it*. Nada. Zilch.

In other words, if I pin your image to my Pinterest board it will be assumed that you authorised me to do so, and in consequence Pinterest has carte blanche to do with that image what they will. If you’re not happy about that you'll be pointed in my direction.

You might want to read this, this, and finally this, which was posted earlier today on Business Insider and concludes that "Pinterest seems designed almost entirely for the theft of others' copyrighted material."

Source: knitsofacto.blogspot.com via Claire @ Happy Elastic on Pinterest

And then there's this, from director Jim Jarmusch ...

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

Like I said, my head is spinning!

Update 18.02. Gosh, the Pinterest debate really is on everyone's lips! I'm so enjoying reading what everyone has to say about this ... please keep those comments coming guys.

Wendy has written a great post on the topic just today, and has linked to yet more useful thoughts and info from other commentators. And, like Sue, she has deleted her Pinterest account. I've decided to keep mine, for now, but am working through my pins, deleting the few that aren't properly credited and seeking permission to leave others where they are. Easy for me as I'm not a big 'Pinner' and I've always been careful about copyrights and credits, but I could do better and I'm determined that I will. To remind myself of that I've added the Link with Love logo to my sidebar ... it even comes in knitsofacto green!

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The pictures in this post are from Pinterest, picked up oh so easily via the Pinterest embed tool. Luckily I know the originator is happy for me to borrow these images to illustrate my point ... they're mine!

Oh, and I've activated embedded comments so we can all join in the conversation and reply to each other. Sadly the last time I did that a few folk found commenting impossible, if that happens this time please do let me know - there's a Contact box in my sidebar - and I'll deactivate it again. Still no word verification you'll be pleased to hear, isn't the new Blogger version just awful.

* I’m paraphrasing for brevity but you can read the whole thing here in Member content and General Prohibitions.

♥ Love ♥

2012-02-14T23:41:00.014Z

Three decades ago today the love of my life asked me to marry him. I was twenty, in my second year of university ... the timing was crazy. I said Yes!

Today I made heart-shaped French toast. He bought me sparklers, to write our names on the night with, together. Of such simple things are thirty years of happiness made.

How did you celebrate Valentine's Day?

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French Toast for Two Lovebirds

Cut 8 hearts from 4 thick slices of bread using a heart-shaped cookie cutter.
Whisk together well 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder, 2 eggs, and 3 fl oz milk.
Soak the bread hearts in the milk and egg mixture and then pan fry in butter, turning to lightly brown on both sides.
Dredge with icing sugar and serve with fresh fruits of your choice.

I used granary bread and blueberries as that’s what I had in the fridge, but brioche and raspberries is a favourite combination, as is left-over baguette and stewed plums. No photos I’m afraid ... our delicious sugary-eggy-bready hearts were eaten way too quickly!

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Huge thanks to Fee of Chipper Nelly for the custom You Complete Me blocks, bought for my fella to keep on his desk. Do you know Fee's work? Her decoupaged blocks are just perfect, very highly recommended.

Stuff ...

2012-02-12T23:55:00.015Z

Picture credit: Boston Public Library

We found my car keys eventually, in the drawer where I keep all the kitchen odds and ends ... knife sharpeners and drinking straws and jam pot covers and the like, biros and safety pins and rubber bands, and assorted miscellanea we have no idea where else to put. Friday’s inventory included a takeaway menu from a curry house we have never heard of, a vintage blackbird pie funnel that I‘d forgotten I had, a lone party popper, and a candle snuffer we hadn’t seen since my birthday. We call it St. Anthony’s Drawer, the first place to look for the things you can’t find*. In keeping with the recent Series of Unfortunate Events I, of course, looked there last.

I had looked in The Jug Of Infinite Capacity, which is probably of too small a circumference to accommodate my quite large bunch of keys. For years we have been dropping into that little jug all those tiny screws and oddly shaped bits of plastic that turn up unattached to whatever they should be attached to. Mr K. is convinced that if we ever throw these artefacts away we will immediately discover that they were essential to the continued proper functioning of whatever they belonged to. Actually, we rarely take things out of The Jug Of Infinite Capacity, we just keep on putting them in, and yet the jug is never full. Spooky!

I own a Sieve of Oblivion too, otherwise known as my memory. This is why I lose car keys and candle snuffers, and forget to thank folk publicly for blog awards. I thanked them privately, of course, I would never forget to do that, but I didn’t thank them here. So, Penny and Jill, please forgive my tardiness my lovelies and accept my heartfelt thanks.

Picture credit: Boston Public Library

Now for the difficult bit, the part where I fear I may offend someone. I’ve written about blog awards before, truth is I find them both humbling and jolly discombobulating. They are validating, which is cork-poppingly wonderful, but they are also conditional ... there are rules and I was never good with rules. I’m just not comfortable with prizes which require that a person jump through a hoop. To paraphrase Sue’s most eloquent critique, I couldn’t be happier if someone thinks my blog deserving of attention, but the only award that I need or want is a friendly comment from time to time. Which is not to say I won’t be shouting about the blogs I love, I will, but when I do I don’t want the bloggers who write them to feel obligated in any way.

Please don't think I'm ungrateful. That anyone should choose to read my jottings and maybe join the conversation here never ceases to amaze me, that so many of you do is beyond awesome and I am truly thankful. To be in the virtual company of lots of lovely people, now that really is a glittering prize!

Thanks guys ... the flowers are for you x

* For Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things. A number of my relatives have a St. Anthony’s Drawer, it’s part of the family lexicon.

Runrig

2012-02-09T02:34:00.026Z

I finally went back to my dentist’s yesterday, to discover that the acrid stench of burning plastics had been replaced by the sharp smell of fresh paint, and that my dental x-rays indicated I have a mega abscess that necessitates one root filling, one extraction, and one course of super-strength, extra-potent antibiotic tablets that are the size of horse pills. I am not impressed!

Driving home in a state of high disgruntlement, I stopped en route at the village shop to buy a comforting bar of Green and Black’s and some consolatory magazines. Glossy ‘interiors’ magazines of the kind my sister loves, filled with elegant images of fashionable people and their envy inducing homes. There they are on the hall table, with my car keys and my newest muffatees. I pottered off to put the kettle on and returned with my camera while it boiled ... snapping some pics for the soon-to-be-published muffatee knitting pattern took my mind off the unrelenting agony of toothache.

I move to admit exhibit one, your Honour, a photograph which clearly corroborates the defendant’s claim that the missing keys were still in her possession at approximately 4.30pm on Wednesday afternoon.

With luck and favourable winds the Runrig muffatee pattern* ~~will be published on Ravelry later today~~, can now be downloaded here, or by following the link in the sidebar. Don't be shy, it's free!

I worked my first pair of Runrigs in a worsted-weight camel and merino blend, but this time I wanted alpaca. And if it weren’t for my blasted teeth I’d be happy-dancing in these mitts. I adore everything about them: the butter-soft DK yarn, the subtly feminine picot point edging, and the full-length textured ‘stripes’. Chic perfection, if I do say so myself.

Why Runrig**? For the ploughed ridges and dividing runnels that characterised the early agricultural landscape in the UK and that are echoed in the mitt’s welted construction. My farmer-boy great-grandpa always wore mitts without fingers about the farm in winter. He died when I was three and is in memory no more than the scent of wool, soil and tobacco.

One more thing ... has anyone seen my car keys?

*The pattern includes instructions for ‘mitts’ worked in both Aran/worsted and DK weight yarns and is sized to fit most female hands, from child to adult. Available to download now. A stripy gents version is pending but sadly is not yet ready for publication ... I'm having problems with the corded edge.

** In later usage runrig described a Scottish system of communal land tenure. And, of course, there’s the rock band!

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Once again I've been humbled by and am so very grateful for all your kind comments and good wishes. When things get as crazy as they did for a while there last week it really does give me a boost to know that so many good people out there in Blogtopia are rooting for me. Thank you lovelies, truly :D

Ouch!

2012-02-03T19:25:00.013Z

Picture credit: Library of Congress

Monday, I broke a tooth. Ouch.

Wednesday, I visited the dentist. As I waited, reclined in the dentist's chair, for the drilling - eugh! - to begin ... there was an almighty BANG! The electrics had blown, big time ... the circuit box on the wall behind us burst into flame ... the place was on fire !!!

Picture credit: Library of Congress

I have a temporary dressing on the cavity until they can see me again next week, "after the clean up". It tastes of cloves. Every darn thing tastes of cloves!

Previously, in the depths of the chilly Tuesday night-before, my just filled hot water bottle had burst as I climbed into bed. I was clutching it to my chest at the time. I have a lightly boiled left boob. OUCH.

Subsequently, in the early hours of the icy Thursday morning-after, Mr K. - stopped at lights in a queue of traffic, handbrake on - was shunted from behind as he made his way to work. His car is in the body shop. He has a touch of whiplash. Ouch!

Picture credit: City of Toronto Archives

I am hoping it is reasonable to suggest - and I implore you, please, to agree with me here - that this was a sequence of events unlikely to be repeated in my lifetime !!!

Meanwhile, in other news, Tolly, the wanderer returned,* celebrated his homecoming by munching his way through a few highly unmunchable items. Inevitably this reckless partying was followed by a trip to the vet's, and a hefty vet bill. OUCH!

I feel some theraputic yarn shopping may be justified, don't you?

Picture credit: Mr Knitsofacto

* I should insert a huge thank you here for all your good wishes on young Ptolemy's safe return. He's fine and dandy and as dastardly as ever ... it's a jolly good job we love him!

We interrupt this broadcast ...

2012-01-29T18:18:00.025Z

... to bring you the most wonderful breaking news: Tolly*, our lionhearted miniature dachshund, the little lad who went missing from a friend's daughter's garden just before Christmas, is home safe with us !!! Overjoyed doesn't begin to cover how we feel!

We are still trying to piece together the story of the last few weeks; all we know so far is that Tolly had been living with an elderly lady of 92 who sadly died, and that her niece then passed him on to a pound fifty miles away for rehoming. Thankfully he is microchipped and so once scanned was easily identifiable as our lost boy**. A flurry of 'phone calls, a frantic drive, and Mr Knitsofacto brought our wanderer home. He needed a bath and has a bit of an upset tum (Tolly that is, not Mr K.) but otherwise he seems fit and well. Happy, if rather hectic, days!

By a curious coincidence I had planned yesterday to tell you the tale of another lost dog, and the tiny buddy who has joined him here.

When I was just a tot, and still finding my feet, my parents gave me the best ever toy hound, Bonzo. He was bigger than I was, but I would haul myself up behind him, take fast hold of his shiny red metal handle, and push him along on his shiny red metal wheels. Better still, my father would sit me on Bonzo's broad back and push us both, out through the gate and along the street, far further than my dog and I could possibly have travelled on our own. We had such adventures and I loved my Bonzo with all my heart. There is a photograph somewhere of me, aged two or three, with my arms wrapped around his neck, kissing his funny black nose and stroking his floppy brown ears.

But kids grow up and push-along dogs lose their magic, and at some point my mother allowed my aunt to take Bonzo home with her. My younger cousins have fond memories of him too, but thereafter he was lost. Until recently. Discovered in a dark corner of my Godmother's attic, looking rather threadbare, he was finally returned to me. Am I sad that my own children never got to play with him? Yes. But he stands in my study patiently awaiting the next generation of littlies who will trundle him up and down on his now far-from-shiny red metal wheels, and caress his bald old snout.

And he has a new chum ... for Christmas my parents gave me Bonzo Junior, the handsome miniature pull-along fellow pictured here. Isn't he just perfect! Sarah of Northfield Primitives rushed him to me just in time for the big day. She makes such beautiful creatures, do please take a peek at her menagerie! And tell me, did you have a favourite toy that is passing down the generations, I'd love to know.

* He's Ptolemy really, but it's a big name for a small dog! Apologies for the lack of photographs of the runaway in question but it's been such a dismal day I've just not had the light to take any.

** Please, please, if you own dogs who are not microchipped do consider rectifying that, one day you may be very glad indeed that you did!

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I'm so happy you all liked the muffatees so much ... thank you to everyone who took the time to comment. I have to admit I am really rather pleased with them myself. The pattern is almost ready, so watch this space. Oh, and there's a matching cowl coming soon too :D

Cosy muffatees

2012-01-23T23:58:00.029Z

I blame Beatrix Potter. My fascination with muffatees began with Benjamin Bunny ...

That wood was full of rabbit holes; and in the neatest, sandiest hole of all lived Benjamin's aunt and his cousins—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. Old Mrs. Rabbit was a widow; she earned her living by knitting rabbit-wool mittens and muffatees ...

Kate Greenaway's Going to the Party played its part too ...

Overcoats and wrappers, furs and muffatees, hands deep down in pockets, cosy as you please. Little lads and lassies, trotting through the snow, please tell us where you’re going, we should like to know.

Muffatees, the simplest kind of mitt, no fingers or thumbs, just an open-ended tube of knitting with a thumb-hole in the side. In the largely unheated homes of the 18th and 19th centuries they were essential daily wear in winter, and early knitting books abound with patterns for them. They're pretty useful still, particularly if you're trying to economise, as we are. We donned thick sweaters, woolly socks and muffatees in the recent cold weather and turned all the thermostats in the house right down ... we've saved a fortune on fuel bills and we weren't cold, not once!

Gardeners welcome muffatees, and in the past they were recommended for huntsmen, sailors, and army officers, but not, it seems, for the poor foot soldiers ...

During the cold winters in the Peninsula many of the Guards took to pulling down the sleeves of their long Welsh flannel shirts over their hands and tying them to form a sort of crude glove. The officers could not do this so a number of them had ‘muffatees’ sent out from England, which were normally knitted by ‘the prettiest ladies we know’, according to Ensign Rous. When he wrote home on 17 September 1813 to ask for some muffatees he said that they were worn by a few officers; but that the ladies should not knit any for the soldiers, as it would make them too tender ...*

I'll be making my Runrig Muffatee pattern - they're knitted flat from side to side, and have a three-needle bind off so they are essentially seamless - available just as soon as I've finished knitting the stripy gent's version I still have on the needles, so if you know of any fighting men in need ...

Cut flower challenge #12, First Snowdrops

I'm linking this post to Emma at Silver Pebble's and Mrs Thrifty Household's Making Winter blog hop. Comfort and cosiness is the theme this month and all manner of warming delights are to be found there.

* Ian Fletcher, 1994, Wellington's Foot Guards, Osprey Publishing

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Many, many thanks for all your kind and helpful comments about our plans for the allotment. Our list of things to plant is now even longer than it was. But we must be patient and savour every step of the journey, from the promise of the plot, to the harvesting of the first produce, to the plenty we hope for in the years ahead. And I now know who to ask if we need advice along the way!

Allotment

2012-01-20T21:58:00.021Z

A simple flyer, picked up in the farm shop in the village ...

Would you like your own local allotment or smallholding? The plots ... have high quality soil, riverside views, easy access ... water on site, non flooding* ... they will make perfect allotments for growing vegetables, fruit, flowers and even keeping your own chickens, bees, etc.. To register your interest and for more information contact Sarah on ...

... and such excitement ensues!

When we first moved here the village's few allotments were mostly derelict. Two were still being worked in a desultory way by a couple of very elderly gents with barely the strength between them to push a wheelbarrow. The other six were a mess of couch grass, rubble and rusty metal, having been used for aeons as a dumping ground by a local jobbing gardener. Incredibly, his pals on the Community Council had allowed him to rent them expressly for that purpose! With only a small courtyard garden and desperate for a plot on which to grow things we spearheaded a campaign to get these allotments cleaned up and returned to proper use and, eventually, we won! But when it came to their allocation, unbelievably, scandalously, we missed out ... apparently our "meddling" had annoyed the Community Council, we were "upstart incomers" whose pushiness was not to be rewarded!

Years passed. We became increasingly resigned to our allotment-less state. But we never gave up on the dream. And then along came Sarah, another 'incomer', a farmer's wife with a dream of her own and a farmer husband with a field to spare! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The time has come, the knitso's said, to talk of many things, of herbs and hops and dahlias, of cabbages and composting, and whether walnut's worth the wait, and if the spud is king**.

Actually we have a long list of things we want to grow, and it's not entirely conventional. The farm shop I mentioned is just half a mile away and is part of a large market garden. In season we can buy, fresh-picked, a whole alphabet of produce ... asparagus, brassicas, carrots, peas, potatoes and strawberries, at a fraction of supermarket prices ... we don't need to plant those things ourselves. Instead we want to grow vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers that we can't easily come by elsewhere.

This is our surprisingly alliterative wish list - we're in no rush to plant everything this year, we don't even know what our soil is like yet - and if any of you gardeners and allotmenteers would care to comment we'd welcome your input. Most importantly, what have we missed?

Broadbeans, Brussels Sprouts, Beetroot and Red Onions.
Salad Greens, Shallots, and Sorrel for soups.
Crab Apples - probably Golden Hornet - for their glorious blossom, pollinating prowess, and the prospect of Crab Apple Jelly.
Quinces, Greengages and Gooseberries.
Raspberries, Blackcurrants and Rhubarb.
Comfrey as a compost activator, Chives for their insect repellent properties, Sweet Chamomile for my tea, and Dyers Chamomile for my dye pot.
Purple Loosestrife, also for the dye pot but most importantly for the butterflies. Parsley, Pineapple Sage, and Purslane.
Lavender, Dahlias, Sweet Peas and Sunflowers, because I'd be bereft without them. Oh, and Basil. And Nasturtiums.
We're thinking about the chickens and the bees.

So, what do you reckon?

* That's important here, the village sits on a rise in the bend of the river and a lot of the land around us is flood plain and not infrequently under water.

** With thanks to Lewis Carroll.

Seed catalogue images from the Smithsonian's glorious digital collection of seed catalogues

The Lover's Oracle

2012-01-17T23:58:00.047Z

Cut flower challenge #11, Helleborus x hybridus

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

"Dear Madam, I am bold enough to flatter myself that you are not altogether a stranger to the fact of my having regarded you for some time with an eye of tenderness ..." *

Which is why, Miss Hellebore, I have liberated you from your gloomy hiding place beneath a rampant garden shrub and brought you indoors to enjoy a few short days of glory.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Cut flower challenge #11, Helleborus x hybridus

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

"Dear Madam, I feel sure you will believe me when I declare that the possession of your regard has been the greatest boast and happiness of my life ..." *

Which may be over-egging the pudding a little, but I do want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Stocki and Annie, who both recently deemed me worthy of a Liebster blog award. Thank you ladies, truly, I am flattered. And although I had determined to graciously decline any further awards that came my way, I will, I promise, pass the honour on to others who are equally deserving of a wider readership. Just not today.

