The Nile - a bit of a review

I've been knitting for some time on one of the patterns from this year's Jane Austin Knits from Interweave... you can see how I love these editions by how well-thumbed my magazine is. There are usually several patterns I want to make and I find them very satisfying for my vintage-loving heart. My well-worn mag:


 
One of my local yarn shops has been holding a Jane Austin Knit Night throughout the summer and each person is knitting a pattern from either the first or second Jane Austin magazine, or the newer Jane Austin crochet book, Austentatious Crochet.


The pattern I chose is Margaret Dashwood's Shawl by Joanna Johnson. As you can see from the pictures, it is a repetitive and soothing knit - just what I was longing for! This shawl is a brilliant wisp of simple garter stitch and lace knitting with true vintage construction, style, and appearance. I love it beyond reason and want to make more, experimenting with different yarn weights and needle sizes.



This first one I'm making, which I've named The Nile for various reasons, is out of Frog Tree's Alpaca Sport Melange - a heathery green that looks not only like weeds along the river but like a real hand spun vintage yarn. My shawl will look like it came from Margaret Dashwood's shoulders just yesterday!



If you plan to knit this, please keep in mind that the pattern was designed for a pre-teen or young girl. If you are making it for an adult, you'll want to add yarn and pattern repeats - keeping track of your mid-point, so your decrease side will be symmetrical. I added one ball, or 215 yards, to mine.

Margaret has always been one of my favourite characters in Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility. I like her complete innocence and abandon - the way she relates to her two older sisters: who at times seem as close as twins. It obvious that she is much loved - and I love her keen interest in the world around around her. One of the most delightful scenes in the movie that stars Emilie Francois as Margaret, is when she is hiding under the library table and her sister Eleanor and visitor Edward begin to sprout outrageous facts about the source of the Nile River - causing her to pop out from under the table to correct them!



My day is long today, full of tasks left undone from my last two weeks of surgery and recovery, so there's no movie-watching planned - tasks like laundry, lawn mowing, and groceries that really eat up the weekend hours. But soon. Soon in one of these days coming up I'll rewatch Sense and Sensibility as I knit my Nile-coloured Margaret Dashwood shawl.

Art Deco all around

In my last post, I said I'd have a surprise for you at the end, but then I ran out time and this particular surprise takes a lot of time to type out! I had been planning to pour through my old pattern books and find one of the beaded bag patterns for you but then, as I looked at book after book, I found this in a pattern for a stylish sweater:



and it reminded me so much of this in style:



I took a closer look and both the sweater design and the bag were made within just a couple years of each other so... yeah... these were inspired by the Art Deco era that started in Paris in the 1920's.

This pattern, The Spencyr Sweater, comes from 1923 Fleisher's Knitting and Crochet Manual, Number 106.



I have the complete series of these manuals, in the original, starting with 1890 and going through 1939, as well as several from the 1940's. It took me about 10 years to collect them! Each one is a complete gem. You can find many of these manuals, in reproduced form, through IvaRose.com. So here it is!

The Spencyr Sweater

~ S.B. and B.W. Fleisher, inc. Philadelphia.



Materials ~ Fleisher's Silverglow Yarn - 5 balls White, 5 balls Henna, 2 balls Black. Needles, 1 pair No. 5 (US). Gauge: 6 stitches and 6 rows = 1 inch square.

[Silverglow was a fingeringweight yarn on the thicker side, like Blue Moon Fiber Arts STR heavyweight]

No size for the finished sweater is given, but in other of their manuals they state that the patterns are sized 36 and to size up or down by changing the needle size and yarn weight.

With black yarn cast on 96 inches, Work in stockinette stitch for 1 1/2 inches. Purl 1 row on the knit side to form a hem line and continue in stockinette for 5 rows. Join Henna and start pattern following chart no. 1.



1st row: 1 st henna, *6 stitches black, 2 stitches henna*. repeat between *'s ending with 1 st henna.

