Lucky Girl

Last week I was given the most enormous and most wonderful bunch of flowers  -  all different varieties in autumn colours.  Someone knew that while I love pretty pinks and whites those aren't really the colours that are at home here.  All these reds and rusts and golds fit with the wood, the ox blood walls and and the firewood stacked in the fireplace.  It's a funny old house, not everyone's taste, but sometimes I'm rather proud of it.  

Wonderful depths of colour

Unusual shapes and shades

Found at a Car Boot Sale

So Pretty

Found at a Car Boot Sale a very pretty cushion cover in an all-over chain stitch embroidery.  Obviously machine made, but very, very pretty.

Close-up of stitching

Inspiration for embroidery

Inspiration for Embroidery?

Believe it or not this is a section of Roman wall painting seen at the British Museum.   It comes from Lullingstone Roman Villa (4th century AD).  The colours are subtle and shaded and while it looks like a naive painting, there is great skill in the way the colours and shapes are balanced.

When I think of Roman wall painting I think of static portraits of doe-eyed gents and ladies staring out of the wall, or of swirling frescoes of dancing people and leaping horses or dolphins and mermaids.  Some of those old Romans obviously felt that was all a bit overpowering and went for a more homely feel.

The Upstairs Stitchers

We've started a stitch club at Beulah's Vintage Attic.  Good company, good cake.

I sat in my jim-jams on Friday morning cutting up flyers and then visited a couple of local yarn shops (having got dressed first) to hand them out and talk about how we might promote the yarn shops.  I never cease to be amazed at the kindness, enthusiasm, generosity and willingness to share in the knitting community.  As well as some enchanting eccentricity.

6am on a Saturday

Setting out in the drizzle - red sunrise and a rainbow

Sun coming over the hills

Something about the air up there.  Something about the scent of the turf makes the spirit rise.

Flowers of the Field

A jewelled patch of flowers on a drizzly morning

A couple of Saturdays ago I went for a long walk, first time in weeks.  It was drizzling, there was a rainbow, but I took a chance.  I was rewarded with more flowers than I have ever seen on the hill.  I found myself walking along with a big smile on my face.  I took masses of photographs and this one appeals to me because of the mix of species on one small patch of earth.

Among the ones I can name are Red Clover, Viper's Bugloss, Self Heal, Birdsfoot Trefoil and Hop Trefoil.

Pink, bright blue, purple, yellow and green.  What a range of colours to play with.

La Plage

It's called 'La Plage'

A pleasurable make, this design for a striped moss stitch bag originated as an exercise for a knit workshop. I have developed it a bit since then.  It's made in three shades of cotton yarn and lined.  It has a crochet chain handle using six strands of the yarn for strength.  The top of the bag is reinforced with strips of plastic so that it holds its shape when it's being carried.  

The colour of wet rocks

And the button - from my vintage collection. That's not a reflection of the stripe.  It really does have a marbled pink stripe running through it that matches the yarn.  It's that sort of thing that makes my life complete.

Of course, ideally I would have pictured it on a sandy beach with appropriate props.  Sandy beaches a bit scarce in Wiltshire.  Maybe I should start a 'Stonehenge' line.

Just Playin' Around

It's gloomy outside, but lovely here

I'm in my sewing room playing with lots of pretty things at the moment.  So many ideas, just one pair of hands.

The Man Who Can set up my sewing room when we first moved in here on the strength that it would keep me quiet and I wouldn't ask for more.  He was pretty much right.

Finding Closure

Visigoth Bronze Buckle
Photographed some time ago - at the V&A I think

I'm making bags at the moment and there is always this challenge about handles and closures.  Quite often a lovely old vintage button does the trick and there are all sorts of ways to tackle the handle issue.  But how to make it look professional. That's the thing.  So I'm looking at all the various kinds of hardware - buckles, D rings, clasps.

You'd go a long way to beat the Visigoth design above.  Although I imagine the weight might be a bit of a problem.  This was designed for something fairly hefty.  The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 AD and I expect they had a good party on the strength of that, but I doubt there was a lot of call for delicately embellished clutch bags.

This May Not Look Promising...

A wet wall

It may not look promising, but this was the wall of the dry dock where SS Great Britain is held.  The water seepage had stained the wall in dark blue and olive green and a salt lick of white against the grey.  I'd like to swatch this.

Brian the Builder is here

Granny's Bonnet

My garden has become a disaster area.  The builders have definitely arrived. Scaffolding plonked on borders. Honeysuckle chopped down - I had just managed to get it to grow over the garden wall and down the other side.

They are dealing with a chalk wall and since it has rained for nearly a week now, there is a grey trail of trodden in chalk pretty much everywhere. Bless their hearts, they are trying so hard to minimise the mess.  And hey, it can all be cleaned up and re-planted.  Right now I'm trying to focus on the survivors.  Granny's bonnet.  Doesn't come up true from seed, so you don't know what you'll get.

A while ago I had a try at replicating it in knit.  Strange, but interesting.