"Sir, I regret that the painful task devolves upon me of returning an answer to
your communication which may, for the moment, occasion you some disappointment. At the same time I beg to express a hope that, notwithstanding this reply, the friendly terms upon which we have hitherto met will be in no degree altered ... " *

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Cut flower challenge #11, Helleborus x hybridus

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

"Madam, In venturing to address these lines to you, I trust you will not count me unworthy of your notice because I am engaged in trade; nor will deem the pursuit of commerce incompatible with refined statements and honourable esteem ..." *

Which is a little clumsy as an overture, but I needed something from the book to preface a plug for Project :: Sky 365, and it was the most appropriate passage I could find. Please join us if you haven't already, it's fun!

"... Beyond this I shall not attempt to say more ... if you deem my prayer worthy of being heard, you will not hesitate to seal my happiness by granting it ..." *

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
* All the block quotes in this post are taken from 'The Lovers Oracle', The Companion Letter Writer: A Complete Guide to Correspondence on all Subjects Relating to Friendship, Love and Business, Frederick Warne & Co., 1866, pp 65-124. Photographed previously in this post. Oh how I cherish this musty little book. I know, because the original giver carefully recorded the fact on the flyleaf, that it was "Presented to Mr. J. Barkley, Aqueduct View, Pontcysyllte, Llangollen, by a Mutual Friend". And where there is a mutual friend there is surely a third party, a lady perhaps, awaiting a proposal ... how wonderful if we could know! For me this glorious volume encapsulates exactly what we lose if the ebook prevails.

Beginners please

2012-01-15T23:16:00.010Z

Varigated yarn, you either love it or you loath it! Me? I'm most decidedly in the latter camp, so quite why I determined to wrestle the multi-coloured stuff into submission is a mystery. A skein of Colinette Cadenza in Dark Jacob was duly bought, and the faffing about began. Reader, I failed. After much entirely unsatisfactory swatching I admitted defeat and buried my woolly nemesis at the bottom of a box of more useful yarn. It was clear I was never going to like the space dyed look. Until yesterday.

I had promised, on the spur of the moment, to teach a friend to knit what Elizabeth Zimmerman called idiot cord*, and I needed some colourful double knitting yarn in a hurry. In a light bulb moment I grabbed the Cadenza ... stripy i-cord, perfect. And it was! 80cm of 5 stitch i-cord with a neat loop at one end, a stitched-on-at-the-other-end 1940s vintage button from my button box, and a few cups of coffee and a large slice of cake later we each had a nifty little knitted bracelet. What do you think?

Fun, isn't it, though not the sort of thing I'd normally wear. Which is handy, because my friend's daughter has decided that she'd like one too, and as her novice knitter mum has had quite enough i-cord knitting for one week ... Ella, it's yours!

I'm linking this post to The Felt Fairy's A Make A Month 2012, January's Flickr group is here.

My picture prop was "The Companion Letter Writer: A Guide to Correspondence on All Subjects" (1866), just in case you were wondering. It was at the top of the nearest pile of books. Books always were everywhere here but there seem to be more than ever, I think we've unwittingly created favourable breeding conditions ;)

* There's a great photo tutorial here for those unfamiliar with the i-cord technique.

Project :: Sky 365

2012-01-10T21:23:00.011Z

Everyone seems to be looking at the ground lately. Ali at Domesticali, Mrs Thrifty Household, and lots of other folk keen to photograph the land beneath their feet, are taking part in the fascinating daily photo journal From Where I Stand*. I had thought I might join them. But then I got to thinking that I'd rather spend my days looking up than looking down. And a line from Paul Auster's remarkable Moon Palacepopped into my head: "A man cannot know where he stands on the earth except in relation to the moon or a star". Project :: Sky 365 was born!**

All of the photographs in this post were taken from my garden between three and five yesterday afternoon. That's all I had to do, step outside. Easy. This morning's sky pics were shot through an open window, in moments. Easier still. And when you're pointing your camera at the heavens you don't need to worry about revealing your embarrassingly muddy boots or your scruffy bunny slippers to the world. And, and this is important to me, you don't have to be standing anywhere.

I won't dwell on this, just say that through my association with Action for ME and NRAS I know some lovely people who are housebound, wheelchair bound, even bedbound. For some of them, and I'm sure for others who are similarly limited, participating in From Where I Stand would present an almost insurmountable challenge. But Project :: Sky 365 just might be possible.

"There is the sky, which is all men's together." Euripides

So, anyone can have a go. And you don't have to commit to daily photographs, weekly is fine, or less often if that's all you can manage. Fancy joining us on Flickr?

The rules are few. Skyscapes are what it's all about, taken anywhere, anytime, day or night. Look up: no horizons or skylines or earthbound things please, although overhead cables are fine. As is anything that is in the sky: sun, moon, stars, clouds, falling snow, seeds blowing in the wind, birds, hot air balloons, kites, aeroplanes ...

I did worry I might become bored by unrelenting firmament. But the sky is a never ending kaleidoscope of subtly shifting colour and light, even in the most dismal weather (although you might need to switch from auto focus to manual focus if your camera protests at an expanse of variegated monochrome). No, the thing I'll find challenging is choosing just one image to represent each day, for the knitsofacto Project :: Sky 365 page I've added to the blog***.

Oh, and there's a reason I've chosen to launch this with photographs taken on January 9th. The date marks the anniversary, 173 years ago, of the French Academy of Science's announcement of the Daguerreotype, the first commercially successfully photographic process: arguably January 9th is photography's birthday!

Even my knitting is getting in on the act ... you knew that was coming, didn't you! I'm planning a stripy Old Shale stitch wrap in a palette of sky colours. Real sky colours, as close as I can get to those in my photographs, but not too much blue, because, well, I'm not that fond of it. Watch this space!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll leave you with this little button pic - just in case you'd like to link to the Project :: Sky 365 Flickr group at wherever in Blogtopia you call home - and rush off ... there's a rather nice sunset I need to catch!

* The current craze for this seems to have begun with Susannah Conway, and bloggers around the globe have picked it up. But I can remember doing something similar in my art student days.

** I know there are 366 days in 2012 but I didn't want to limit this to leap years, who knows, it might catch on!

*** You can, of course, add as many images of each day's sky as you choose to the Flickr group.

Bumpy ride, busy year !

2012-01-06T23:57:00.027Z

I'm generally a glass-half-full kinda' gal, it comes easily to me to look on the bright side, which is lucky as 2012 promises to be a difficult year. It is really quite likely that Mr knitsofacto will be made redundant in the not too distant future, which might mean a house move, and will certainly mean unwelcome hassle and change. And that's not the only curve ball I expect 2012 to throw us. So, we've a bumpy ride ahead. Not the best time, perhaps, to be committing to much. Or maybe I'll welcome the distraction of having fun things to do as the year rolls on.

So, what do I have planned? Well, the Cut Flower Challenge continues. I always have flowers in the house but this year I've pledged to only pick stuff that I've grown myself or can find growing wild hereabouts, and to photograph each week's blooms. There might even be a flowery knitsofacto calendar available at the end of the year!

And there's 12 Shawls in 2012, of course. And I've signed up to A Make A Month 2012, which for me may well be a knitting free zone, because if all I do all year is knit I'll go a little crazy!

Oh, and I'm teaching myself to crochet. So far I've managed a very wonky Granny square courtesy of Pip's totally brilliant Granny Squares 101. And the lovely Jo recommended this book, which arrived in the post today and really does look to be a corker of a beginner's primer. I'd like to believe that by the end of the year I'll be able to crochet one of those twelve 2012 shawls. Am I aiming too high do you think?

There's more. I want to get out and about more with my camera, and experiment more with my photography. Connect with more lovely bloggers. Read more. Sleep more. The list goes on. Just writing down my hopes for 'more' in 2012 gives me a little buzz of excitement that is far preferable to the way I feel when I think about all the 'less' we might be facing. If I were to pick a word for the year ahead, one word for all I wish for in 2012, I think it would probably be abundance. Because, to borrow from Epicurus, it's not what we have but what we enjoy that constitutes our abundance, which sounds about right to me. May we all enjoy an abundant 2012!

Insanknitty

2012-01-03T23:58:00.028Z

If you're thinking this photograph looks vaguely familiar that might be because it is*: it's popped up here before, and on Ravelry, Flickr and Pinterest (sorry, I can't remember who pinned it, but thank you, whoever you were). I'm not often happy with my knitting pics but I love this one. It's deliberately blurred and smoky and I think it perfectly captures the comforting cosiness of knitting with fine yarns spun from animal fibres.

Alpaca, angora, bison, camel, cashmere, merino, mohair, qiviut, even yak - not that I've knitted with yak, yet - these are the fibres I covet! Call me a fibre snob, but you can keep your synthetics and your regenerated cellulose**, your cotton and your linen (although admittedly the latter have their place in some blends). It's a sad (and often expensive) fact, but without the protein fibres from sheep, goats, and all those other hairy quadrupeds, knitting would be anathema to me.

And then there's silk, a protein fibre but not a hair, a kind of halfway house. I'm never quite sure about silk. On its own it's such slippery stuff, too slippery, but it can certainly add lustre when spun or plied with something else.

This evening I cast on this lovely thing in a naturally dyed, lace-weight, silk and camel blend. I am hoping it will qualify as the first of my 12 shawls in 2012. Yup, crazy person that I am, I am planning to knit one shawl or wrap every calendar month this year. And if it doesn't qualify? Well, one every lunar month surely can't be that much more difficult, can it?

Will I make it to twelve? Your guess is good as mine, but I certainly intend to try. Like I said, insanknitty!

* Part of this post is recycled too, from knitsofacto's early days, when I could count my readers on my fingers. I hope you'll excuse the repetition.
** Yarns manufactured from the cellulose in wood pulp (rayon), bamboo and soya.

Loose ends

2011-12-31T23:56:00.011Z

As one year ends and another begins taking a few moments to tie up some loose ends seems like a good idea. Photographs I meant to post but never did*, and more overdue thank yous than is seemly, all need attending to.

So without further ado ... Karen, thank you again for the Versatile Blogger Award, and Stocki, thank you for the Liebster Blog Award. And then there's Brenda at Cosy Little House who has yet to be thanked for including knitsofacto in last week's Welcome Wagon Friday.

Thanks too to the amazing cooking Karen at Lavender and Lovage and to Sue at mouse notebook for the very generous giveaway wins that they sent my way but which never got a proper mention here. Karen, the cookery book is already well thumbed. And Sue, I can see my gorgeous little brown linen heart happying up my living room as I type. Thank you so much ladies.

More thank yous must go to the talented Kate at Harmony and Rosie for being so marvellously easy to buy from - I will blog about my beautiful bluebird zip purse soon I promise - and to Sarah of Northfield Primitives for the very special something that, magically, arrived on Christmas Eve - I can't wait to share what it was!

So have a I forgotten anyone? Oh dear, I do hope not! Don't worry though, I haven't forgotten YOU! Because the biggest THANK YOU of all must go to all my lovely readers and bloggy friends. Without you there wouldn't be a knitsofacto. Love you more than chocolate (and believe me, that's saying something!)

Which just leaves the most important loose end of the night ... I've yet to say

Happy New Year one and all

And may 2012 bring you all that you wish for!

* All mixed up here with favourites of mine from 2011 that you've seen before.

A whale of a time?

2011-12-29T21:38:00.012Z

Not really, actually. How was it for you?

I did get some fantastic presents, this little brooch among them, from me to me! Isn't it wonderful? The lovely Ruth at Ruth Robinson Ceramics rushed him* to me in the last Christmas post, trekking to the post office in the rain at the eleventh hour. Just the kind of can-do person you need when you are three gifts short for soon-to-arrive Christmas visitors you weren't expecting. And how could I resist adding a little something for myself!

He's spent most of the last few days pinned to whatever I was wearing, pjs included, but doesn't he look perfect 'swimming' through my table top 'vinaigrette' (she types in homage to the other Annie).

My lavender scented candle-in-a-vintage-teacup from my good mate Dr. B is there too, but its deliciously subtle perfume couldn't compete with the divine smell of the hyacinths**. Not that that matters, no, not at all. And it is sooo pretty.

So, apart from some seriously droopy hyacinths with a tendency to break, what's been getting us down chez knitsofacto?

Silly things, mostly. There has been no time for knitting, not one moment spare. The bathroom shower gave up the ghost on Christmas Eve and won't be operational again until essential parts are delivered in the New Year. And the same afternoon my dear ol' osteoporotic Mum fell up a step whilst carrying a bottle of wine and is now sporting some truly spectacular bruises. She managed to save the vino though - way to go Ma! - and to avoid breaking any bones, thank goodness.

It is our hearts that are breaking, because a week ago our feisty little miniature dachshund, Tolly, disappeared from the garden of the daughter of a friend. She had been looking after him for us since he fell out with the whippets a while ago. Despite our every effort, and those of the amazing volunteers at Dog Lost, there is still no news. It is the not knowing that gets you; somehow we must keep hope alive while accepting that he is probably gone.

Mostly my blog is my happy place but I hope you'll excuse my melancholy blues just now. I'll be back soon with a cheerier post, I promise.

* Or is he a her? How to tell a whale boy from a whale girl is something I've never pondered before. Anyone know?

** The first of this year's crop. Hyacinths in pots and forcing glasses, and jugs of berried holly from the hedgerows and ivy from the garden have been helping me keep up with the Cut Flower Challenge through December. Week eight and I'm still going strong!

Home Games and Amusements

2011-12-22T23:58:00.021Z

"... first catch a boy ..."

Christmas Morning, Paul Seignac (ca. 1846-1904)

So the tree's up (or in our case the twig, a whole other story), the cake's baked, the presents are wrapped, and it's time to party. No little (who am I kidding) black frock events this Christmas, with most of our friends and extended family jetting somewhere or other for some sun, or snow, or possibly both. It's just us, the children, their boyfriends/girlfriends, and Home Games and Amusements (published 1935, although I suspect it's a later edition of a much earlier book).

"How frequently have we sat by the fireside of a winter's evening, and asked almost despairingly, 'What can we do tonight?' ... the answer to this question is supplied by "Home Games and Amusements", the compilation of which was undertaken with the express purpose of solving these difficult problems. It is a complete library of ... entertainment that meets the requirements of everybody."

So that's Christmas sorted! We shall be playing Bequests, Consequences and Telegrams, just a few of this book's joys.

"... place him in charge of a responsible grown up, so that he cannot escape."

Happy Christmas, Viggo Johansen (1891)

I was given my tatty copy of Home Games and Amusements very many years ago by a dear elderly friend. It had been at the heart of her family Christmases since it's publication, and now it enhances our festive fun. Part of me longs for a world where the pace of life allowed for such gentle entertainments as competing to write "the most improbable story in twenty minutes", or games of Up Jenkins or A Boy's Pockets. But I'm grateful for Wii Bowling too!

Whatever you do to amuse yourself this Christmas may it be a joyous time for you and all who you hold dear. Oh, and if you have time for any last minute Christmas knitting the Downton hat pattern is now up on Ravelry, the link's in the sidebar. It's free, my gift to you :D

"... the boy is requested to empty his pockets ..."

Christmas Time, Eastman Johnson (1864)

A Boy's pockets
You first catch a boy - a plain ordinary British boy - about the knickerbocker age, and having made sure that his pockets contain their usual and normal miscellaneous articles, you place him in charge of a responsible grown up, so that he cannot escape. The company, having been supplied with pencils and sheets of paper, are requested each to write down the names of twenty articles most likely, in their judgement, to be found in a boy's pockets.
This having been done, the boy is requested to empty his pockets, and the articles found therein are checked off on the lists. The lists may also be read separately to show the varying ideas of the guessers. The person guessing the most articles wins the prize.

(Apologies for the fact that this was only half a post initially, I think at the top of my Christmas Wish List is a Blogger that works!)

Bottling it

2011-12-18T22:30:00.004Z

Hubby followed his nose into the kitchen earlier in search of "that intoxicating aroma". It did smell rather good in there, I must say.

For the last few weeks four huge 'Quattro Stagioni' jars have graced the coolest corner I could find. Two packed with dried fruit, rum and a little sugar syrup, and two with the makings of a homemade orange liqueur*. Today was decanting day. But before the sterilised bottles and jars were filled and the starry bows tied there was, of course, a taste testing. Hic!

Am I the only maker of gifts of Christmas fare terrified that one day I will poison someone? And this despite much annual evidence to the contrary. I really have bottled it when it comes to some of the more adventurous things I used to dare. Now I stick to candies, cakes, chutneys, jams, jellies and fruit liqueurs. And the dried fruits in rum, which is something of a halfway house. I call it Not Quite Rumtopf.

Not Quite Rumtopf

8 oz/225g sugar (granulated or caster, golden or white)
2 lb 8 oz/1125g mixed dried fruits (I use raisins, sultanas, apricots, figs, sour cherries and blueberries, but any good quality dried fruit will do)
16 fl oz/450 ml good amber rum
2 pints/1125 ml water

Sterilise two 1 litre preserving jars or similar and one jam jar.

Mix your chosen dried fruits together and divide between the preserving jars. Neither jar should be quite full as the fruits will need room to swell.

Place the sugar and water in a pan and slowly bring to the boil, stirring all the while. Boil for three minutes. Add the rum to the syrup. Now pour over the fruit in the jars, all the way to the top. Pour any remaining syrup into the jam jar. Screw the lids tightly onto all three jars.

Leave somewhere cool and dark for at least one month**. Check weekly as the rum syrup may need topping up once or twice. And if you run out of syrup don't worry, just top up with neat rum instead. When ready divide between six sterilised 1lb jam jars. Enjoy!

I'm linking this post to Emma at Silver Pebble's and Mrs Thrifty Household's Making Winter December Blog Hop. Do pop over for a look at all the festive craftiness there, if you haven't already.

* I used Karen's Santa's Little Helper recipe. Highly recommended, as is her lovely blog.