Change to chart for body of sweater. On first row of all white increase to 99 stitches by increasing in the 2nd stitch from each end and also in the center of the row.



Follow chart for the 66 rows and repeat pattern from the 1st white row.

When back measures 21 inches from hem line (20 inches from 1st row of 1st pattern) bind off 5 stitches each side and decrease 1 stitch each side every 2nd row 3 times.

Work even for 5 1/2 inches. This should be the last row of 2nd full pattern. With white yarn work 31 stitches, place on a stitch holder, bind off 21 stitches. On remaining 31 stitches start front, reversing pattern from last row on back.

Work even for 1 inch, then increase at neck edge 1 stitch every other row 3 times and cast on 5 stitches.

Work even on both edges until armhole measures 5 1/2 inches from shoulder, then increase 1 stitch on armhole every 2nd row 3 times and cast on 5 stitches. Finish front same as back to border. Increase 1 stitch at underarm on 1sr row of border and follow chart.

With black, work 5 rows of stockinette, purl 1 row on the knit side and continue in stockinette for 1 1/2 inches. Bind off on wrong side. Make other side to correspond.

Sleeves:
With white pick up 71 stitches around armhole. Reverse pattern of sweater from 28th row of 2nd pattern. When work measures 10 inches increase 1 stitch each side every 2nd row 3 times. Reverse to 23rd row of pattern; this should measure 12 inches; then work border to match border on bottom. Work other sleeve to correspond. Sew up seams and hem bottom.

Band on Front:
With black pick up all the stitches from neck to bottom of sweater. Work stockinette stitch for 3 rows, purl 1 row on knit side, and continue in stockinette for 1 inch. Bind off on wrong side. Make other fromnt band to correspond. Turn both bands on knit line and hem.

Collar:
With black, holding wrong side of sweater toward you, pick up 70 stitches around neck. Work in stockinette for 1 inch. On knit row, knit 25, *knit 2 together, knit 7*, repeat between *'s once, knit 2 together, knit 25. Purl 1 row. Next knit row knit 24, knit 2 tog, knit 6, knit 3 tog, knit 6, knit 2 tog, knit 24.

Join henna. *knit 5, increase 1 stitch in 6th stitch* repeat between *'s twice, knit 27, *increase in next stitch, knit 5* repeat between *'s twice. Work 1 row black as follows: purl 2, increase in next stitch, purl 31, increase in next stitch, purl 31, increase in 3rd stitch from end, purl 2. Join henna. Beginning with 1st row of border chart work 7 rows. After last row of henna, with black work 3 rows of stocinette, purl 1 row on the right side for hem line and 1 1/2 inches of stockinette as before. Bind off on wrong side.

On front edges of collar, holding right side toward you, pick up and knit 16 stitches. Work in stockinette for 3 rows, decreasing at neck end every row. Work 1 purl row on knit side, and stockinette for 1 inch. Bind off on wrong side. Sew hem on collar and hems on edge over the deep hem.

One last note,,,, doesn't the model in the sweater look so like Edith Granville from Downton Abbey?! And this is just the type of sweater that she would wear.

It's in the bag...

Good morning! I hope you have a nice cup of tea, because this looks to be a long and picture-laden post! I'm going to show you my small collection of 1800's and early 1900's beaded bags, show you some of my vintage pattern books with their bag pictures and patterns, and - if my typing fingers hold out - a nice surprise at the end.

I've always been fascinated by those intricately beaded designs on little bags that were popular and useful items for over 100 years. I've seen them in my early 1800's knitting and crochet manuals right up through the early 1900's. Even in the 30's and 40's there were simpler versions of these bags in pattern magazines but their popularity was waning.

These covers from my 1920's Fleisher's manuals show the types of bags still used then, but less as chatelaines and more as project-bags:







Corticelli was another company that produced silk knitting and crochet threads and created pattern books to go with them. This reproduction Corticelli booklet from Iva Rose was originally printed in 1917 and is full of designs in the popular bright colours of that era as well as a few of the earlier bags in bead crochet and filet crochet.



