A little vintage knitting.

One of my favourite things when teaching a knitting class is to talk about the cultural history of knitting a little bit. It's fun to think about how us knitters have centuries of knitting background to draw from and to feel like we're carrying on a lovely, important tradition.

Over the past couple of weeks I have had some lovely knitting history surprises! First up is this lovely copy of a notice of prizes for "home made woolen articles" in 1850. It was sent to me from a very kind online friend. Isn't it lovely? It says that the prizes are to encourage "trade in home manufactured articles." Not only is it a great little piece of typography, it tells us a bit about what it may have been like to be a knitter in Victorian Britain. Queen Victoria was a bit of a knitter herself, but I have a feeling the word "industrial" wouldn't have been applied to her handiwork! Thanks, Jo, for sending this!



Also in the post last week was a parcel from Australia! While visiting Tasmania, my mother-in-law came across a gem of a fibre arts shop called Spindle Tree. It seems like a really interesting place; they are a cooperative that promotes fibre arts in Tasmania and provides studio spaces, classes, and a shop to sell Tasmanian-produced textile products and yarns. Everyone we know who has been to Tasmania loves it, so it will have to be a stop on our next trip to Australia. Also in Hobart, my mother-in-law found a this vintage knitting booklet and was kind enough to send it over to me here in London. There's no date on the booklet and we've been debating which era it may have come from... any ideas?



The illustration on the cover is fantastic, don't you think? My favourite pattern (or "recipe" as the booklet calls it!) is one for "knee caps." Funny, huh? MIL thinks women may have used these when washing floors.

There's a bit of handwriting on the front cover - I did a little research and I think it says, "B Backhouse, Kingston Beach." Turns out Kingston Beach is a coastal suburb of Hobart in Tasmania and it looks like a lovely place. I just love imagining Ms Backhouse knitting by the sea!



The last little knitting surprise I have to share with you came to me via my last post, dedicated to garter stitch. I babbled on for a while about its virtues and also about one of its most influential proponents, Elizabeth Zimmermann. I also shared a few of my favourite garter stitch patterns out there at the moment. Lucky me, the designer of the stunning Piper's Journey from Quince & Co's Scarves, etc collection was alerted to my mention of her shawl, and got in touch! As it turns out, Paula is a lovely knitter and bagpiper from Illinois, as well as host of the podcast The Knitting Pipeline, and shared with me that EZ "was, or is, the biggest influence on my knitting. I kept a correspondence with her for years when I was a young knitter. Occasionally I read one of these letters on my podcast." Needless to say, I was delighted and immediately began downloading Paula's back catalogue. I highly recommend tuning in to her show, and not just to hear these letters. I am absolutely in love with the idea of Paula sharing her correspondence with a knitting legend as with knit along with her. 


So that was my exciting week of knitting history! Do let me know if you have any "vintage" knitting stories to share - they're always welcome here. 

Multi-tasking.

I am a reader. I love to read. I take pride in my reading. But - knitting has come between me and my books.

Turns out, I love both too much to choose between them. Usually, on a tube ride into Central London, I will bring both a book and some knitting, and depending on the conditions of the train (how hot, how crowded, how bumpy) I will choose one or the other to take up the journey. (I absolutely, positively loathe any kind of waiting or idleness, and must keep busy somehow or else I go mad.)

At home, it's a different story. Do I read or do I knit?? How could I possibly choose? When I was writing my MA dissertation on knitting in literature, my supervisor even asked me if I was able to knit and read at the same time. (She really shouldn't have encouraged this.) I developed a method of opening a book out on to a pillow on my lap and weighing it down so it stayed open with my phone. This was okay, and fairly do-able as long as I wasn't knitting something too complicated or reading something too complicated.

And then, an epiphany. I didn't need to use my eyes to read - I could use my ears! So, my adventures in podcasts and audiobooks began. I have listened to a lot of stuff now. Here in the UK you can get a good amount of quality listening from BBC Radio 4. However, I just can't seem to get into the radio drama, The Archers, which seems to be their leading fiction. It seems strange, then, that now I live over here, I am in love with NPR - the closest thing Americans have to the BBC. In particular, I just can't get enough of This American Life. I will go as far as to say it's one of my favourite things in the world. Ever. (Other favourite things include Murder She Wrote, but for entirely different reasons...)

It's sort of difficult to explain TAL, but it's basically a real life story or stories based around a theme. It's an hour, weekly, and it's just never enough.

Going through TAL withdrawal for the rest of the week (it's available on Mondays on iTunes), I had to find something to tide me over. TAL lead me to The Moth - more real life stories, except these are one-off, 15 minute stories told live in front of an audience. It's people from all walks of life, and though they aren't necessarily professional story-tellers, it does often turn into a performance. Some are really funny (in fact most have elements of humour) and a lot of them are really touching.

From there, (because clearly, 1 hour of TAL and 15 mins of The Moth are just. not. enough.) I found Selected Shorts. This time it's fiction. Short stories from any time period, often read by actors or other theatre people. Also usually on a theme (French Fictions, anyone?). It's wonderful.

Not exhausted by all this storytelling, I then fall back on the knitting podcasts. I have tried out quite a few over the past couple of months, and my favourites are now The Electric Sheep and Stash & Burn. I also used to enjoy the Cast On podcast, but she hasn't had a new show on since early August, so fingers crossed she comes back. Cast On is probably the most professionally made of the three, but I have to admit I actually like the more lo-fi atmosphere of the other two. Of course, the host, "Hoxton Handmade", of Electric Sheep, has a voice for Radio 4 - a clear, English, made-for-reading-the-news voice that's lovely to listen to. Not everything she talks about is necessarily knitting related, but great for knitting along to. She even throws a ukulele Radiohead performance in there occasionally. The Stash & Burn podcast is great for catching up on what patterns are big on Ravelry at the moment, info about different yarns, etc - and they always have a great song on at the end that usually I have never heard before.

So needless to say, with all this listening, I have been getting a lot of knitting done. But that's not all! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have also been taking advantage of the free, in-the-public-domain audiobooks that are available on librivox.org. My library also has audiobooks to check out, and I've currently got Ali Smith's The Accidental on the go.

In the photo above: a favourite antique book - an 1892 copy of Charles Dickens' Christmas Boooks and the in-progress and appropriately named Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang. Book vs Yarn crisis averted.