**Too late for this Christmas I know, but it's equally good at any time of year.

Glory

2011-12-16T23:43:00.019Z

Yesterday we stepped away from the exhausting rush to have everything ready for Christmas and spent an afternoon in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Not our first visit, we have been before to marvel at Piper and Reyntiens' stained glass extravaganza, but this time we had a very special reason for being there.

We sat in the company of hundreds of others, mostly of similar age, bathed in the coloured light that floods the building's interior on a bright winter's day, and waited. And waited. And waited some more. They were late. The organist exhausted his repertoire and began again. Listening to Nimrod for the second time I reflected on Dante's Il Paradiso

And lo! All around me, equal in all it's parts,
a splendour dawned above the splendour there
like a horizon when the new day starts.

What can I say, I get taken like that from time to time!*

Who were we waiting for? A bunch of tardy Liverpool University academics and some nervous graduands. They turned up eventually.

When, hours later, we finally left the cathedral, our bottoms numb, the bells ringing out magnificently above our heads in the early dark, we headed off for tea and cakes at the fanciest joint in town. Because it's not every day that your daughter, our darling Sally, graduates with a Masters in Archives and Records Management. And not every day that your honorary daughter, our son's partner Wendy, graduates with a Masters in Public Health. The girls deserved a good bun fight. Kudos ladies!

Miss BA Hons, DipARM, MARM. She hadn't slept well. It was windy. She'll probably kill me for posting this!

* Dante, in keeping with medieval theocentrism and geocentrism, imagines a paradise formed of nine concentric spheres with the earth at their centre. Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King is likewise concentrically circular in design. The cathedral's modernist architect, Sir Frederick Gibberd, was no doubt influenced by his brief - a central altar visible to the entire congregation - and by the architectural style du jour. But by medieval aesthetics? Anyone know?

Bringing home the tree

2011-12-10T21:52:00.003Z

Tweeling en Kerstboom in Wandelwagen
Amsterdam, December 1964
Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands

VW-Käfer mit Weihnachtsbaum
Bonn, December 1972
Bundesarchiv

Vader en kind met kerstboom
Haarlem, Holland, 1949
Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands

So, have you dressed your tree yet? Decked the halls? Hung up the mistletoe? If you'd like to knit some to kiss under the pattern's here.

Mistletoe

2011-12-06T23:59:00.022Z

Pale-green, fairy mistletoe ... a multitude of Christmas kisses in potentia.

I'm making sure we'll have some, I'm knitting it! Pattern ~~to follow shortly~~ now in the Atelier.

So, who will you be kissing under the mistletoe this Christmas?

Mistletoe

Sitting under the mistletoe

(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

One last candle burning low,

All the sleepy dancers gone,

Just one candle burning on,

Shadows lurking everywhere:

Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go

Nodding under the mistletoe

(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

No footsteps came, no voice, but only,

Just as I sat sleepy, lonely,

Stooped in the still and shadowy air

Lips unseen - and kissed me there.

Walter de la Mare

Advent Kersttulband

2011-12-01T23:53:00.015Z

Kinderen rond kersttulband met kaars, 1960

Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands

I've written before about culinary traditions chez knitsofacto. The making of the Advent Kersttulband is another seasonal marker in my kitchen year. The day I bake the Kersttulband is the day we start counting down to Christmas.

Being part of a multi-national extended family allows one to pick and mix one's Christmas customs. In Holland Kersttulband is traditionally eaten on the Feast of St. Nicholas, or Sinterklass, December 6th. But here at knitsofacto this fruit studded cake is a December 1st treat. When the children were littlies the opening of the first Advent calendar door had to be followed by the eating of the first slices of Kersttulband if all was to be well in their world.

Would you like the recipe? Hmm, I thought you might!

Kersttulband

250g soft butter
200g caster sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons good vanilla essence
250g self raising flour
100g raisins
100g sultanas
100g dried citrus fruit

Cream together the butter and the sugar and beat until pale. Then work in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla essence. Sift the flour and fold in, a third at a time. Finally, stir in all the fruit. Spoon into a bundt pan and bake in a preheated oven at 175°C/Gas 4 for 1 hour. When cooled turn out and dust with icing sugar. Voila!

I used golden caster sugar today as that was all I had, and I dusted the cake with vanilla icing sugar. Sometimes I feed it a little rum. We call that tipsy Kersttulband!

A grand day out and a giveaway winner

2011-11-29T21:36:00.005Z

Take one inquisitive whippet. This handsome young chap's called Griff.

So, I made you wait for the giveaway draw while I dallied in Harrogate at The Knitting and Stitching Show. Sorry about that. But what a jolly time I had, in company with my good friend Dr. B and her friend, the lovely Sue.

Add one cup of folded paper name slips.

I'm a seasoned visitor to the show, I go for the galleries and the shopping. Oh my word, the shopping! Suitably wowed by the UK Hand Knitting Associations 2011 Knitted Textile Awards - if a tad disappointed that the winning extravaganza was worked in crochet - and properly impressed by this year's Textile Graduate showcase - we hit the halls. And, surprisingly, I spent very little.

Shake, sift and sniff.

Never home in on a Habu Textiles stall in the company of non knitters, that's my advice. Because however patient your dear chums are they are absolutely not going to want to spend an hour or more oohing and aahing and comparing the relative merits of Tsumugi silk and Tegasuri cotton and swooning over the Hand-dyed cashmere. I came away after just ten minutes, empty handed. Ali and Sue, my bank balance thanks you!

Check you have them all.

Luckily Sue and I were equally enchanted by The Silk Route's fabrics, and I bought enough silk dupion - a fine stripe in chocolate, topaz and peridot, and fat quarters of this and this - to make a couple of pieced cushion covers. An elegant combination you'll hopefully agree.

Choose, and chew to test.

And on, via Art Van Go and a second hand book stall, to the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop, where some incredibly lustrous pomegranate DK was calling to me. This wonderful stuff is already on its way to becoming a Christmassy Abigail cowl. Joy!

And home. Tired, footsore and in need of a cuppa after a truly grand day out.

And discover a winner

Which brings me to the giveaway. And congratulations go to dearest Stephanie of Millefeuilles. If you'd care to email me your address my lovely - there's a contact button in my side bar - I'll post you your book. And to everyone else, my profound thanks for your continued bloggy fellowship. I just wish I'd had prizes for you all.

Last chance saloon

2011-11-25T22:59:00.005Z

Cut flower challenge #2

What a week! I won't bore you with the detail, just apologise for neglecting to read so many of your lovely blogs in the last few days. But I have good news: if you haven't yet entered the knitsofacto giveaway you now have until midnight GMT on November 27th, Sunday, in which to do so. Unexpectedly, and very happily, I'm off to The Knitting and Stitching Show this weekend, so as I won't be around to make the draw tomorrow I thought I'd extend the deadline.

And what news of the cut flower challenge? Well, faded hydrangea heads you might expect to find in a sheltered corner of the garden in late November, but coming across meadow clover still in flower really was a surprise. With a shortage of all things floral out there I've taken to scanning the ground when I'm walking with the dogs, pouncing on the merest hint of colour. At first I thought I'd spotted a single wayward clover bloom, but as I walked on it became clear that the edges of that particular field path were thick with the stuff. Or they were on Sunday, when the weather was still unseasonably mild. This morning brought the first snow. Just a few brief flurries, but snow all the same. So I'm guessing that these really were the last wild flowers I'll pick this year.

Cut flower challenge #3

Glittering prizes

2011-11-20T23:57:00.035Z

Have you ever asked yourself, 'Why do I blog?', or, if you've been at the 'ol blogging lark for a while now, 'Why do I still blog?' Your early posts may have been little more than virtual journal entries, but those of us who blog publicly clearly have a desire to connect in some way. And slowly but surely connect we do, until instead of one reader we have fifty, or five hundred, or five thousand, and ever more people join the open conversations that our blog posts begin. They comment, post links, write posts inspired by our posts - Moira, this one's down to you! - and together we go global. To be part of a world wide community of engaged and engaging bloggers who are wise, witty, and willing to share their best ideas ... that's why I still blog.

knitsofacto readers who've been popping by for a while might remember that I'm kinda' excited by the notion of liquid networks, those 'spaces of creativity' where ideas meet and mate and procreate. Sure, in our little corner of blogtopia these ideas probably have more to do with the best way to make yoghurt* than to achieve world peace, but that's not really the point. It's the free exchange for collective benefit that matters.

Of course sometimes what we exchange is not a good idea but our good will. We congratulate and commiserate and comfort and encourage, and send each other virtual hugs and impromptu parcels and, on occasion, blog awards.

Contentious things, blog awards, not welcomed by some. Validation arriving hand in hand with obligation. The obligation to post a response that might require you to dance to another's tune, and the obligation to pass the obligation on. Karen, who recently declared me to be a Versatile Blogger - thank you my lovely, truly - very thoughtfully decreed that the awardee could choose whether to 'take up the baton or just glow in the praise'. I think I might do both.

Ladies I'd like to pass to you that Versatile Blogger Award baton, to do with as you will. Bin it, merely bask in the glory for a while and move on, or bestow it upon others you believe to be worthy, the choice is entirely yours.

Annie at Artistica Domestica
Colleen at Rus in Urbis
Mrs Thrifty Household at Thrifty Household
Stephanie at Millefeuilles
Sue at Mr. Micawber's Recipe For Happiness

And just as I - thanks again to Karen - am not obliged to divulge some previously undisclosed personal quirks as a condition of accepting my award, nor are you. Just know that I value what you do.

Later. I thought I'd leave it there but I find I'm oddly tempted by the prospect of sharing a few of my eccentricities, aka the things I do that embarrass my children. I collect the skulls of small song birds, can and do perfectly mimic Ivor the Engine, and I play the bongos, badly. Oh, and don't mention the knitting in public!

* Please don't suppose that the marvellous Mise posts only about yoghurt!

More flowers, no knitting

2011-11-15T23:54:00.020Z

Sue at Backlane Notebook has issued a challenge. With only your garden, allotment if you have one, and local hedgerows to pick from, can you pull together some cut flowers to adorn your home each and every week of the year. Rather crazily I've decided to give it a go. Crazy because we have a minuscule courtyard garden, no allotment, and although there are a lot of hedgerows hereabouts I won't find much that's useful growing wild in winter.

I'm going to have to set some parameters of my own I think. Sue explicitly says bunch of flowers, but I shall allow myself the occasional two or three bloom posy like the one above, and accept that there will be times in the next few months when I'll have plenty of leafy greenery available but nothing that's got petals. At least for the moment, with the topsy turvy weather we're having, there are a few last remnants of summer - late roses, some daisies, a couple of shrubs - still flowering, even budding, outside. How crazy is that!

I'm also going to try to use as many as I can of the various 'vases' I've collected over the years - everything from vintage glass teething-powder bottles to treacle tins - although whether I'll be able to resist returning again and again to perennial favourites, like this tall white jug, remains to be seen. I do so love to see flowers in a jug!

I won't be posting about the challenge every week, but I'll certainly be sure to tell you about each week's flowers. I actually took this picture last week and processed it before I knew about Sue's idea. You can just see the tiny, round, brown glass vase peeping out below the flower on the left. This week's photo shoot awaits better light, but I promise, just as soon as there's a spot of sun, I shall photograph the flowers I found and share them with you.

And in other news? Virtual flowers go to Kath at Hillside Cottage, as a thank you for the walnut husks she generously gathered from her garden and posted to me so that I could dye more wool brown, and to Karen at A Quiet Corner, who has so very kindly declared me a Versatile Blogger, of which more another time.

Oh, and don't forget to enter my Vintage Flowers giveaway my lovelies, I want you all to have a chance to win.

And the knitting? Hardly a stitch. Although I am nearly done with the second Downton test knit. So that's another challenge, make more time for the craft I love best. How about you? Have you accepted any challenges lately? Do tell if you have.

Vintage flowers: a giveaway

2011-11-11T02:51:00.022Z

Something jolly exciting happened just the other day ... knitsofacto's follower numbers hit the fifties! And that clearly doesn't include all you lovelies following via Google reader and such! Plus page views for the last nine months topped 25,000* !! I think that calls for a celebration, don't you?

Actually, knitsofacto has been around since 2007, but for years it lay abandoned in a virtual attic gathering dust, until February, when on a whim I decided to give blogging another go. Blogtopia was much altered I found, and I wasn't sure if it still contained a knitsofacto shaped niche, heck I wasn't totally sure what shape knitsofacto was henceforth going to be. But I cleared out the old posts to make way for the new, restyled and revamped, and started afresh, follower-less and largely reader-less at first. And what a truly marvellous time I've had since, it's been a blast.

I'm not convinced I've cracked this blogging thing yet mind you. I mostly write as I speak - and yes I really do use words like jolly and discombobulated - but I can sound a bit school marmish from time to time, it's the academic in me, I can't always help myself. I'm not as funny yet as I know I can be. And I still feel very much a novice blogger. So I am humbled by your continued interest in what I do and make and write, and happy to have made so many lovely bloggy friends.

This giveaway is my thank you to everyone who has stopped by, I just wish I had a gift for each of you, a pretty primula in a little terracotta pot perhaps. Instead I have the perfect book to send to one lucky knitsofacto reader, Vic Brotherson's wonderful Vintage Flowers.I was given a copy for my birthday and I absolutely love it, so I'm really chuffed to be able to offer you the chance to own a copy too.

I was asked by a friend recently if there was anything I'd been surprised to find myself blogging about. And yes, there was: flowers! I adore them**, I always have, I just hadn't realised how tremendously important they are to me until they kept popping up here. I'm not often to be found in a florists but I always have flowers in the house. Cut from the garden, gathered from the fields and hedgerows hereabouts, forced indoors from bulbs, gifted to me by friends, or picked up for little more than pennies at local farmers markets. And I have a vast assortment of jugs, jars, bowls and bottles, old and new, that I use as vases. Which is just what Brotherson recommends: "try to keep as many different water holding vessels in your home ... as possible", she says, from "pickle jars" to "patterned milk jugs". I even have some old glass teething powder bottles!

I was hoping to have had a little booky photo shoot, to give you a taste of the contents of Vintage Flowers - blousy roses galore, hydrangea and hellebore, alchemilla and magnolia, cherry blossom, grape hyacinth - and tempt you to take part in the giveaway. But sadly the daylight here has been all but non-existent in the last few days, the skies so very grey and gloomy, and it's been quite impossible to squeeze a single decent picture out of the camera. No matter, if you scroll down here and click on 'View inside' you'll find plenty of enlargeable page views of Brotherson's book. Gorgeous isn't it, and packed with floral inspiration and useful how-tos, "tips, and old wive's tales". And see how Catherine Gratwicke's glorious photographs of the flowers are interspersed with images of vintage floral wallpapers and seed packets, and faded old paintings.

The usual pack drill then. Just leave me a comment if you'd like your name to be put in the hat, and it would be great if you'd also follow knitsofacto if you don't already, although that last bit's not essential. And for a second chance to win simply link to the giveaway on your own blog, if you have one, and then pop back and tell me that you have. Entries will close at midnight on Friday November 25th and I'll send the book anywhere in the world.

* I know stats can be deceptive, but hey, that's still a lot of page views!

** Except for lilies, I really do not like lilies.

The images top and bottom are of prints held by the Boston Public Library and do not appear in Vintage Flowers.

Dyed in the wool

2011-11-06T15:45:00.017Z

I thought you might like to see how things are looking in that acorn cup dye bath of mine. That's a length of boiled wool fabric, some Icelandic Lopi yarn, and some Teeswater tops. Pretty aren't they. And this is just the beginning. The first exhaust dye bath will give a paler shade, the second exhaust paler still, and then I'll use what's left to mordant some cotton.

The boiled wool* is lovely stuff to work with. Cheaper than 100% wool felt but just as versatile. Sure it doesn't come in many colours, but dyeing it easily remedies that. I will be using plant dyes to colour a fair few woolly bits and pieces in the weeks ahead ... but you'll have to wait to see what that's all about!

Meantime, it's Wovember, did you know? A joint venture between Kate Davies of Needled, who I'm sure needs no introduction, and The Domestic Soundscape's Felicity Ford, aka Felix, whose blog I highly recommend. A celebration of all things woolly, Wovember is also about campaigning against the misuse of the term wool in fashion industry garment descriptions. There's a petition to sign, and a competition to enter with woolly prizes from Jamieson and Smith. I'm guessing the interchangeability of the words 'wool' and 'yarn' is pretty ingrained in some quarters, but Kate and Felix hope that if we all work together we can remedy that.

Ingrained, by the way, quite literally means dyed in the wool. Kermes red, a substantive dye derived from the egg sacs of the female scale insect - do you ever find yourself wondering how these things are discovered? - was hugely prized in the Middle Ages. Scale insects feed exclusively on the leaves of evergreen Mediterranean oaks and were collected in tremendous numbers from those trees and dried for use as the blood red dyestuff kermes grain**. To dye 'in the grain' was to dye wool with kermes before spinning, a phrase that, over time, ceased to be dyestuff specific and was used instead to describe dyeing in the wool using any fast colour. Eventually 'in the grain' became, of course, ingrained. And kermes became crimson.

Kermes grain "was used till about the year 1656, when a Dutch chemist discovered the secret of getting a scarlet from cochineal by the use of tin, and so produced a cheaper, brighter, and uglier scarlet, much to the satisfaction of the civilized world; which has, for the last three hundred years, always greeted with enthusiasm every invention which tends to make its clothes and dwellings uglier and more inconvenient." William Morris (1884)

*Boiled wool is a knitted, as opposed to woven, 100% wool fabric that has been fulled.

**Or sometimes "kermes-berries, commonly, but ignorantly, so called", Nehemiah Grew (1676).

Happy Jammy Halloween

2011-10-31T02:50:00.016Z

All Hallows Eve, a night for making mischief, and jam! Although this year I broke with family tradition and made my All Hallows Jam a day early. We have decorators arriving this morning, so it was that or not at all.

I suppose there is some logic in making what is essentially pumpkin jam on the one day of the year when you can be sure you'll have pumpkins. But how far back this little seasonal ritual goes I have no idea. Grandma Eva's recipe called for "chopped turnip or pumpkin flesh", suggesting that it could date from the 1800s, when turnip lanterns were the height of Halloween chic!

I mostly use what my American cousin calls pie-pumpkin, rather than the traditional Halloween giants. My jack-o-lanterns might be a little smaller but my jam tastes soooo much better. Would you like the recipe? Yes, I thought you might!