My Heminway & Sons Silk-Craft manual also has a variety of these bags but from decades earlier. Heminway, established in 1849, also manufactured silk knitting and crochet thread - a laborious and exacting science in those years:



I have some original spools of this knitting silk in my collection, and from experimentation I've found that Perle Cotton size 5 might be substituted for some of these patterns, and comes in as wide a variety of colours as the early silks. You need something with a twist for durability (the original spools were called "Silk Twist") but thin enough for threading the tiny, tiny glass or steel beads.

My earliest bags are beautiful examples of the glass and steel bead crochet. Some are simpler geometric designs, like these from the 1800's using cotton twist and faceted bronze-coloured glass beads. I love the big beaded tassel on this small bag:





and this larger bag with its beaded, turned-down collar and celluloid rings that the drawstring loops through:





This cream silk twist bag has rows and rows of beaded swags and beaded diamonds and a tightly crocheted, beaded ball-and-tassel (incredibly, I found it at a charity shop with a $5 price tag in a box of purses. I did tell them it was mis-marked and paid them a fair price for it):





This magnificent example is in navy Silk Twist with steel/precious metal beads:



It's incredibly heavy - like carrying a brick of metal - and maybe that is the reason that there is no wear or flaw of any kind on this bag, even though it is at least 100 years old. An antique appraiser told me that the beads were sterling silver.



This bag also has rings, silver ones, for the drawstring...



But the drawstring is a chain - as delicate and intricate as a silver necklace - beautiful!



The Heminway Silk-Craft book has a pattern for a silver-bead style bag, not as elaborate in design, but a pretty example:



It also shows patterns for the cotton crochet bags, with beads used just for the poesy design:





But the King and Queen of my little collection are the silk "beaded picture" bags:





These bags use such tiny crochet stitches and the glass beads themselves are minuscule. There are at least 45 beads to one inch in this example, and hundreds in a round.





The Heminway booklet has one pattern for this type of bag. I imagine it would take a year to complete it - the pattern alone is 11 pages long! The Oak Leaf and Acorn bag:



It uses 2 and 1/2 spools of silk twist, 7 skeins (beads threaded on string) of black beads, 5 skeins of bright yellow beads, 5 skeins of dark yellow beads, and 2 skeins of red-brown beads. The directions that follow give exact instructions for threading every single tiny glass bead onto the silk twist in a colour configuration that will result in the design pictured, similar to hand-painting yarn before knitting it. Then a tiny crochet stitch is made in between each and every of those thousands of beads to create the fabric and the beaded design. Each bead has to be threaded in exactly the right sequence in order for the "picture" to materialize - Amazing!

Well, I do have a related pattern for you, but I've run out of time so that will have to wait for the next blog post. If you have ever tried beaded crochet, let me know - I'd love to see your projects!

too early for wooly scarves

When I was out in Portland, I got to meet a lot of new people and one of my favorites was Sean, who was the best man and a really, really big help with the wedding. I wanted to send him something more than a thank you card, so I've started making him a scarf for winter.

Do you remember BrooklynTweed's Noro Striped Scarf? ...Seems like years and years ago that this was first popular! I think it's a classic. I had several skeins of Silk Garden in my stash and had fun putting the colors together for the perfect pattern...

This scarf uses two skeins of the main colours - I used one of my favorite combinations with black, browns in many shades, and greys - and then pairs it with one skein each of two different, more colourful, but similar colors for contrast. I used two skeins that I love best: greens and browns and blues and brownish reds... They seem to be working very well together in a toasty mellow kind of way.

Sorry for the poor phone-camera picture, but you can see a bit:



This is a very soothing knit so there's lots of good magic in it! I watch the baseball game and knit away, carrying each colour up the side. It is early for knitting winter scarves. But it's always the right time for gifts!

and now.... back to our regularly scheduled programming...

I suppose it is natural after a huge effort and event like the wedding to feel a bit of a let down when it's all over. Jule and her new husband are now on their honeymoon and I am back home on the other side of the country... I've been trying to pick up the projects and plans that I put aside to make the wedding dress but it's been hard.