Stitch Dictionaries

Published by Arco in New York, 1985

I love Mary Thomas and Barbara Walker, but perhaps my favourite stitch dictionary is one that I bought at a car boot sale for 50p.  No dust jacket and a bit scuffed and marked here and there The Arco Guide to Knitting Stitches is a treasure.  It's A4 size but not very fat and inside it's unfussy.  Just lots of stitches with pictures of beautiful swatches and the directions for making them, no commentary, just picture and pattern.  Of course, I spend most time studying and trying out the slip stitches - my favourites.

The builders have started work and the garden is being trampled, so I have begun to swatch obsessively to take my mind off it.  I'm working my way through the Arco Guide.

Look on the Bright Side

Approximately fifty of the photos in my blog were corrupted. I still don't know why, but it was something to do with the Blogger upgrade.  I had to reload them all.  What a pain.  Still, I managed to capture a couple of the more interesting effects.  I'm wondering about swatching these.

Now here's a funny thing (peculiar, not ha-ha)

This was a mossy log - now looks like a fast train

This was an old post from early May with a photo of various plants growing on and around a mossy log.  Something weird has happened to it.  It was ok when I posted it, but just browsing back through photos in old posts, I see it has become corrupted somehow.   And I think I deleted the original photo.  Typical.

But I thought, waste not, want not.  It does present an interesting colour exercise

...And I've just discovered that the upgrade of Blogger has corrupted a lot of my old photos.  Wonderful.

Pretty things

Car Boot Find

Went to a car boot sale last weekend.  It was 6th May and absolutely freezing cold.  And as I type it is pouring with rain - again.  So concentrate on pretty things.  I got a slightly damaged table cloth for 10p which I will cut up to make more pretty things.

Life is good.

Struggling to Knit, but still love the patterns

Good Needlework Magazine - June 1940

Owing to an inability to relax right now I am having trouble sitting down to knit.  I think it may be a seasonal thing and will pass.  However, I'm still enjoying looking at the patterns.  This magazine is among my vintage collection and I am rather taken with the sweater on the right. 

And guess what, the pattern goes up to a size 38.  Might be worth a shot.  Maybe this is the thing to get me back on my needles.

The Green and the White

Flowers of the Norway Maple

Because the flowers of the Norway Maple are usually up high, I hadn't really appreciated them before.  I only saw these because a branch had fallen and was still merrily flowering away.  This is a non-native tree in Britain and can tend to be invasive casting a dense shadow, shutting out native plants and flowers and reducing the diversity of the habitat.  In spite of all that it's now well out in flower and the bright green on the skyline is quite welcome.



Wild Cherry 

According to the Woodland Trust other names for Wild Cherry are :

• Idath (Old Irish)
• Crab Cherry
• Hawkberry
• Mazzard
• Merry
• Gean

White (or off-white) and green being one of my favourite colour combinations, I couldn't resist using this little bit of wild inspiration to try out another slip stitch for my collection.

Dotted Ladder Pattern
From Barbara G. Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns

Regeneration

Skeleton of a hydrangea flower

I found this while photographing the spring flowers all bright and chirpy.  Somehow this is very beautiful.

Attempting a Vintage Knitting Pattern

Swatching for gauge, pattern and colour - with notes
I'm going for the yellow

I'm still thinking very hard about adapting the vintage pattern that Susan Crawford talked us through at her workshop 'Interpreting and Working from Vintage Patterns'.

Dina - Stitchcraft May 1939

The example pattern tells us the model is called Dinah.  At a guess she may be about of perhaps 5ft 8inches height, perhaps more and she has an approximately 32inch bust.  I've calculated an adapted pattern for the back.

My Schematic and Calculations

I am 5ft 2 inches with a 38inch bust and a short waist and the adjustments have been dramatic.    In spite of all the measuring and calculating, will this ever fit me?  And if it does, will it have lost the character of the original design?  I think probably yes.  But I'm still keen to have a go. I've already learned a lot from it and there is so much more to learn. 

Susan Crawford

Swatching the stitch we looked at with Susan Crawford

I am on a yarn fast.  One of my 2012 objectives is not to buy yarn until some of the stash has been used.  So, I made sure to book myself on a course at Unravel therefore minimising the time I would have to be led astray among the wonderful stalls of colour and squishiness.  I figured even with the course fee it would be cheaper. 

I booked myself onto 'Interpreting and Working from Vintage Patterns' with Susan Crawford.  What a knowledgeable lady, not only about knitting, but about social history and all things vintage.  And although we all got too interested in home front issues of the war and the austerity period just after, and we all talked too much and ran out of time to knit, I learned a lot.

I came home and straight away swatched the stitch from the vintage pattern Susan shared with us.  She showed us how to dissect the pattern, look at what it tells you and what it doesn't and all the pitfalls and assumptions you shouldn't make.  I had several attempts before I mastered the stitch.  All down to terminology I think.  If you strictly interpret the yfwd printed in the pattern as a yfwd, you run into trouble and suddenly lose about 5 stitches.  I learned a lot just from battling with that.

Susan helped me understand a few things one of which is that I'm not far off in the way I look at vintage patterns.  I just needed someone with her experience to articulate a few things I hadn't quite grasped.  I had a good time and am inspired to start to use my collection in a practical way.  Susan gave me confidence.

Try the link to Susan's blog to see how she gets her inspiration for her knits and her books and the wonderful things she creates.
Susan Crawford's Blog