All Hallows Jam, my way.

For every 1kg of chopped pumpkin flesh you will need the grated zest and the juice of I unwaxed orange, the grated zest and the juice of 1 unwaxed lemon, 70g of peeled and grated fresh ginger, 200 ml of water, and 500g of jam sugar, the kind that has added pectin. 50g of finely chopped crystallised ginger is a yummy optional extra that makes for a very gingery jam. Actually, the original imperial recipe uses crystallised ginger exclusively, so you could too if you prefer.

The pumpkin, the citrus zest and juices, and the fresh ginger are cooked in the water until the pumpkin is soft. Use a heavy bottomed pan with a lid, and give everything a stir from time to time. You may feel you don't have enough liquid at this stage, but trust me, you do.

Once the pumpkin is cooked you need to mash it up a bit, and the more you mash the smoother your jam will be. When you've achieved a consistency you're happy with return the pan to the heat, stir in the sugar, and the crystallised ginger if you're using it, bring to a vigorous boil, and cook for a further ten minutes or so. Spoon a little of the jam onto a plate and it should set as it begins to cool. If it doesn't, boil for a little longer and try again. Finally, pour the jam into jam jars you have sterilised in a +100°C oven. I usually put my jam jars into the oven just before I add the sugar to the pan, and take them out only moments before I need them. Place a wax disc, wax side down, on top of the jam in the jars and screw the lids on tightly. And there you have it, All Hallows Jam!

I toasted some pumpkin seed bread** for supper - thinking all the while of chef Valentine Warner, who devotes a whole chapter of his book The Good Table* to toast - and spread it with unsalted butter and still warm jam. Delicious. And a brilliant way to start 'Making Winter' along with Emma at silverpebble and Mrs Thrifty Household.

Outtakes

Son: "Isn't ginger like onions, doesn't peeling it make you cry?
Me: "No, not at all"
Three minutes later ...
Me: "Can I amend that last statement, I just got ginger juice in my eye!"

Me: "I must be the first person to blister her finger making jam"
Husband: "Surely not, cooks always have burns"
Me: "True, but this isn't a burn. It's where my finger was pressed against the wooden jam spoon, I think I stirred too hard!"

*Of which more another time. When I will post a proper thank you to Karen :D

** Please don't go assuming here that the bread was a wonderfully thrifty affair made by me with seeds from my pumpkin. I make the jam because tradition demands that I do, and that is quite enough slaving over a hot stove!

Downton: a hat

2011-10-28T23:40:00.031+01:00

Downton Abbey. Oh dear! There always was some sensationalism in the dramatic mix, but now it's getting silly*. And increasingly historically inaccurate. What of the war to end wars? The house may be as full of convalescent army officers as the plot is of clichés but Downton's habitués remain remarkably unscathed. One dead, one injured, the scandal of Mrs Patmore's nephew, the shell shocked Mr Lang, and Ethel's ruin ... have I forgotten anyone? And where's the knitting? Surely someone, below stairs at least, should have knitted a soldier some socks by now? Or maybe Mrs Hughes would like to knit that meagrely clothed baby a hat! I have a pattern she could borrow.

This one. Updated and rejigged, by me, to be knitted in Sirdar Sublime Merino DK as the Downton. Details to follow on Ravelry, just in case you should wish to knit one for a small person with a cold head.

Accurately dating undated knitting patterns is notoriously difficult, but this battle scarred Sirdar Knitting and Crochet Book** proved easy to pin down. The 'Doll Dressed in Crochet as a Soldier' was a joy of a clue ... he's wearing WW1 puttees. But the 'Crochet Respirator for Home Use' was the clincher.

"The respirator measures 2 inches at each end and 3 inches in the centre, and it is 9 inches long. Two pieces of crochet are worked exactly the same. Two thicknesses of cotton wool the same size as the crochet are laid between them, and the outside edges fastened together with a row of double crochet. After the respirator is complete, dip the whole in a strong solution of soda and let it dry.

1915 then, possibly late April, perhaps May. Chlorine gas, a new threat, was killing hundreds horribly at Ypres, and the Daily Mail was encouraging women to make pad respirators like these to be passed on to troops in the line. Unfortunately, the Mail's design was useless, even dangerous: ineffective against chlorine gas when dry, the pads blocked out all air when wet. Sirdar's crochet respirators seem similarly flawed, so it's a jolly good thing they were never needed for home use!

Back at Downton Abbey Mrs Hughes is now knitting her way through the chest protectors, 'comfy' colic belts, vaccination vests, baby's stays, 'useful' socks, coats, and gaiters that Sirdar so thoughtfully included in their little book. Well I like to think she is, anyway. She'll have that wee bairn properly kitted out in no time!

*We keep our television in a cupboard and rarely go to the trouble of wheeling it out. Downton Abbey certainly was worth the effort, but for how much longer? I chortled my way through this review, but beware if you are a fan and are yet to watch the second series as it's irreverent and full of spoilers.

**Part of my birthday present from that darling husband of mine.

Mishmash

2011-10-24T23:00:00.009+01:00

Mishmash. It's an old, old word. Dutchman Hadrianus Junius nailed its meaning in his Nomenclator (1585): A confused or disordered heape of all things together: a mishmash.

Apologies for going all lexicographical on you for a moment, but Junius was something of an iconoclast and deserves a digression. Topical dictionaries like his traditionally began with words pertaining to God, and to all things made by God, and ended with words pertaining to all things done and made by man. Kinda' from stars to starlings to speeches to spindles. Junius – physician, scholar, poet, mycologist* – stood all that on its head, he began with books!

"Words are names for things. They are produced by the voice and received by the ear. They are prevented from being forgotten by writing and made common property by printing. If forgotten, they can be recovered from books. This is why I begin with books"**

You've gotta' love the guy! Especially when I tell you that this polyglot dictionary of his included not just Latin words but everyday Dutch equivalents gleaned from the working men he drank with in the taverns of Haarlem. An iconoclast and a carouser. Go Junius!

So, this is going to be a mishmash of a post about mishmashy things. Like the quince jelly I'm making with a mix of 'Lescovatz' Serbian quince and 'Crimson and Gold' Japanese quince, the last of this years crop from the Walled Garden at Norton Priory. Which, by the way, is home to the National Collection of Tree Quince. The 'Lescovatz' is really quite yellow, and the 'Crimson and Gold' is, unexpectedly, very green. A proper mishmash. But hopefully it will be a tasty one. Sadly, only after I started cooking them did I discover that the Lescovatz are considered perfect for quince vodka!

I've been boiling up some acorn cup dye baths as well. Just along the hollow way*** that runs down toward the river from the house there is a row of ancient oak trees. Hubby is an ancient tree hunter – ancient applying there to the trees and not the hunter, she hastily types – and he assures me that these English oaks are very, very, very old. He even hugged them to be sure! So the acorn cups I gathered at their feet come from trees that were probably around when Junius was busy collecting words and suggestively shaped fungi.

I also picked up some fallen bark, covered in a blue-green lichen that refused to be dislodged, and that's now soaking too. How will the mishmash of tree lichen and oak bark affect the dye colour? I have no idea, but I'll keep you posted.

And the mishmash of photographs? They were taken on our half dozen visits to the Walled Garden this year.

* Phallus Hadriani, or the Dune Stinkhorn, was named by Junius, who wrote a treatise on "this gift of Nature" which quite explicitly explains why he called it what he did!

** Not a perfect translation, but you get the gist.

*** Locally these sunken lanes are known as hollow ways. There are a few hereabouts, routes that are Roman in origin and so have sunk quite a bit!

Of birthdays, books, and Bunnikins

2011-10-17T22:24:00.015+01:00

First things first ... the most humongous THANK YOU to everyone for their kind comments on my last post. Truly, having so many lovely people wish you well is both healing and humbling. I really was quite poorly for a few days there, so poorly that I could neither knit nor read, which was very discombobulating. And while I was ailing my birthday came and went and we had to cancel the short break that we had planned to celebrate it, and that was jolly discombobulating too. But copious amounts of birthday cake and lots and lots of birthday balloons definitely helped to dispel the gloom; as Winnie the Pooh so wisely said, "Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon". And of course there were presents, and some rather special ones at that!

As ever I was given an abundance of books. I don't often mention books here, which is odd, frankly, because this house is full of them, chock full. There are six tall bookcases dotted about the place, all stuffed with books two deep; books spill from side tables and night tables, are piled by chairs and on desks; and then there are the very many books that we've 'retired' to boxes in the store room. You can never have too many books methinks.

My birthday haul included a Virago first edition of Mrs Miniver*, Knitted garments for the family by Dorothy M. Beckett - one of the few Odham's knitting books I didn't already have - Vic Brotherson's Vintage Flowers, and the titles you see here** ... all of which deserve a post of their own! Oh, and there was a little something else from my darling husband. Something the eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted atop the books. Something I was surprised and delighted and enchanted by. Can you guess what it is?

The most perfect vintage Bunnykins cup! Penelope has a Bunnykins mug of the same design, made in 1986 to celebrate the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of York. She blogged about it back in the summer and I caught a very nasty case of the wanties right there and then. Amazingly, hubby took note! And the clever man found me one too. Mine, a tea cup with a 'Casino' style handle, is older and rarer than Penelope's mug, or so I am told, and it is one of the best little birthday presents I have ever had, because just look at what those Bunnykins are doing ...

... knitting up a storm, and frogging! Did someone drop a stitch, or are these thrifty little rabbits recycling their yarn? And the colours! I'm kinda' lost for words to describe the colours, although 'storybook' came to mind. Would you like a closer look? Of course you would, how could you resist!

Isn't it just the cutest thing. And better than that, it seems Walter Hayward's designs - 'Unravelling the Knitting' (front) and 'Trying on the Knitting' (back) - first saw the light of day in exactly the same year I did ... could there be a more perfect coincidence!

*I'd asked for this, inspired by Sue, but I didn't expect to get a copy with such lovely artwork on the cover.

**India Flint's Eco Colour, Angie Lewin's Plants and Places, and Antony Woodward's The Garden in the Clouds. There were some ancient knitting booklets too, but I'll tell you more about those another time because they really are very special. Oh, and a generous amount of cash in an envelope stamped with the words Yarn Fund ... my family know me well!

Resting

2011-10-10T23:53:00.004+01:00

Michael Ancher, The Sick Girl, 1882
I'm a wee bit under the weather just now, but thought I'd pop in to share this wonderful painting with you and apologise for missing so many of your lovely blog posts in the last few days. Back soon I promise, when I'm sure I'm going to have a lot of catching up to do!

Trending right now ... pumpkin!

2011-10-05T22:57:00.019+01:00

I know, I know, they're not pumpkins, but I so wanted to put them at the top of this post because every time I look at them they make my heart sing. And they are kinda' pumpkin coloured. A few cheap flowers, a little bit of ivy from the garden, and a jam jar ... my kind of simple. And a good stand in for the sun, which seems to have deserted us again. Don't they just make you feel like smiling?

Autumnal sunshine aside, orangey things do rather seem to be proliferating here of late. The farm-shop in the village is positively awash with home-grown pumpkins. Last year they ripened late and were barely ready come Halloween, this year they are much earlier. And more have been harvested than the shop expects to sell ... most folk hereabouts won't be hanging out their jack-o'-lanterns just yet, and I'm told that few people locally buy pumpkins with the intention of eating them. So at just fifty pence apiece - isn't supply and demand the most wonderful thing! - I filled my basket with pumpkinny goodness.

This little beauty was on it's way to becoming tonight's vegetable korma. No korma pics though, sorry, Ted's cooking as I type and I know better than to disturb my beloved when he's in curry creation mode ! No recipe either I'm afraid; he's a 'handful of this, pinch of that' kind of cook is my man, a method which apparently requires great concentration and at least one beer along the way. I do know a korma joke though ;D

The rest of my pumpkin haul is destined to become pumpkin and ginger jam, or possibly pumpkin and chilli chutney à la Sarah Raven. I haven't quite decided which yet. Chutney does need at least two months in the jar before it's really eat-worthy though, doesn't it, and I'm thinking Christmas presents here. So do I play safe and make something sweet, or take a risk on something spicier?

We had supper with friends yesterday and were served the most delicious gooseberry chutney. Did you know you could make the best chutney ever with gooseberries? I didn't. And it really was divine. Made by our host Richard from the gooseberries he grows in his garden, clever man. The courgettes in the soup were home grown too, and the tomatoes in the Wensleydale and tomato tart, and the red currants atop the Pavlova. It was a wonderful evening, spent in the company of a great mix of people ... a vicar, a sometime violinist, two prison officers, a couple of academics, and some holidaying Aussies. I wore my Indian cotton shawl ... pumpkin orange cropping up again you see!

Even my knitting is pumpkin coloured. I've really been feeling the need to take a break from working on knitsofacto patterns and relax with something easy that I'm not in the process of trying to design myself. And I've had my eye on Ariane Caron-Lacoste's Villeray for a while. The yarn is Artesano's 100% Alpaca 4ply and it is soooo soft. I'm not entirely convinced that a full length scarf in fingering weight yarn on 3.25 mm needles will prove to be the wisest project choice when I have so much else on the go, but so far I'm loving it :D

Hmm, I think you need to see those sunshiny flowers again, don't you. Gerbera, the African Daisy, according to a report in Curtis's Botanical Magazine of November 1899, "A very handsome plant ... with brilliantly coloured rays ... which, if it will resist the untimely frosts of our uncertain climate, will prove a great addition to the herbaceous garden." And clearly, might I add, to the jam jar!

Of lovely people and long distance parcels

2011-09-30T23:54:00.018+01:00

So the consensus, if I've heard all you lovely people aright, is that the reining in kinda' failed but that it really doesn't matter. That so many of you took the trouble to encourage me to carry on as I am has left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. Thank you, truly, to everyone who commented and emailed. I shall now continue on my knitsofacto way with renewed vim and vigour, knowing that bottoms are just as welcome as bind offs!

The wonderful generosity of the community of creative bloggers is something to be cherished in a world too often characterised by self interest. That was brought home to me today as I packed up the parcel of hand knits to post, as promised, to Kenta Shimohira of Scarves for Japan.

Huge, huge thanks go to Ali B., the other Ali (you know who you are), blog-less Helen, Vivienne, and my Mum and her chums at the WI. Between us we managed to fill a big, fat, squashy parcel with cosy scarves and hats and such. And with kindness and goodwill, because tucked in with every hand knit was a personal letter from maker to recipient, a warm hug from across the world in words as well as wool. I have to admit to getting a wee bit teary* wrapping the little Demnes for the August and September babies of Tohoku region mums who will have been newly pregnant when the tsunami turned their world upside down. How different their lives must be now to the futures they had imagined back then.

If you're reading this and you'd like to send something you've knitted or crocheted to Japan there's still plenty of time, just click on the Scarves for Japan link in the sidebar and you'll find all the info you need. And there are buttons for your blog and flyers you can print too, so it's easy to spread the word!

The knitting of scarves for those in need of comfort is nothing new. Colleen has kindly drawn my attention to VADS latest addition to their online database, the Richard Rutt Collection of nineteenth century knitting patterns (previously posted about on knitsofacto here). VADS features Helping the Trawlers', a book of knitting patterns published by the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fisherman. The authors are quite clear that "if knitted articles are taken in order of usefulness" then mufflers are superior to sea boot stockings, mittens or helmets. And basic instructions for a muffler are given ... "Two pins, no. 7 ... cast on about 50 stitches and knit plain or any fancy pattern" for 5 to 6 feet. So there you have it ... scarves rule!

Jevons and Mellor, of Corporation Street, Birmingham, supplied the wools needed to knit for the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen at "a special discount", and their advertisement on the inside front cover of Helping the Trawlers' reminds customers that "Orders amounting to 10s., if accompanied by a remittance in full, will be despatched carriage paid to any Railway Station in the United Kingdom, or by Parcel Post to address if cost be the same". So the excitement of having the postie deliver your stash from far away is nothing new either!

*Which is probably why I forgot to take any photographs until after I'd finished wrestling with the parcel tape and brown paper!

Not just knitting ...

2011-09-27T23:51:00.032+01:00

When knitsofacto came out of bloggy hibernation back in the spring I declared that, though never 'just' a knitting blog, it had previously been far too eclectic and needed reining in. Henceforth there would be 'mostly knitting'.

And yet here we are, six months later, and eclecticism is again in the ascendant. I’ve recently posted more about my button collection and Antony Gormley’s bottom than I have about my knitted works in progress.

What can I tell you. There has been knitting, and frogging, lots of frogging, and knitting up again. And there are a couple of new knitting patterns in the pipeline, but nothing that I'm ready to fully reveal *. Meanwhile, chronicling every last stitch that I knit and tink and tink and knit while perfecting my designs would, frankly, bore us all.

That's the problem with knitting, it's a slow and samey process that can lack visual interest. One row looks much like another. It doesn't have the multicoloured immediacy of most crochet, or the 'look what I ran up today' potential of anything involving a sewing machine. Knitting is all about the long haul, and that really doesn't make for a particularly beguiling blog.

In fact my commitment to 'mostly knitting' is starting to feel a little limiting**. It may not actually stop me posting about other stuff, but it does stop me posting about other stuff as often as I might. Were I to renege on the promise I don't suppose I'd feature knitting any less, but maybe I'd post more in toto. So, should I ditch the niche? Should I change the name? Should I leave things as they are? What do you think? And have you wrestled with similar dilemmas?

* The pictures in this post are of Murrow, a new lace-edged scarf.

** According to the V&A knitting bloggers have cats and mostly live in North America. Sitting here in Wales, surrounded by whippets, I wonder should I also be doubting my knitting blogger credentials ;D

Postcards from America, and a posy ...

2011-09-22T23:55:00.025+01:00

One of the pleasures of country living is the gathering of an abundance of wild floral things that come free. Even in the depths of winter I can usually find something to plonk in a vase and perk the place up a bit. Just now, on the eve of the autumnal equinox*, there is still plenty growing in the hedgerows and on the verges along the lane that will prettily adorn the mantel shelf or my work table. Today I brought home wild hops, hawthorn berries, the ubiquitous hogweed**, ivy, and fumitory. And, on returning with my haul, I found that the postie had delivered a parcel in my absence. A parcel sent by Heather in Oklahoma. A parcel of postcards from America!

