Little things

The other day I was looking for a button. As I was trawling through my collection, I came upon a few old favourites. I got to admiring them all, and then I did this:

Arranging my buttons made me happy. If you look at the peach buttons in the middle it looks like they're smiling too! Isn't it nice to be with all your button friends?

Perhaps one day I'll even sew them on to something...

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. 

Fair Isle Finishing Line.

In the months since I really got going on this blog, it felt like I was knitting a mile a minute and had something to share pretty often. For the bulk of what has been 2010, however, I have been pretty much a one-track knitter.

All has not been in vain, I hope! It is with a great feeling of accomplishment that I have finally finished the vintage fair isle sweater I mentioned a few weeks ago. Knit in a 2-ply, laceweight yarn, it's no wonder it took me so long. There was swatching, there was choosing colours, there was fiddling about with 2 strands of yarn at a time (and no, I don't do continental - yet), there was going back rows and rows when a mistake was found... and then there was finishing.

I met my friend Lara (the, um, commisioner? of the sweater) for tea last week and showed her one of the yet-to-be-seamed pieces and she seemed to really love it! Lara doesn't knit regularly, but she does know how to knit, so it's nice that she has a real appreciation for the work that has gone into it. Since we were having tea at Liberty, we took the opportunity to pick out buttons for the shoulder joins at the same time.

That night, I cast off stitches on the last sleeve, steam blocked, and had four lovely panels of knitting. Next day, weaving in ends and seaming awaited me. The weaving in of millions of tiny strands of yarn was fine. It was the seaming that became a bit of a nightmare.

The pattern called for a slipped stitch selvedge, which, while normally fine, with this very laceweight yarn, was actually pretty messy and loose. At first I tried doing the usual mattress stitch seam, but this came out horrendously. I could tell that when the two pieces of fabric were stretched over a body it would leave really ugly gaps and holes. I did a bit of research into what's best for slipped stitch selvedge seams, but nothing really specific turned up. Instead, for the first time, I decided to try a backstitch seam. A combination of a few websites' info gave me the confidence to give it a try: Knitting Daily, Figure 167 in this Google Books result for Knitting Tips and Trade Secrets, and this article in Knitty.

It came out beautifully and actually, really professional-looking, on both the outside and when you look at the seam on the inside. I love when a new technique works out.

I wish I could show you the garment in use, but Lara is teeny-tiny and so is the sweater. And tiny I am not. If she'll let me, I'll take a photo of her in it to show you. For now here's the image from the pattern:

And my project details:

On Ravelry: meghanaf's Dasha

Pattern: Dasha - La Laine No 2177

Publisher: Bairnswear (obtained from The Retro Knitting Company

Date: Unknown (unfortunately!)

Yarn: Jamieson & Smith 2-ply laceweight in shades L34, L36, L202, L43

Needles: 2.75 and 3.75 mm

Fair...? Isle

How "fair" it is remains to be seen. This is my first big fair isle project, and I am doing it from a vintage pattern from the amazing resource The Retro Knitting Company. So that means first big fair isle project and my first vintage pattern. Yikes!

The pattern only comes in one size, but luckily the person I'm making it for has a very "vintage" figure - meaning very slim. The other tricky thing is that the pattern calls for a yarn that no longer exists, in a 3-ply, which isn't so common anymore. I was lucky to come across the Jamieson & Smith range of yarns made from Shetland wool. Their website says that their 2-ply works for vintage patterns that call for 3-ply, and they have an amazing range of colours, so I went for it.

Before and after steam blocking.

My tension was great at first, but surprisingly in order to increase the width of the sweater, rather than increasing the number of stitches, it calls for an increase in needle size. Unsurprisingly, this messed with my previously beautiful tension. While completing the front (which is all I have done so far) I was pretty worried things were not going to turn out well at all. Ravelry research revealed that the puckering and other tension problems are normally worked out in the blocking, which gave me hope. So far I have only done a steam block, which has corrected it a lot, but I am still not completely satisfied. Perhaps if I do a full wet block things will perk up. Fingers crossed! I had better figure all this out before I knit on...

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Listening to: Bon Iver, again.

Eating: Pizzoccheri