Heather recently held a giveaway on her blog, Audrey Eclectic, and I was the winner. Me! Now how did that happen? I never win things. Okay, I did once win a years supply of disposable nappies***, which was kinda' handy as daughter number two was just a few months old at the time. But honestly, that's the only thing I've ever won before. And though all those nappies were clearly a very practical prize, the talented Heather's folk arty ladies are a whole lot prettier and more permanent! Thank you Heather, truly.

And in other news ... where there should have been a ta-dah moment today, a finished-knitted-thing, or at least a very-nearly-finished-knitted-thing, there is no thing at all ... Reader, I frogged it!

* September 23rd this year. Which, if I've got my dates right, is Heather's birthday too. Happy Birthday Heather :D

** Heracleum sphondylium, aka common hogweed or cow parsnip, native to the UK and not to be confused with the giant invading variety of hogweed.

*** That's disposable diapers to my North American friends.

100 days until Christmas!

2011-09-16T23:27:00.023+01:00

100 days !! Did you know? Did you want to know? I didn’t. Until a happy thought occurred. This year, instead of buying Christmas gifts for family and friends I shall make them, all of them*, in the next 100 days!

I always did give homemade Christmas presents, years ago, but somewhere along the way I lost my present making mojo. Time to refind it methinks! And I'll share the process, so far as I can**. Much knitting and sewing and such to come then ... I'd better get busy!

Luckily I don't have too many Christmas stockings to fill ! How about you? And do you make your 'stocking fillers', or do you prefer to shop for them?

* Or at least part of each and every one of them.

** Sorry Mum, there'll be no sneak previews for intended recipients who read knitsofacto!

The photograph, Christmas Eve c. 1901, has been cc licensed by the Library Of Congress.

Antony Gormley's bottom ...

2011-09-10T22:14:00.036+01:00

... a cheeky post ! *

We've been enjoying a short 'staycation' this past week. A holiday which has been all about visiting places within a thirty mile radius of our door that we had never visited before. Today we piled the whippets into the car and headed for the beach at Crosby, twenty-nine miles to the north. We wanted to see Antony Gormley's sculptural installation, Another Place ... 100 cast iron replicas of the artist's body that stand along the shore there, facing the sea. A beach party with a twist!

Each iron man wears a numbered wrist tag, matches Gormley's 6 foot plus height, and weighs in at 650 kg. Placed at irregular intervals along a two mile stretch of coast, many of the figures are completely submerged at high tide. Exposed to every kind of weather, to light, to salt water, to bird and barnacle, they have been textured by time, their contours blurred. Some, Ozymandias like, are half-buried in the sand.

It is not unusual for the iron men to be 'dressed' by those who come to see them. We found one with a mohawk and a goatee made of sand, another wearing a tatty plastic rain coat. In the past, we were told, they have been given balloons to hold, crowns of seaweed, sunglasses. But, knowing the affection many people feel for them, I was most struck by the friendship bracelet circling the wrist of number 81.

I had thought I might frame an arty intellectual response to Another Place, but frankly I'm struggling. I could write about the artist's use of the human body as motif - his own "particular and peculiar" body - or his fascination with the relationship between bodies and the spaces they occupy. But, unexpectedly, I was affected by the iron men emotionally, even viscerally. The figures look to new horizons - Gormley has talked of emigration and "the human need to imagine another life in another place" - but to the onlooker they seem more watchmen than potential wayfarers. They stand sentinel, and their presence is a hugely powerful one.

We were there at low tide in the late afternoon, the sun dropping into the sea. Next time we will visit when the tide is higher and the morning sun is at our backs, looking for another Another Place ! I wonder if the iron men have ever been yarn bombed? Do I dare, do you think?

Further reading on Gormley's work here.

*Sorry, I just couldn't resist!

Demne again

2011-09-03T22:19:00.021+01:00

It feels like it's been a long time coming - who am I kidding, it has been a long time coming - but finally my knitsofacto Demne pattern is free to download over at Ravelry. There were days when - as knitting needles snapped, yarns were discontinued, and tech editors dropped like flies - I was heard to mutter 'Never again !' ... but the birthing pains have quickly been forgotten and the next knitsofacto baby knit is already on the needles. Seeing the 'My original designs' tab on my Ravelry profile page is such a thrill, but does rather demand that I do something to earn the plural don't you think?

The wonder that is Ravelry makes everything so easy. Because the pattern is free anyone can download it, whether they have a Ravelry account or not. Isn't that marvellous! And it is free, not a penny to pay. But if you'd like to knit a Demne and you do have a little cash to spare perhaps you'd consider popping over to the wonder that is p/hop* and making a teeny donation to Médecins Sans Frontières** that will benefit babies who are almost certainly less fortunate than the little one you're knitting for.

Oh, and while I remember, somewhere else you might like to visit, for the chance to win a free Never Not Knitting knitting pattern and a copy of this book, is Stephanie's lovely blog Millefeuilles, where she is hosting a generous giveaway. Hurry though, it closes soon!

*Demne isn't actually listed at p/hop yet, but I'm hoping it will be soon.

**Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is an independent humanitarian medical aid organisation committed to providing medical aid where it is most needed, regardless of race, religion, politics or gender.

Glass buttons

2011-08-31T23:57:00.032+01:00

Today, while sorting through various boxes of arty crafty bits, there was a serendipitous moment when some glass buttons I'd tipped onto my desk rolled across some found imagery I'd been working with *. They looked so perfect together, the buttons and the pictures of postal ephemera, that I grabbed my camera. And the first shot I got was so pleasing that I staged a few more.

I've been collecting glass buttons since my art student days, and from the beginning there have been rules: only black, white or clear glass buttons, and only buttons that are older than I am. Why? I'm afraid I really can't recall. But the older I get the older these monochrome buttons I beg for and buy must be!

They come from car boot sales and charity shops, from ebay once in a while, and from other people's button boxes. They cost me pennies if they cost me anything at all. And they're just so darn pretty. But they are almost impossible to photograph satisfactorily, hence my delight in this morning's happy chance.

White glass buttons from pre-war Czechoslovakia. I have a box full of these, and a good handful of the plainer ones above. They are actually blanks and would have been hand painted with streaks of colour that followed the detail in the molding of the glass. Don't you think they are so much more elegant 'undressed ' ?

These came from my Grandma Eva and I clearly remember playing with them as a child. Oh the joy of being allowed to open the dull old biscuit tin where she kept her buttons, scoop up the pirate treasure within, and watch the many coloured 'jewels ' fall from between my fingers.

The mismatched set below came from Grandma Eva too. But there's a difference. The mismatches aren't glass, they're lucite. Made to mimic glass they are actually formed from an acrylic resin that was popular with button manufacturers in the 1930s and '40s. How do I know they aren't glass? A glass button will always feel cool if held against your cheek or lips, an acrylic imitation won't.

No question that these are glass, they are much thicker than the lucite buttons, and although small they weigh heavy in the hand. And see how they sparkle!

And these are the oldest buttons I own. Mosaic glass buttons with metal shanks that were probably made in Italy and are definitely Victorian **. They look well used and I love to imagine the clothes they might have fastened and the long ago woman who wore them. Did she think her buttons as beautiful as I believe them to be?

So, it's official, I'm a button nut! At least I'm not alone. How about you?

*More on that little project another time.

**Twentieth century molded glass buttons generally have an integral shank where nineteenth century glass button shanks are metal ... it's a pretty reliable way to date them.

Persuasion, and pinballs

2011-08-25T23:36:00.031+01:00

Have you spotted the Persuasion 'button' in my sidebar? I've signed up for a read-along over at Book Snob. Big grin. I'm no Janeite, but I do enjoy Austen’s novels, so much so that I once wrote a dissertation on the language of friendship in her published works*. It will be fun, the reading along ... care to join us?

It can be difficult to find anything fresh to say about Austen's writing, but Rachel's Book Snob review bravely explored why so many women identify with Persuasion's stoical protagonist, Anne Elliot. My mother certainly did, to the extent that she named her first born, me, for Austen's heroine. Unfortunately - although I agree with Mrs Oliphant that Persuasion is "the most interesting" of Austen's books** - I have always thought of myself, so far as I have identified with Austen's characters at all, as an Elinor***. I like Anne, but I’d like her a whole lot more if she was just a little less dutiful and self-effacing. So, hardly an original question, but which of Austen's heroines are you?

And did you know that knitting gets a mention in Persuasion? Just the once. The widow and invalid Mrs Smith, an old school friend of Anne's upon whom the plot turns, declares herself indebted to her nurse, Nurse Rooke, who has taught her to knit – "a great amusement" - and who facilitates the sale of her "thread-cases and pin-cushions", thus supplying the financially constrained Mrs Smith "with the means of doing a little good to one or two very poor families in this neighbourhood". Coded into this disclosure, of course, is the reassurance that although busily producing goods for sale – "I mean to make my profit of Mrs Wallis ... I intend she shall buy all the high-priced things I have in hand ..." - Mrs Smith is nonetheless genteel ... the making of 'fancy goods' was an acceptable pastime in polite society, their sale is being handled by an intermediary, and the income they generate, we're told, does not benefit the maker beyond allowing her to engage in the charitable giving that might be expected of a woman of her station.

It’s interesting though that, despite the reference to knitting in Austen’s text, literary types generally seem to assume that Mrs Smith is selling embroidered items. Yet I wonder if the 'pincushions' might in fact have been knitted silk pinballs, worked on fine steel 'makkin wires' little more than a millimetre in diameter, at a minimum gauge of ten stitches to the centimetre. Easy-on-the-eyes knitting it was not! But look at the pretties!!

*My principal academic interest is in Georgian and Regency friendship networks and not Georgian and Regency literature. Oh dear, that does sound horribly dry!

**Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant, quoted in Brian Southam, ed., Northanger Abbey and Persuasion: A Casebook, Macmillan, 1976

***Elinor Dashwood, steady sister to the emotionally susceptible Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, for those unfamiliar with Austen’s novels.

Further reading on knitted pinballs: Erica Uten, Tokens of Love - Quaker Pinballs, Needleprint, 2006

Ups and downs

2011-08-19T23:56:00.033+01:00

What a crazy, roller coaster of a week. A week of excitement and joy and disappointment and worry.

Up. A niece got great A' level results and secured a place at her first choice university.

Down. The thirteen year old son of a good friend is in hospital. He has rapid onset Transverse Myelitis and may never walk again. Our thoughts are with him.

Up. A little lottery win. Just enough to pay for a nice lunch at the pub. Kedgeree followed by Chocolate Coffee Bean Icecream. Yum!

Down. Three close family members, hubby included, learnt that they might be made redundant sometime soon. We have our fingers crossed that the company they all work for will be sold as a going concern.

Another 'up'. An unexpected refund from the tax man. We know we should bank it in case the worst happens, but we're thinking we might book a weekend away. Would that be so very naughty of us?

Another 'down'. Son Tom has fractured his metatarsal, just a few weeks before the triathlon he's been training so hard for, and won't now be able to compete.

And the best 'up' of all. Daughter Sally got impressive postgraduate diploma results and is now a bona fide archivist. Way to go girl!

I'm just hoping that's the end of the ride! And I'm thinking about the question asked over at Maxabella's this week. Is your blog your happy place? Do you only record your 'ups' for posterity? Or are you equally happy to share your 'downs'?

Picture credit

Of cold feet and hiccups, and knits for Japan

2011-08-14T20:27:00.021+01:00

"Cold feet will be a fruitful cause of wakefulness", asserts my recently thrifted copy of The Motherhood Book (1934)*, and my metaphorically cold feet are certainly keeping me awake at night just now. It’s scary stuff, this designing of tiny knits for tiny people. The "distinguished group of specialists" responsible for The Motherhood Book knew a thing or two about the importance of "knitted woollies" in a baby’s life, and they issued copious instructions regarding "piles of snowy garments" in "pure wool" and "silk mix". They also had a lot to say about a mother’s "delight" in clothing her baby in the "ideal way", and how very important it was that she do so. And they had an exact, and exacting, notion of what was and what wasn't 'ideal'. I don’t entirely trust their judgement – would you feed your baby "scrambled brains" and "tripe in milk"? - but the essence of a good baby knit surely hasn’t changed so very much since 1934. The pilche** may be a thing of the past but "warmth without weight" and "practical first, pretty second" seem commendable "mottos to dress baby by" to me. Yet the little voice of doubt pipes up, 'What if Demne is all fur coat and no knickers', 'What if no one delights in knitting it?', 'What if it isn't ideal'?.

I’ve been designing knitted baby things since two quite unconnected friends each presented my first born with identical hand knit rompers, worked in exactly the same yarn in exactly the same colour. But previously my 'originals' have all been custom gifts, not prototypes for proper patterns. Which is where the hiccups come in. Demne will be a one-size-only affair. Why? Because I designed it for a particular new arrival, Finn, with no thought of a baby of three or six months, and I didn’t realise that the 'stripes' would not match up if I tried to make it bigger. The only way to size it up, I now know, having tried, is to use thicker yarn and bigger needles. Another hiccup ... after pulling a favourite go-to yarn from my stash for the project I discovered that Sirdar plans to discontinue it. Talk about bad timing! These things matter when there's a pattern release pending. Fortunately my lovely friend Lal was quick to test knit with a substitute and tech editing continues. But I still can’t shake my amazement at folks' interest in knitting Demne, or my fear that it will disappoint.

I too did another test knit, in 'Natural White' Fibre Harvest 'Knit by Numbers' Merino DK from John Arbon. It was a perfect choice ... the Demne pictured above is just so, well, woolly, and yet incredibly soft. And it is destined to travel afar ... all the way to Japan! Do you know about the appeal to gather warm hand knits - scarves, hats, gloves and babywear - to keep victims of the Japanese tsunami warm through the coming winter? Scarves for Japan hopes both to provide cosy woollen clothing for those who lost everything, and to reassure them that people still care. The victims of natural disasters are all too soon forgotten as world events roll on and the people of Miyagi Prefecture are feeling increasingly alone. To send a scarf or a baby sweater that you have made is to send a warm hug from across the world. I'm aiming to put as many Demne's and kids beanies as I can in the post on September 30th - my Mum and my mates are knitting like crazy already - and I would be more than happy to pop your hand knits in the box too if that helps, just drop me a line***.

* The Motherhood Book for the Expectant Mother and Baby’s First Years: An entirely new work compiled by a distinguished group of experts and specialists in health, maternity, infant and child welfare, 1934, Allied Newspapers Ltd.

** OED: A triangular wrapper of flannel, wool, etc., worn over a baby's diaper or napkin. Now rare.

*** My contact info is in the sidebar and the postage to Japan is on me. I'm guessing crocheted woolly scarves and such are just as welcome too, so this appeal is not just to knitters.

Life is just a bowl of cherries

2011-08-10T12:50:00.027+01:00

A 'good things' post today. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and although the weather forecast is for a rainy afternoon that's not a problem, I revel in a walk in the rain. Perhaps I’ll take myself off to the oak wood on the hill, along with the whippets, and get delightfully damp as I listen to all the soft watery sounds of the summer rain falling onto the leafy canopy overhead and drip, drip, dripping to the woodland floor below.

The dogs will be totally absorbed by all the new sniffs that come with fresh rain, disappearing into the ferny undergrowth around the trees, and the long grass of the open glades, with their noses to the ground. They'll reappear from time to time, to shake themselves dry and snuffle at my pockets in case I have Polo mints or, better still, cheese ... they’ll do anything for cheese! But then they'll be off again, until I whistle them to me and turn for home.

Back at the house I shall pick a few sweet peas from the hanging baskets in the garden, just enough to pop into a little old ink bottle ‘vase’ and brighten the end-of-rainy-day grey. Thompson and Morgan’s 'Sugar n Spice', grown from seed. Have you tried them? They smell divine. Growing sweet peas aloft is a necessity here, if we don't the whippets eat them! As they do the jasmine, and the hibiscus buds. Seemingly hibiscus bud is to whippet what the finest chocolate is to woman, well to this woman anyway; the whippets would gorge on hibiscus if they got the chance. We do battle over the hibiscus buds every summer, the dogs and I.

Once we're indoors, and I've towelled the dogs dry, I’ll make chamomile tea. Good chamomile flower tea, the expensive kind, is a must have chez knitsofacto, it's an extravagance I know but I savour every sip. I shall pick up my knitting and curl up somewhere comfy with my teacup to hand and enjoy the peace that reigns when the whippets are asleep after a really long walk. And perhaps, as I knit, I'll imagine myself back in The Vinery at Arley Hall, with fuzzy, golden peaches ripening on the wall behind me, and figs and grapes above my head. That's where I sat and knitted the last time I was there. Happy memories.

All the photographs in this post were taken in the gardens at Arley Hall, Cheshire.

Keep calm and carry on ...

2011-08-09T23:55:00.017+01:00

It's what we do, we Brits. This original WWII Ministry of Information poster, first seen in 1939, was intended as a morale raising acknowledgement of British stoicism, a reminder of how we could be expected to behave were our cities to be invaded by the enemy and our streets echo to the stamp of jackboots.

And now that a tiny minority* of disaffected youths are littering those streets with burnt out cars and glass from broken windows we're keeping calm and carrying on once more. Tonight it's Manchester's turn to be looted and torched, and tomorrow in Manchester, just as in London and Liverpool and Birmingham today, a different kind of mob, a mob armed with brooms and buckets and bin bags, will turn out to tackle the mess that the rioters leave behind.

Manchester is 'my' city, home to my father's family for many generations, to our favourite theatre, The Royal Exchange, and to the wonderful Purl City. But many of my husband's family live in London and others have spoken, more eloquently than I can hope to, of the situation there.

A Playful Day
Book Snob
Rus in Urbis

* In Greater London alone there are over a million young people, 99.9% of them have not been behaving unlawfully.

Pale and Interesting: a review, of sorts

2011-08-05T23:43:00.050+01:00

Unlike us, with our four children and our six dogs, my sister and her fella’ have no kids and no canines. Instead they have The Retreat, a 1930s artisan built timber chalet that stands in the middle of its very own wild-wood in the middle of nowhere. The Retreat had stood empty for half a lifetime before they took it on and was close to falling down. It eats more of their time and their money than our many children and dogs have ever consumed of ours. But it is their baby and they are lovingly, if ever so slowly, restoring it. And, with minimal help from professional builders and plenty of input from local craftspeople, they're doing most of the work themselves.

Rat-a-tat on The Retreat's front door with the custom-made-by-a-local-blacksmith acorn-and-oak-leaf door knocker, and you will be admitted to the perennial building site within. A dust sheeted, tool scattered, electrical wire festooned space which may surprise you if you arrive after dark, but not if you have come in daylight and observed the perennial building site without, strewn with piles of reclaimed oak cladding and assorted architectural detritus. “It will be lovely when it’s finished”, we all say, and I’m sure it will be. But, for now, they live for what they dream The Retreat can become while, quite literally, camping inside the charming if chilly shed that it currently is.

Every weekday morning they set off bright and early in their shiny company cars, my sister and her man, to tackle the long commute to their respective offices in a distant city. And every weekday evening, after the long drive home again, they tend to mundane chores and their vegetable garden. But come the weekend they swop their corporate wheels for a Land Rover that has seen better days, and their tailored suits for paint spattered coveralls, and then they happily hang out in architectural salvage yards, and home improvement stores, and up ladders, and under floors. They plan to make most of their own furniture when the work on the house is finally done. “It will be lovely”, they say. I wouldn’t have the patience!

I suspect that my sister and I are from different planets. Show me a book with the word ‘Interiors’ on the cover and I shy away. She, on the other hand, is in heaven. So Atlanta Bartlett and Dave Coote’s Pale & Interestingseemed a suitable choice for her birthday present. But, before handing over this alien object, I sneaked a peek inside ...

If you ask me – I know you didn’t, but I’m just going to pretend that you did - Pale and Interesting peddles a stunningly styled and sumptuously photographed ... lie. And I'd say it's quite probable that Bartlett and Coote really are from a different, and far distant, planet. I must hope it’s the same one my sister hails from!

“Take inspiration from humble things”, the authors say, “make the most of what you’ve got”. Which is all well and good but I can only assume that their dictionary gives a somewhat different definition of humble to mine. And that they have more money and more space to 'make the most of ' than I can likely ever hope for. They seem to suppose that we all live in 'period' homes with ancient beams just waiting to be exposed, kitchens big enough to accommodate an 'island', and plenty of room for a replica shepherd’s hut at the bottom of the garden. And if Bartlett and Coote have really raised kids and wrangled dogs in similarly pale and interesting interiors then I’d hazard a guess that they've also had staff. Where are the marks left by the grubby little hands of children just in from playing out? Where are the paw prints? Where is the muddle of toys and school books and wellington boots that I associate with family life? Jeez, if I accessorised our home by throwing “a richly embellished sari over [one of the] beaten up leather armchairs” a whippet would probably eat it! And I can just imagine the outcry if I'd banned Ribena and Coca Cola, as Bartlett and Coote must surely have done.

It’s not all bad. I’m with them on the “keep it simple” and “celebrate the imperfect” approach, although chez knitsofacto the latter generally equates to making a virtue of a necessity rather than spending a fortune on "eclectic antiques". And "shades of pale" we can most definitely do, as long as they're not too pale and and we keep a wet cloth to hand at all times.

I should maybe make it clear here that although knitsofacto Towers is in the country it is most definitely not a country cottage with rambling roses at the door. Ours really is a humble abode; the middle house in a modern row of three three-storey homes that were built, at the planner’s insistence, to match the similarly tall and terraced Victorian and Edwardian farm worker’s houses that are a feature of this village. We have a tiny courtyard garden, just as they do, and I am forever grateful that those same county planners forbore from insisting on matching brick privies as well. Inside is 'interestingly' proportioned and poorly arranged. Some of the upstairs rooms are built into the eaves. We’re all sloping ceilings and uselessly small alcove cupboards. We don’t have a separate dining room, or an en suite bathroom just for grownups. But, back when the kids were littlies and I was a stay-at-home Mum, it was the best we could afford in a place that one pays a premium for the privilege of living in. All six of us fitted inside, just, along with the children’s budgies, goldfish and guinea pigs, and the dogs we had then. We thought we’d soon move on. We didn’t. From our bedroom windows we can see for miles across the lush meadows where the whippets love to run, all the way to the hills and the mountains beyond. At the end of the lane the River Dee rolls lazily by in summer, and rushes through in the wetter months, hurrying then to get to the not-so-very-far-away sea. The hedgerows hereabouts are all frothy white blossom in spring, and purple with a wild harvest of sloes, damsons, elderberries and blackberries come the autumn. The children are growing up and moving on now, but we’ll probably stay. We like it here.

Do I like Bartlett and Coote’s book? No, not really. Agreed, the colour palette is totally me. And ditto the abundance of flower filled jugs and jam jars, and all that lovely, lovely linen, and the painted pebble-grey wood panelling. But, although admittedly a very pretty book, it is also a profoundly annoying one. Faced with statements like “this opulent yet low-key dwelling” I’m too busy complaining about the oxymoron – surely nothing can be both ostentatious and restrained - to appreciate the authors' passion for “chalky pastels” and “distressed patinas”. The important question, though, is ‘Will my sister like this book’? And yes, I think she will, because after careful consideration I’ve concluded that, unlike me, she probably is from planet Bartlett and Coote. Happy Birthday Sis!

All photographs in this post are of Atlanta Bartlett and Dave Coote’s Pale and Interesting: decorating with whites, pastels and neutrals for a warm and welcoming home, 2011, published by Ryland Peters and Small, ISBN 978-1-84975-112-4

Lavender

2011-07-30T23:57:00.011+01:00

A flower "of middle summer", that was William Shakespeare's take on lavender in The Winter's Tale. And for a few short weeks in July the lavender farms hereabouts prove the point. Catch one open - harder than you'd think - and you may stand in a sea of blue that's abuzz with bees and pick some lavender to take home. Sometimes there is lavender ice-cream to be had, sometimes jars of thick lavender honey. Always the air is heavy with the flowers' heady scent.

Tied tightly with a loop of twine these have been hanging, heads down, in the dry air of the attic for a week or two now.

A different William, William Shenstone, nailed that part of the story ...

And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom
shall be, ere-while, in arid bundles bound
to lurk amidst the labours of her loom
and crown her kerchiefs clean with mickle rare perfume ...*

Personally I like my lavender to do its lurking from inside a lavender sachet, and the next batch of sachets I make will be edged with this ... hand knitted lavender-grey perle cotton picot points. What do you think?

* William Shenstone, The School Mistress, 1742

Le Tricot

2011-07-27T19:59:00.038+01:00

Position les mains poue le tricot

How she came by it I have no idea, but my Welsh grandmother possessed a copy of Thérèse de Dillmont's Encyclopédie des Ouvrages de Dames* in the original French. As a child I was enchanted by it. Neither she nor I could read much French but together we would guess at Dillmont's text.

My grandmother was a knitter, le tricot, and a tatter, la frivolité.

Le dénomination de 'frivolité' est essentiellement française, we read ... so did the French think tatting frivolous, or did they think it fun? Le tricot est l'un des plus anciens et des plus perfectionnés ... we were inclined to agree, knitting was an older art, and definitely a better one.

Encyclopédie des Ouvrages de Dames is now mine, kept in remembrance of my Grandma Eva and much cherished, along with her favourite rosebud studded Royal Albert teacups, and her ivory silk wedding shoes from 1926.

Today, as I attempted to decipher Cécile Franconie's beautiful French language blog C'est Facile avec Cécile, I was reminded of those long ago afternoons with my grandmother and Thérèse de Dillmont. My French is little better now than it was back then, but thankfully Cécile's photographs speak for themselves. If you pay her a visit be sure not to miss the tiny knitting hare, Lapinette tricote, and her oh so pretty Trousse 'Rose'.

Cécile is kind enough to link to knitsofacto, and so is Stephanie Boudazin of Millefeuilles, another truly delightful French blog that is written in English. Stephanie's blog is a magical place ... I feel so at home there, amongst the flowers and the knitting!

And then there's Dona, who also writes in English, and Azelie, who doesn't. Amazing knitters both. Azelie is another whose incredible photographs don't need words. And Dona is my guide to the yarn emporia of Paris**. I covet a pair of her splendiferous socks!

I kinda' feel as if I've come full circle, le tricot is back in my life!

*Dillmont's Encyclopedia of Needlework, in English, is available free and with no restrictions on use from Project Gutenberg.

**I also buy yarn, mail order, from Laine & Tricot in La Chapelle sur Erdre. If you're within the UK it's as easy as buying from online stores here, and just as quick. Highly recommended!

Meet Jim

2011-07-23T23:03:00.015+01:00

No knitting today, instead we took the whippets to the beach.

I needed cheering up. I recently discovered that my blood pressure is quite high and I'll admit I've been feeling a little sorry for myself. Not in the best of health I now have one more thing to deal with ... grr! So, some sun, sea and sand of the north Welsh variety seemed the perfect cure for my self-indulgent blues.

Things didn't go quite according to plan; we did have a wonderful walk along the shore, but we had to cut our outing short when Tyg trod on a beached Lion's Mane jellyfish and got stung on the paws for his trouble. Don't worry, he's fine. An antihistamine, a doggy painkiller, a vinegar foot wash, and a large helping of lamb's hearts later he's sleeping off his ordeal on the biggest, softest, squishiest dog bed we own.

But I've not posted pictures of Tyg today, sorry, these are all of Jim, because it was watching this little chap clowning about that really restored my spirits. Jim has far more reason than me to be sad, and yet he never is. Happy as the day is long, that's young Jim!

See how awkwardly he carries his right foreleg? When Jim was just a few weeks old he dislocated his elbow - we don't know how - and his unscrupulous breeder did nothing! Perhaps he didn't notice, perhaps he didn't care, but when it became clear that Jim "wasn't right" he abandoned our adorable stripy boy. And we rescued him!

He was in a pretty poor state when we picked him up - dirty, hungry, and so very thin - but thankfully he wasn't in too much pain. He had been, we're sure, but his dislocated bones had gone on growing outside the joint (making it impossible to repair) and his adaptable little puppy body had somehow adjusted to his disability. He remembered the pain though, and maybe the fear ... he would dream about it! And wake whimpering and shuddering and almost inconsolable. So we cuddled him a lot - cwtched him, as the Welsh say - and slowly he forgot.

Well meaning folk thought we should have him euthanased, or at best wrap him up in cotton wool and never let him run, but we knew that Jim could hope for better than that.

Clearly we needed to ensure that the rest of Jim's body, the undamaged part, grew as strong and as true as possible and wasn't compromised by the strain that his inevitably awkward gait would put upon it. A good friend who is a Galen therapist taught me how to massage Jim daily to keep him supple, a local canine hydrotherapy pool donated swim sessions, and our generous vets treated him but didn't charge us much ... people were so kind.

And it worked! Jim has celebrated his first birthday (we don't know the exact date but it's sometime in late May), and although he walks with a limp he lives life to the full, just like the other whippets. His muscles and ligaments hold the bones of his right leg approximately in place, and this false 'joint' is amazingly stable, despite having a range of movement somewhat greater than the norm. True, in time his right wrist may become arthritic and perhaps need surgery, but what does a dog care about tomorrow? Today he can run. And just look at him go!

The knitsofacto bind off

2011-07-22T20:03:00.024+01:00

I promised you a tutorial for the bind off I stumbled across while experimenting with just-so edges for Demne, and here it is! Oh, and I've added a picture to Demne's Ravelry page of young Finn wearing his little cardigan ... he's just so cute!

Demne is knitted cuff-to-cuff, and both cuffs and the button and buttonhole bands have bound off edges*. In consequence there's no need to worry about matching cast ons to bind offs, but two of the bind offs are prominently center front and I wanted them to blend well with the seed stitch bands. That's a section of the bound off buttonhole band in the picture above. What do you think?

I liked my bind off enough to ask Lal and Francesca to test knit it for me - thank you so much you two - and happily I got positive feedback from them both. Francesca declared it to be "the best garter stitch bind off ever" - you can see what she meant in picture 5 below - and encouragingly she both tried and failed to find anything quite like it elsewhere. Not that I suppose, not for one moment, that I'm the first to have invented a twisted purled bind off - think of all the knitters down the centuries puzzling out solutions to their knitting problems and you know there can be nothing new - but maybe I'm the first to have written it down?**

So, how do you work my knitsofacto bind off? Like this!

Working with needles two sizes smaller than those you have used to knit your garment*** purl the first stitch and place the new stitch you have just made, purlwise, back onto the left needle (not pictured). Next, insert the right needle into the first two stitches as if to knit them together (1), but instead slide them from the left needle (2), twist them anti-clockwise (3) and replace them, purlwise, onto the left needle, keeping the right needle to the front (4) ...

... now purl these two stitches together (5 and 6), and then place the new stitch you have just made, purlwise, back onto the left needle (7), snugging the stitch into position (8), before working again from (1). Continue until you have purled the last two stitches together and then, as with any other bind off, pull the end of the yarn through the remaining stitch to finish. It's the right side that I've pictured here, but the reverse has a certain knobbly cable-like appeal too.

*Courtesy of a couple of provisional cast ons

**If you have seen this bind off somewhere else please do let me know.

*** If you knit tightly you may only need to drop one needle size ... experiment if you're unsure. If your needles are too big the bound off edge will flare slightly, if too small it will be too tight.

Daisy, daisy ...

2011-07-17T02:43:00.032+01:00

What fun we have had, pottering about in the garden at Arley Hall today. I got quite carried away photographing all the daisies*. There were so many!

The garden was first recorded on a map in 1744, but is probably far older than that would suggest. There has been a substantial house on the site since the fifteenth century and it has been home to the Warburton family for over 500 years. Quite by chance we bumped into Michael Warburton Flower while we were there, the current Viscount Ashbrook. Dragging a hosepipe behind him he was watering young plants in the woodland garden; a "never-ending" task, he said. I wanted to ask about the preponderance of daisies, but didn't.

Eye of the day, that's what Chaucer called the daisy. Day's eye, the flower that closes with the dimming light of evening and opens again with the dawn. On this glorious strawberry sundae of a July afternoon all the Arley Hall daisies - in the kitchen garden, the walled garden, and the woodland garden - had turned their faces to the sun.

That men by reason will it calle may
The daisie or elles the eye of day
The emperice, and floure of floures alle.
......................................Geoffrey Chaucer

Chamomile is a member of the daisy family too, and there was an abundance of chamomile nodding to the sun in the herb garden**. Great drifts of it! We drank chamomile tea on the lawn outside the Arley Hall teashop, sitting on ornate white-painted wrought iron chairs ... it seemed appropriate.

Sadly, though I may know chamomile when I see it, I'm no plantswoman. Osteospermum, Aster, Marguerite, Bellis ... I'll hazard we met them all, but I'm not brave enough to caption the rest of my photographs with plant names for fear of embarassment. I will say that my personal preference is for the cool white, yellow and green of the archetypal English daisies, but my goodness these flowers can be hot!

Did you spot the hoverfly? The garden was abuzz with them, all gorging on pollen. Daisies attract hoverflies and hoverflies are highly efficient pollinators that also feast on aphids and leafhoppers, the best kind of biocontrol. Perhaps that's why the gardens at Arley are just bursting with daisies of every kind. Worryingly, we didn't see many bees.

These last were in the kitchen garden, between the runner beans and cabbages and the sweet-peas. Aren't those colours amazing? Wouldn't it be lovely to have such a vibrant cutting garden on one's own little patch!

I didn't entirely restrict myself to photographing daisies, but I'll share the rest of my Arley Hall garden pictures with you another time. And did I mention that there was knitting? I can think of nowhere better to relax and knit a little than a shady corner of an English garden on a sunny summer's day. Can you?

*I should be clear that I'm using daisy in it's broadest sense here, to describe all the daisy like flowers that belong to the order Asterales.

**The sun popped behind the only cloud in the sky just as I took the photographs of the chamomile, can you tell?

Field Notes

2011-07-13T23:52:00.038+01:00

Two parcels in the post today ... some more Field Notes and a new Fisher Space Pen ... all for me :) (Note to my sons: hands off!)

I'd be lost without my pocket-size Fisher Space Pens. They're very handy for writing while lying flat on your back ... sunny afternoon, garden hammock, Times Crossword, no problem, well not with the pen anyway! And they are really useful for taking notes in the rain - has been known - and in zero gravity* - unlikely to happen I admit - and in temps of +200°C - well that's what it says on the box, though were it ever to be that hot I suspect I'd have more pressing issues than whether or not my pen still worked! The new one is the classic bullet shape, matt black, and kinda steampunk.

Unlike the Fisher Space Pen my Field Notes sadly won't work underwater (papier-mâché anyone?) but are perfect for ... well, for "writing it down ... to remember it now" **. I have a whole bunch of them: knitsofacto and all my knitting projects come to you courtesy of Field Notes. Those subtle graph paper pages are darn handy when you're coding a bit of HTML or charting stitch patterns, and printed along the inside edge of the back cover there's a five inch ruler that I swear was intended for measuring guage swatches!

If you're as geeky as I am about notebooks you'll know that not everyone loves Field Notes; there are some, hard as I find it to believe, who prefer Moleskine Pocket Cahiers. Why? I have no idea. Field Notes have fewer pages, it's true, and a stapled rather than a stitched binding, but they last, unlike their Gallic counterparts***, and they look so good! And with their softer covers they'll even survive being stuck in your back pocket and sat upon, although they may take on something of a feminine curve thereafter (I write from experience here). Where Moleskines claim to be for travellers - "a symbol of contemporary nomadism" - Field Notes are made for stay-at-homes with a job to do. Durable, 9cm x 14cm, 48 pages, perfect 1-pica-graphed paper (or plain, or lined): what's not to like?

They also speak to me as the grand-daughter of a letterpress typesetter who would have greatly appreciated the simplicity of the Futura typeface, and that the inside back cover lists papers, inks, and even the printing presses used. And as the owner of a miniature wire-haired dachshund how could I resist ...

Cover: French Dur-O-Tone 80#C "Packing Brown Wrap", with a thick, brute force, 1-Color application of "Dachshund Nose" black ink ... printed on a Heidelberg SP 102 28"/40" 6-color printing press.

The things I wrote down 'to remember now' today ...

A couple of web addresses: Lane Borgosesia Bollicina, a 4ply cashmere/sillk blend that's new to me, and Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread, which looks just perfect for a knit and natter don't you think?

Lots of knitting maths: I've been working out the stitch counts for a next-size-up Demne. (Edited to say, unsucessfully ... I can't make the stripes match up.)

And I sketched some garment shape ideas for the next few knitsofacto baby knits!

And now I can have a 'desktop' Field Notes too ...

Field Notes: Making of Steno Book from Coudal Partners on Vimeo.

* Which is what these pressurised pens were designed to do. Don't believe the old chestnut that NASA expensively commissioned space pens while the Soviets settled for pencils ... imagine what happens when your pencil breaks in zero gravity!

**The Field Note slogan: "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now." Field Notes were "inspired by the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books".

***They're actually made in China these days.

Demne

2011-07-09T09:55:00.018+01:00

For Finn, 05.07.11

Pattern: Demne by knitsofacto, aka me! To be released soon, as a free pattern.

Ravelry project page here

Size: newborn, to fit chest 16", garment measures 18"

Yarn: Sirdar Balmoral DK, 73% Wool/25% Alpaca/3% Silk, 100g/234m

Needles: 4mm (UK size 8, US size 5.5) 10" rosewood straights, and 3.5mm (US size 4) 10" rosewood straights for bind off.

Why Demne? Well, I set out to design something original for a friend's baby and I wanted to name it for him. She knew she was expecting a boy and had decided before he was born to call him Finn. This is the Finn of Irish legend - Fionn Mac Cumhaill ... hunter, warrior, poet, seer - whose boyhood name, the old stories tell us, was Demne. And Demne means something akin to steadfast, which seems just the kind of quality a fairy godmother might wish upon a newborn.

I'd like to think Demne will be a dependable little jacket too. One of those easy-to-knit easy-to-use items that would look good on a boy or a girl. Memo to self: must persuade one of my test knitters to try it in pink!

Do you like the buttons? They were among my vintage button finds at Woolfest, or rather they were among my good friend Lal's. She also has a stash of this lovely yarn and so knew that these would be perfect for Demne when she spotted them lurking in a box of bargain buttons on a vintage button stall. My part in the discovery was to then knock said box of vintage buttons to the floor in my excitement ... which was both embarrassing, as we scrabbled for buttons that had rolled in every direction, and serendipitous, as in scooping them up we found quite a few more that we wanted to buy. We did come back from Woolfest with a lot of buttons.

They're stitched on securely with colour-matched cotton thread, but I've used a single ply of the yarn on top to hide it anyway

The bind off I've used seems to be my own invention too! I was playing with different possibilities, trying to create a 'just-so' edge, and eventually found something I liked that seemed quite new to me (if anything can ever be said to be new in knitting, maybe I've just unvented* it). A quick poll of my 'knitty' friends, a couple of whom - thank you so much Lal and Francesca - have kindly tested it for me, suggests that the technique might actually be all mine, so I'll try to put a little tutorial together one day soon and post it here.

*Elizabeth Zimmerman coined the word 'unvent' to describe knitting solutions that you've figured out for yourself but find it hard to believe are original. Knitter's use it freely but, frankly, it's an awful word. To 'un' anything is to take away from it, and yet each rediscovery of something, if rediscovery it is, surely adds to it. I may be one of many knitters to have worked this particular bind off, and some of them may well have written it down before, but I can find no record of it and surely the fact that I can now share it with knitters everywhere via the wonders of the web deserves a more celebratory verb than unvent. Suggestions anyone?

Please note that the pictures in this post are copyright knitsofacto and are not cc licensed.

A preponderance of knitted underwear!

2011-07-06T21:15:00.014+01:00

Vest and Pantie Set, 1940

"Feather-soft undies', says the caption, "wool moulded to fit your figure - light as thistledown - hardy as finest silk" ... so that'll be knitted knickers then!

Brassiere-top Vest and Panties ... designed to fit smoothly and give support, 1947

"The open rib of the panties is adapted for the brassiere top ... which is cleverly designed in a charming flower pattern" ... so that's knitted knickers and a knitted bra! To fit a 34" bust apparently, although the stretchiness of the knitting no doubt meant the cup would accomodate a range of sizes.

"When a schoolgirl begins to grow older she longs for lovely underwear in contrast to her more austere schoolgirl clothes. Here is a charming, well fitting camiknicker, with picot edged shoulder straps, which she will find warm and practical as well as pretty."

I asked my mother and my aunt, both of whom were schoolgirls and knitters in the '40s, to comment on the above ... and they both suffered a severe fit of the giggles! Hand knitted vests were commonplace apparently - no central heating and not much coal in wartime Britain, and the houses were draughty and the winters cold. And camiknickers were not uncommon they told me, although were shop bought or home sewn in their experience, and most definitely not 'pleasing'. But knitted bras and, worse, panties ... it took them a good while to get over the hilarity of that! So do you know anyone who wore knitted knickers in the 1940's, because clearly I don't.

The books these images come from were among my Woolfest vintage goodies*: Practical Knitting Illustrated: the key to hundreds of garments you can make yourself (1940), and Practical Family Knitting Illustrated: a comprehensive book of knitted garments for everyone (1947), both by Margaret Murray and Jane Koster. I'm slowly building a collection of knitting books by these two, and there are more than you might think. A lot of the titles are similar and yet the date of publication** and the content varies significantly. Should I ever want to knit knickers I have lots of patterns to choose from!

I leave you with Michael, because never let me be accused of propagating any kind of gender inequality ... "Michael throws out his manly chest. He's well protected against cold winds by his ribbed vest."

Ribbed Vests for Boy and Girl, 1940

*I bought some gorgeous vintage buttons too.

** A lot of wildly inaccurate guesses have been made as to when Practical Knitting Illustrated was first published, but 1940 seems pretty certain, and that's not just my view. Two giveaways: the code 1040 printed above the publisher's name, and the original Walt Disney Snow White featured on a nursery wallpaper in one of the photographs. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937.

A quick footnote: apologies to anyone who tried to follow a link to the earlier posting of the above ... Blogger had hiccups or something and lost it in the ether.

A pink Friday

2011-07-01T16:21:00.027+01:00

I know I promised you that my next post would be about the vintage bits and bobs I bought at Woolfest, and I will post about them, I will. But although fascinating they are not exactly colourful, and I don't know about you but I could do with a bit of colour today. We have grey skies and rain again, and after the lovely sunshine earlier in the week the day seems very gloomy.

And I need cheering up ... there was a Great Escape here yesterday, when a visitor left a door open and all five of the whippets got out onto the lane and took themselves for a little walk. Realising that they were missing and that I had no idea where they were was very, very scary. Luckily we live in a quiet, out-of-the-way Welsh village where there isn't too much traffic on the roads, but the half hour it took to round them all up and get them all home was probably the longest of my life. No one got hit by a car, or couldn't be found (the thing I fear most), and all are safely here with me now, but the outcome could have been disastrously different and although I was calm when it happened the shock of it all has caught up with me this morning. So I'm taking it easy today, and making time to appreciate the simple things, because isn't that always the best way to restore one's equilibrium?

I have some beautiful peonies to enjoy. I've arranged them in a tall, tapering jug and they look so opulent. I'm particularly fond of that jug, it was a present from my son Tom when he was small, bought with money he had carefully saved just for the purpose. And the peonies! Their scent is divine, and aren't they the most perfect pink? With those vibrant splashes of magenta and orange, and the cool white of the jug and the soft green of the leaves ... I'm thinking 'what a great colour combo for some Granny-squares'? Hmm, memo to self: must learn to crochet!

I also have a delicious strawberry milkshake, made with fresh strawberries from the pick-your-own farm down the road - they're so sweet! - and creamy local milk. Buying fresh produce from suppliers close to home is easy when you have as many farm shops on your doorstep as we do hereabouts.

Growing up a milkshake meant Nesquik, it was only in adulthood that I discovered the joys of just whisking up a glass of milk along with a banana or a handful of berries. My mum was a tins and packets kind of cook and was oddly compelled to encase all soft fruits in Robertson's jelly, or make them into jam. She still struggles with the concept that the ripest strawberries or raspberries might actually be nicer without sugar.

And, continuing the pink theme that my Friday seems to be developing, I have this fantastic find to read ... Mrs Groundes-Peace's Old Cookery Notebook, which I chanced upon when I was fossicking about in my mate Mary's second hand book shop. She has books two deep on all the shelves, and you never quite know what you'll find if you root through the ones at the back, some of which have been there for a very long time. Her little book barn really is a joy.

The book is a medley of snippets from Zara Groundes-Peace's research into the history of English food and English cookery, includes some "Olde Receipts", and most definitely deserves a post, or even two, of its own! Meanwhile, here is a little pink taster ...

A Conserve of Roses
Take red Rose buds ... and taking to every pound of Roses three pound of sugar, stamp the Roses by themselves very small, putting a little juice of Lemmons or Rose-water to them as they wax dry, when you see the Roses small enough, put the sugar to them, and beat them together til they be well mingled ... in like manner are the Conserves of Violets, Cowslips, [and] Marigolds ... made.
.............................from A Book of Fruits and Flowers, 1653

Time to put my feet up and read on I think ...

But what does it smell like?

2011-06-27T23:57:00.020+01:00

Or, the utter impossibility of adequately photographing yarn!

Dear reader, I have tried. Truly, I have. My entire morning was spent trying, and failing, to bring you passable images of the unmitigatedly woolly Woolfest yarns. I blame the too-bright light for the fiasco (we are enjoying bright sunshine and temperatures approaching 90°F), but also, dare I say it, my impatience with the exercise ...such a waste of good knitting time, given the arguably limited value of yarn portraits.

Take the Black Jacob (2 ply, 18wpi). The intricate subtleties of its colour - kinda' Van Dyke brown meets coffee bean, with hairy bits - were, to some degree at least, picked up by the camera. But capturing its dry, tweedy feel, and the absolute congruity of its scent - sheep, with overtones of farmyard - is clearly beyond photography of any kind. And yet these are the things you need to know.

Perhaps we should compile a list of fibre descriptors to compensate for photography's inadequacies? Could we agree a yarn connoisseur's vocabulary akin to that of a wine lover's I wonder. So, what does it smell like? Earthy? Rustic? Sour? Wet dog? Your thoughts?

Oh, the vintage treasures? Next time ;D

Have you any wool?

2011-06-26T01:38:00.012+01:00

Well yes, and somewhat more than three bags full!

I'm back! And what a Woolfest!! There was so very much to see, as always. Maybe even too much ... toward the end I began to feel as if I were suffering a kind of fibre fatigue. My poor feet were suffering too, and so before we finally left for home Lal and I had a nice sit down while listening to the ceilidh band and enjoying a ewe's milk ice-cream. That's what I love about Woolfest, it's a celebration of all things sheep. And of all things fleece, of course: carding, dyeing, spinning, felting, weaving, crochet, knitting ... the list goes on.

Driving home, a phrase from Thomas Maude's Wensleydale popped into my head ... fleecy bleeters*. Perhaps it was Maude's reference to debt* that did it - because I must confess I was nowhere near as restrained a shopper as I'd hoped to be - or maybe it was the luscious woolly smell that was beginning to permeate my car, but I spent the remainder of the journey musing on 'fleecy bleeters' in eighteenth-century Georgic verse (for which I tender any necessary apologies ... I get taken like this from time to time).

Just as Woolfest is about transformation - from sheepmade to manmade, if you will - so are poems such as John Dyer's 1757 The Fleece, which follows wool from the sheep's back to man's, via shearing, the fulling mill, and the loom and shuttle. I could bore you here with an exposition on the didactic nature of the Georgic, and its focus on useful work and "the felicities of labour" (Dyer) ... but I won't, because it was Dyer's acute awareness of the vulnerability of sheep - to distemper, "scab", "rot" and "fly-blows"; to storms and snows; in fact, to all excesses and extremes - that I was most particularly pondering.

Ah gentle shepherd, thine the lot to tend,
Of all, that feel distress, the most assail'd,
Feeble, defenceless: lenient be they care ...
Observe the lurking crows; beware the brake,
There the sly fox the careless minute waits;
Nor trust they neighbour's dog, nor earth, nor sky ...

But enough of this, I hear you cry, tell us what you bought! Well, predictably, lots and lots of lovely yarn - Wensleydale Longwool, Shetland, Black Jacob, Exmoor Blueface - and, rather less predictably, some exciting vintage treasures. But you'll have to wait to read about those!

*From Thomas Maude, 1771, Wensleydale: or, rural contemplations, a poem.

The objects then that my affections please,
Are a just life of bus'ness, mix'd with ease:
A fruitful farm, a family in health,
From debts exempt, nor plagu'd with anxious wealth:
The bearded field and udder-swelling plain,
Some fleecy bleaters, and a fit domain
For winter's forage; if the glebe be cold,
Manure to warm it from the teeming fold;
Til by such care with glowing heart I see,
A new creation rise from industry ...

Woolly wanderings

2011-06-23T23:44:00.010+01:00

Woolfest, 24th-25th June 2011 ... and we're off! Maybe I'll see ewe* there :D

I am going to attempt to be a restrained shopper, but will probably fail dismally! Full report on my return, I promise.

*Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

A poem in itself ...

2011-06-18T20:32:00.004+01:00

Pattern: Undine by Christine Ebers. Free. Shawl also known as A poem in itself.

Yarn: The Knitting Goddess 4ply Alpaca, silk and cashmere in semi-solid Charcoal

Needles: 3.75mm (UK size 9, US size 5) 14" rosewood straights

Size blocked: 147 cm along curved top edge of crescent, 56 cm deep

Mods: I worked 4 additional repeats of chart B and 1 additional repeat of chart D

Notes: The Undine shawl on Christine Eber's Ravelry pattern page, here, has quite a different edging to the one in the pattern. I actually only noticed this today!

Ravelry project page here

Flickr photographs here. But, honestly, in this instance it's barely worth following the link ... shortly after the above was taken the breeze became a gale, the heavens opened, and it's the only decent shot I got before the deluge came!

Of water nymphs and naming knitting

2011-06-13T23:42:00.027+01:00

Undine in the wind
Arthur Rackham, c. 1909*

She could do with a shawl, don't you think?

I have no idea why Christine Ebers of Spinning Martha named her lacy shawl pattern Undine. Perhaps it was the deep-water blues and greens of her original that inspired the choice, because of course an undine is a water nymph. My Undine is the grey of the rain clouds in the picture above. I finished knitting it yesterday and it's blocking as I type.

It is impossible to list a knitting project on Ravelry without giving it a name. So we Ravellers actually name our knitting, which is kinda weird when you stop to think about it, but fun too!

I like to find names for my projects that connect to the name of the pattern but that do more than just repeat it. And somehow I always seem to choose literary things; it's just the way my writer's mind works I suppose. Undine was a gift:

"It was the dark pool of the sound of the word that first took me; if our auditory imaginations were sufficiently tuned to plumb and sound a vowel, to unite the most primitive and civilized associations, the word ‘undine’ would probably suffice as a poem in itself." Seamus Heaney.

And there it was, A poem in itself.

I plan to knit another Undine; in a finer lace-weight yarn, with beads. And I'll have no problem naming that one either.

"Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine*: that is a fairytale ... of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful." George MacDonald.

Yes, What is a fairytale? will suit just fine!

How do you choose names for your projects!

*All of Arthur Rackham's divine illustrations for the 1909 edition of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's 1811 Undine, the story of a water nymph who married an earthly lover in order to gain a soul, can be seen here.

Baked

2011-06-11T23:57:00.046+01:00

June birthdays come thick and fast here at knitsofacto. My mother, my sister and her partner, and my elder son Tom, have all four celebrated a birthday just this week. And where there are birthdays there must, of course, be cake!

Sweet chocolatey squares - very similar to brownies, but not quite the same - these are a great favourite here, and a birthday tradition. Honestly, I think there'd be some kind of uprising if the birthday tea table didn't include at least one heaped plate of them. They taste good, they're simple to make, and there's hardly any washing up to do afterwards. What could be better?

To make some yourself (because you know you want to!) ... First, melt 6 ozs of lightly salted butter in a large saucepan. Remove from the heat. Next, add 10 ozs of sifted self-raising flour and 1.5 ozs of cocoa powder to the fat in the pan and stir together really well. Now add 8 ozs of granulated sugar and 1 beaten egg and stir well again. Line an 8" square baking tin with baking foil, press the mixture evenly into the tin, and then cook at Gas 4/350F for 25 to 30 minutes. Once cool, turn out - I just lift out complete with foil as this cake breaks rather easily - and cut into squares. Enjoy!

With all these birthdays - so much shopping, present wrapping, baking, and partying - knitting's been all but impossible to find time for this week, but somehow the Undine shawl is done, bar casting off and blocking. Pictures to follow, I promise.

Coffeehouse

2011-06-05T23:19:00.039+01:00

There, that's better, a bit of colour. This blog's been looking a little drab of late don't you think?

I've changed one or two other things too. The blogroll - previously the cause of much angst - has gone. Instead I have added a Coffeehouse page where in the manner of the coffeehouses of seventeenth and eighteenth century London - those "free-schools of ingenuity"* frequented by my biographee Mr. M - I can gather my friends around me for a natter and enjoy, in good coffeehouse tradition, the exchange of creative ideas. If you want to know which blogs I'm reading the Coffeehouse is now the place to look.

The London coffeehouses, and the knitterly blogosphere, are both good examples of what Steven Johnson** terms "liquid networks, environments where ideas can have sex"!

The really important thing to know about liquid networks - apart from all those ideas getting together to make baby ideas - is that they are (Johnson again) spaces of creativity where everyone is equal: coffeehouses were great levellers, just as blogrolls are. Thus in my Coffeehouse you'll find folk listed alphabetically, rather than according to post frequency or popularity. Jean's Knitting rubbing shoulders with Jared Flood is just as it should be say I.

The elderflowers, by the way, were picked this morning from the hedgerows hereabouts. They put me in mind of another 'liquid network', the one that benefits from my brother-in-law Bill's considerable enthusiasm for making elderflower wine!

*Coffee-Houses Vindicated (anonymous 17th century pamphlet)

**Johnson is the author of Where Good Ideas Come From, a book I highly recommend.

The little red plane

2011-06-02T17:21:00.015+01:00

Just popping by to say a quick hello and a huge and heartfelt thank you for all your good wishes and invites to places afar ... the yarn shops of Paris with Dona, and orchidful Los Angeles with Francesca, wouldn't that be wonderful!

I've been resting and am feeling a little less tired today, and - just as predicted by Catherine and Mise - the sun came out this afternoon and really cheered me up.

And how could my mood not be lifted by the award winning woolly wonderment that is knitter and animation artist Charlotte Blacker's stop motion knitted adventure, The Little Red Plane.

Feelin' blue

2011-06-01T19:26:00.035+01:00

It's June, summer, aren't one's spirits supposed to lift with the coming of the sun? Sadly mine seem unwilling to oblige just now, which may be partly because it's raining - I shouldn't complain, after a long drought we need the rain - but is mostly because I'm so darn tired. It's nothing new, this overwhelming exhaustion that visits me off and on, but its familiarity renders it all the more disheartening ... I know from past experience that it's going nowhere soon.

Some years ago I suffered a very nasty infection, a beast of a thing that actually tried to kill me! Thankfully it failed - a fact about which I'm mighty chuffed, I must say - but unfortunately, in the words of my hospital doctor, it did succeed in "frying a few bits" of my brain. Nothing major you understand - my mentis is compos even if my corpus isn't (I know, I know, very poor Latin, but you get my drift) - anyway, one lasting effect has been this infernal fatigue, and in the last sixteen months, with the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, it has unhappily become something of a fixture.

I should maybe insert a quick aside here, in case on reading the above you're picturing a decrepit geriatric typing away ... just so we're clear, I'm a long, long way off drawing my pension, I'm just unlucky with my health. But lucky to have good friends who brighten my day when I'm down ... you know who you are guys. And lucky to be part of a community of bloggers who welcome me, invite me in for a good natter, and make me laugh. Isn't it wonderful that on a duvet day like today, curled on my sofa, wearily sipping hot chocolate and watching the rain fall in my little corner of the world, I can share the travels, the trials and the tribulations, and the triumphs of crafters across the globe who I'm slowly getting to know. And feel a little less blue when I've done so.

Right, I'm off for a nap. Normal service will be resumed shortly, I promise.

More wool, anyone?

2011-05-30T22:42:00.010+01:00

Jamieson and Smith Shetland Wool Brokers Ltd. are offering free worldwide delivery on orders placed before noon tomorrow UK time ... just thought I'd let you know!

I have, of course, been quite unable to resist, and have ordered enough of their 2ply laceweight to knit a Roma shawl in rust and grey.

Jamieson and Smith yarns are spun exclusively from fleece bought from farmers and crofters on Shetland, and the company is committed to supporting Shetland's fragile crofting industry. So not only is this stuff fabulous, it's kinda fairtrade too. Go on, you know you want to!

Knitting pretty

2011-05-24T20:14:00.052+01:00

Happy days ... there's a new shawl on the knitting needles - Christine Ebers Undine, in Knitting Goddess grey - and after weeks without a working camera I can, courtesy of my darling old dad, post an arty shot of the work in progress.

My father has generously lent me his Nikon D80, for as long as I need it, and I cannot thank him enough. Apart from the above, which has been heavily tweaked in Picasa, I've yet to take many photographs with it, but be prepared for some picture-heavy posts once I've figured out what all the buttons do!

I'd hoped to make it to Knit Nation this year, and had pondered taking Franklin Habit's Photographing your fibre class, but alas it's not to be. Well not unless I pull a spur-of-the-moment totally-last-minute trip to London out of the hat in mid-July, but all of Franklin's classes are already fully booked. And how odd, when you stop to think about it, that one of the most popular classes at a knitting expo is in photography!

Was it, I wonder, the advent of the knitting blog that has led so many knitters to seek to become photographers too, or is it the Ravelry effect? With its demand for images of your 'finished objects', and your stash of yet-to-be-knitted yarn, Ravelry (with a little help from Flickr perhaps) surely has to be the principle reason we now play 'hunt the perfect project picture' and pursue yarny portraiture. I know it's what drives me, although I have yet to photograph most of my stash ... memo to self: must do better!

Postscript

May 25th. I've been asked to explain how I achieved the effects in the photograph above and thought I'd share my answer here. I'm no expert, so please forgive any clumsiness on my part ... Google will lead you to far better explanations of the relationship between aperture and depth of field than I can offer. Picasa, on the other hand, is pretty self explanatory, and has an excellent Help facility.

I started with a photograph taken in lowish daylight, close up, using the camera's close up setting, the necessary large aperture (the less light you have the bigger the lens opening you need) resulting in a shallow depth of field (the more the lens is opened up the more limited the area in sharp focus, something that is particularly true when focusing over a short distance). I could have achieved this by using the camera's manual or aperture priority modes, but I like to keep things simple whenever I can. The focal point here is the front edge of the knitting, but the focus was softened slightly when I digitally added a film grain effect in Picasa.

Also using Picasa I added a warm grey tint to the whole image, being careful to first adjust the colour preservation setting to its max. This pulled the white silk fabric on which the knitting was photographed into the same tonal range as the grey yarn, without greatly affecting the true colour rendition of the shawl or the rosewood needles. And finally I added a warm brown graduated tint to the upper part of the picture, with 'shade' at the minimum setting and 'feather' at the max. Chosen because it echoed the colour of the needles this balanced the image's background and foreground. Well I think it did.

I like this picture but it's deliberately blurred and muddy and that's not everyone's cup of tea. The trick is to play with the various settings in a simple photo editor like Picasa and find out what you like. Simples :)

Knitting blind

2011-05-17T23:34:00.028+01:00

There is something particularly satisfying about following an ancient, pictureless knitting 'receipt' and watching the item that you're working slowly reveal itself to you. If, like me, you enjoy knitting 'blind' from time to time, then check out the digital resources at Southampton University's Knitting Reference Library. The Richard Rutt Collection includes many nineteenth century knitting books, and over fifty of them have been digitized and are freely available online.

In addition to shawls, socks, collars, or baby clothes, should you wish to knit a Fisherman's Seaboot Stocking, a French Night Cap, or a Bosom Friend (!) then this is the website for you!

And don't worry if you prefer to work with pictures, plenty of the patterns do have them, and some will be familar from later adaptations of these early knits. Below is a c.1845 illustration of part of 'Mrs Gaugain's* Alpine Scarf', which features as a stole in Jane Sowerby's Victorian Lace Today.

*For more on Jane Gaugain see Kate Davies' fascinating article here.

And, of course, there was knitting !

2011-05-09T08:34:00.032+01:00

Whilst travelling through mid-Wales in 1801 my biographee, Mr. M.*, remarked of the "native" women ...

I cannot speak too highly of [their] industry ... always knitting as they walk along even with heavy loads upon their heads, they must make a number of stockings which I suppose they sell, for they will go bar foot and bar skin as they themselves term it.*

I included this quote in an earlier post, but left it unexamined at the time - my focus back then was the Welsh women's hats. I've returned to it now as it's significant enough to be well worth revisiting.

Potatoes and barley bread were the staples of the Welsh agricultural workers' diet, and in 1801, a famine year following a run of poor harvests, the price of barley hit an unprecedented high. Wages, however, remained pitifully low. The poorest families were reduced to making scant meals of cawl dail - a 'herb' broth of nettles and other wild growing leaves - what few potatoes they could come by, and perhaps, if they were lucky, a little milk. They certainly had no money for new shoes, or for shoe repairs, and would generally walk barefoot unless on the roughest ground, carrying their clogs or boots slung by the laces around their necks to save them from wear. In urgent need of supplementary income many of the impoverished women of mid-Wales, young and old, walked hundreds of miles to seek work in the market gardens that ringed London at that time, others turned to cutting peat locally to sell on as fuel, and of course there was knitting!

Wool gathering, gwlanna, took place in early June, after the last of the sheep had been returned from the lowlands to their summer grazing on the Welsh mountains. The wool the flocks lost along the way was collected from the hedgerows and bushes that lined their routes, and was reputedly most plentiful when a severe winter was followed by a mild spring and the sheep shed freely. The wool gatherers might spend some days working away from their families, sleeping rough in haylofts and barns, before returning home to their stocking knitting, their wool sacks packed full.

The stocking trade in Cardiganshire was considerable and ... stocking men travelled from door to door buying the knitted products and stringing them on poles which they carried on their shoulders. ... The customary output per woman was the carding, spinning, and knitting of four pairs of stockings a week, and the profit was estimated to be 3d a pair.***

In order to achieve this mammoth feat women and their daughters, girls as young as five or six, knitted at every opportunity, just as Mr M. had observed. Of necessity women knitted as they walked about, despite the load upon their head or back - a pitcher of water, a basket of peat - and often with a baby or a toddler slung in a nursing shawl at their waist. They knitted - Mr M. again - "during the whole business" of taking a beast to market, "though many of them held a horse or a cow" throughout. And they knitted at knitting evenings held in each other's homes, nosweithiau gwau, where they would gather together to be sociable and to save on fuel, to knit by firelight and to gossip - clearly stitch 'n bitch is nothing new!

Traditionally the welt and toe of stockings from mid-Wales was knitted in an undyed 'white' and the leg, which was sometimes patterned, in shades of blue-grey. But stockings might also be knitted in solid white or blue, or in the wool's natural colours. And they were knitted without benefit of a pattern, the knitters merely following basic guidelines handed down from generation to generation. Never much of a sock knitter myself, I have been inspired by these long dead Welsh women, and by Mette's recent folk sock posts at Knit Forwards, to tackle knitting a pair of folk socks myself, Welsh style, obviously. I'll let you know how I get on!

A note regarding the photographs. These are late 19th century studio portraits of knitters wearing Welsh national costume, something they would only have done on high days and holidays, if then. In fact it appears that these clothes may have been provided for them by the photographer, John Thomas, as they are all wearing identical over-blouses, over-skirts, and aprons. This costume was unknown at the time Mr M. was writing. Apologies but my normal cc licensing does not apply to these pictures. You can read more about my use of archive photographs here.

*As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm an historian and am writing the biography of an obscure eighteenth century entomologist, Mr. M., a London gent of some renown within scientific circles.

**Source: Mr M's unpublished journals.

*** Further reading:
Reverend J. Evans, "Letters written during a Tour through South Wales in the year 1803", London 1804
David Howell, "The agricultural community of Cardiganshire in the eighteenth century", Ceredigion: Journal of the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, vol. 12, no. 1, 1993. I have borrowed the phrase, "And, of course, there was knitting!" from Mr Howell.
W.J. Lewis, "The condition of labour in Mid-Cardiganshire in the early nineteenth century", Ceredigion : Journal of the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, vol. 4, no. 4, 1963

Gi' us a camera*

2011-05-02T18:47:00.023+01:00

Did I mention that my Canon 400D was ailing and in need of life saving surgery? Well sadly, having seemed to rally, she took a post-operative turn for the worse today ... the old girl is gone, kaput, quite dead, may she rest in peace. Which makes photographing knitted works in progress and recent stash purchases a tad difficult just now. No, let's be clear about this, it makes photographing anything totally impossible. If I can't beg or borrow a replacement soon I may yet have to buy one.

I should maybe explain here that my father is, or rather was, a photographer of sorts. Most particularly of the sort possessed of a vast array of cameras, ancient** and modern, and most importantly of the sort who would gladly lend you one of them. Until recently, when failing eyesight led him to sell many and lock most of the rest - "the antiques" - away. He still has his most prized Nikon DSLR to hand, but that is not available for loan.

This world where cameras cannot readily be cadged is new to me. My very first childhood camera came from my father's collection - a Yashica 635 - and my second - a Praktica Super TL - and so on. I did buy the 400D, but with his guidance, where now he seems increasingly out of touch with what's hot and what's not. He prefers it that way ... having accepted the loss of one avocation, in retirement he has embraced another, philately.

But a working camera of a certain calibre is as essential a knitting tool as needles for the knitter who blogs, and so I find myself in need of a DSLR that's well suited to daylight photography in lowish light but that won't break the bank ... suggestions anyone?

*For my readers outside the UK, the phrase references a British television series, Boys from the Blackstuff.

**Some are so old they require glass plates, and a fair few use film that's long been discontinued. And there are a disproportionate number of Leica's ... Leica apparently having been my father's first choice of name for me, and later for my sister, my mother's more orthodox suggestion having thankfully prevailed in my case!

With many thanks to Hans van Rijnberk and Jiunn Kang for the cc licensed Flickr content.

Nest :: eggs

2011-04-24T14:02:00.025+01:00

Today, on a whim, I knitted a tiny nest.

Easter Sunday was a very eggy sort of day when the children were small. We hunted for eggs; we ate the hardboiled eggs that we'd coloured and patterned with onion skin dye; and we gorged on chocolate eggs, because in the knitsofacto household excessive chocolate consumption is practically mandatory on Easter Sunday.

They're all too old to be interested in such eggyness now, but maybe I was missing the fun.

It was easy enough, my little knitted nest: two strands of a remnant of bouclé yarn (so ancient I have no memory of the fibre content), one of Ganpi Abaka, another of a shiny rayon embroidery thread in greys, greens and golds, a set of 5mm double pointed needles, and 33 stitches ...

Five knit rounds were followed by a further five decrease rounds, leaving twelve live stitches to be threaded through and drawn together once the knitting had been turned inside out. The resulting reverse stocking stitch nest was lined with a few downy feathers and filled with five mini eggs ... Happy Easter!

Yan tan tethera

2011-04-22T22:44:00.033+01:00

Walking the Welsh hills with the whippets I do a lot of woolgathering, both literally - dare I admit here that scraps of wool make excellent kindling - and metaphorically. Today, as I pocketed twists of fleece from a barbed wire fence, I found myself contemplating the counting of sheep, or rather the rhymes that shepherds once used to tally their flocks. Yan, tan, tethera ...

... pethera, pimp; I could confidently remember that far, and that there was a yan-a-dik, tan-a-dik, tethera-dik, pethera-dik in there somewhere, but the rest I had to look up once we reached home.

It seems there are as many variants of these rhymes as there are dales and wolds in the north of England. The version I was struggling to recall originated in Lincolnshire, which fits with my family history ... yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, covera, dik, yan-a-dik, tan-a-dik, tethera-dik, pethera-dik, bumfit, yan-a-bumfit, tan-a-bumfit, tethera-bumfit, pethera-bumfit, figgot. After figgot a notch would be cut in a stick - scored in fact, the Old Norse skor meant twenty - and the count would begin again.

Perhaps the groupings of five also relate to tally marking, where four vertical strokes are struck through by a fifth horizontally. Interestingly the same counting rhymes were also used by knitters to count stitches. My grandmother counted her knitting stitches not in twos, as so many of us do today, but in fives ... I wonder if there was a connection. I tried her system earlier, and once you get the hang of it counting hundreds of stitches just flies by. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty ...

With thanks to the kind Flickr folk - me'nthedogs, themanwiththegoldencam, and lovestruck. - who not only cc licensed their wired and woolly Flickr content but also allowed derivative works to be created from it. Without you this post would be pictureless as my camera is currently undergoing what I can only hope, fingers crossed, will be life saving surgery.

Hiatus

2011-04-16T17:48:00.017+01:00

Why, when you happen across a 'must knit' pattern, do you never have a 'just right' yarn in your stash?

Why, when you order yarn to knit with now does it take forever to arrive, where if you order yarn to knit with later it ships overnight?

Why, when you impatiently pick a different project to cast on do you discover that your only needles in the size you need have mysteriously disappeared?

There has been much transcribing of knitted lace patterns from nineteenth century periodicals this week - The Lady's Newspaper, The Ladies Treasury, The English Woman's Domestic Magazine, The Girl's Own Paper, and Myra's Journal of Dress and Fashion - and there has been some associated swatching, but in the absence of the yarn I need and the needles I know are here somewhere there has been no 'proper' knitting.

Not that working blind from ancient instructions that frequently don't make sense is 'improper' knitting, but a lot of scribbled notes and scrappy bits of lace do not a finished object make.

Blackthorn

2011-04-09T20:17:00.013+01:00

An abundance of blossom now; an abundance of sloes for gin, jellies, and the dye pot come the autumn; and meanwhile, a beautiful spring day.

Stashed

2011-04-07T16:53:00.028+01:00

My yarn from Quince & Co. of Portland has finally arrived; five soft skeins of kelp coloured fabulousness to fondle and fall in love with.

A "skinny" fingering, Tern is a blend of 75% American wool and 25% Tussah silk. The wool takes the dye more readily than the silk, giving the yarn a slightly variegated, vintage quality. It really is divine.

Importing Tern into the UK from the US has cost almost twice as much as buying it stateside*, but it was a 'must have' I simply couldn't resist and I am not disappointed with it. I have lovingly photographed it, stowed it safely away, and sometime soon it will be no doubt be on my needles.

By comparison with many knitters my stash is actually quite small**. Nonetheless my mother never fails to remind me that I am immensely privileged to be able to stockpile yarn. A keen knitter from her early years, as a child she experienced the post war rationing of knitting wool - a mere two ounces per clothing coupon. She remembers her mother, of necessity, unpicking old sweaters and reknitting the salvaged yarn into 'new' ones, coats of many colours with sleeves, body, and collar often all in different hues.

I don't think my mother has ever bought yarn without knowing exactly what she planned to knit with it and exactly how much she needed to buy. The concept of a stash is quite alien to her. That yarn itself might be an object of desire is beyond her comprehension.

*Update: Quince & Co. yarns are now available in the UK from Loop.

** I have two boxes in which I store my yarn and neither is ever full. The larger box holds the yarn I've bought recently and intend to knit up soon, and the smaller the few yarns I've fallen out with but hope to revisit some time.

Mothering Sunday

2011-04-03T16:45:00.023+01:00

Mothering Sunday in the UK falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent, today. A secular celebration of motherhood rooted in Christian tradition, this is a day to gather as a family, feast on simnel cake, and give flowers to your mum.

A big bunch of her favourite creamy white freesias and two little knitted lavender sachets seem to have made my mother happy. Today's was certainly a more sophisticated offering than the bunch of dandelions I once proudly presented to her on Mother's Day ... I was six, and it's the thought that counts!

These cabled rib sachet covers are so easy to make, as are the fusible interfacing lavender sachets they contain, which require no stitching, just an iron.

The lavender was the last of the summer's harvest from the local lavender farm, picked by me and dried hanging from a beam in the attic. It has to be the attic because hubby is allergic to lavender. Anyone imagining some sort of rural idyll here should add sound ... poor Ted sneezing and spluttering his way through the spring and the summer, from the first sign of blackthorn blossom - the hedgerows are thick with it now - to the final cut of hay. Worse still, the man is allergic to wool!