Here is a bit of eye candy:



This is a skein of Rhubarb in MadelineTosh fingering merino that just arrived at my door. I had planned to pair it with another skein of the same in Oak (a kind of pond scum green) to make a fake isle shawl collar sweater. That will happen, just not for awhile. The Rhubarb skein is much more fluorescent orange that the one that was displayed when I ordered, but this is the way with hand-dyed yarns. I think it will still look fine with what I have in mind.

I'm in the middle of a lily-of-the-valley shawl made with Kraemer white lace-weight with sterling silver yarn. This was to be the wedding shawl, but of course couldn't be finished until the dress was finished and I was still altering the dress up until the morning of the wedding! Now that I am near the point of the shawl (it's a modified triangle - the points are rounded) it's going much faster!

While I was in Portland, I got a small skein of jade green silk for wrist-gloves and the new Piecework magazine - the "Travel Issue" - has the perfect pattern for them. I want to start these soon, but I'm afraid if I double-book (cast on for a second project before I finish the first) I won't go back to the shawl. A complicated lace shawl - with nupps! - is a serious commitment. And I'm not a serious girl. So it takes a lot of push for me to take these longer projects to the very end.

I know I'll get my knitting mojo back shortly - all it takes is a pretty yarn to get me inspired and a nice dose of Ravelry - but for right now... I guess it's just time to breathe.

In Your Sleeve, People!

Everyone at work is worried about the flu that's going around. The nurses here are scurrying to calm people down and check that they have their flu shots. Someone posted THIS video on the work website. Hilarious! I recommend it to anyone - good family fun!

It is only 2 weeks until the Sheep & Wool Fair. I can't wait. Even though there is no yarn or fiber I could conceivably need, I still look forward to it with an unparalleled anticipation. Every year I'm eager to visit the Vermont Spinnery, Foxfire Fibers, Zeilinger's Wool Company, Grafton Fibers, and Spirit Trail yarns. Not only are the yarns, fibers and tools beautiful but the people are so nice! It's amazing that they recognize me every year, even though we only meet once and they see so many people in the course of their busy fiber-y lives. As you know (If you been following my blog for a few years), I like to slip in anonymously and early and spirit my way through the fair quietly. We'll see if I succeed this year.

I'm almost finished with the Baby Wrap Sweater. It almost reminds me of wrapping sushi, the yarn is so slippery and soft!



As you can see, I decided to go with button wraps on the sides instead of the big bow in the back or front. I thought ties wouldn't be quite so comfortable for a wriggly baby. Next steps: sleeves and cute buttons.

This post wouldn't be complete with a flashing of the stash! Woolgirl had a sale recently on some selected sock yarns and I bought a skein of Dancing Dachs in the colourway, Toadstool. Isn't it lively and vibrant? I don't know yet what it's going to be, but I have high expectations of a yarn called Toadstool. It will definitely have to be something fun.



PS - You won't understand the title of this post unless you watch the video.

Yesterday's excursions...

I thought that, today, I'd take you with me on my weekend rambles. You'll get to see a little bit of what my town and area looks like, as well as a typical Saturday. It's probably pretty much like your Saturday...

The plan started with the Natural Market which was holding it's first Organic Farmer's Market of the year. The day was warm, but cloudy and overcast, looking like rain, but even so the streets were crowded. I circled the square several times and finally had to park down the hill and walk a couple of blocks. The good news is that this took me past some of the lovely old buildings in that part of town.

The first one that caught my eye was the Art Gallery:



It's been there for a while and Jule worked there before she went to college. One time they had a painting of our house in the window - a local artist had thought it was pretty and, unbeknownst to me, painted it: "Yellow House on X Street"

This week's art is abstract and I found it very soothing:



I stood at the window and admired the paintings for a while, and then continued up the hill, past this little enchanted alcove:



All those bricks! There used to be a brick-making factory in this town in an early time, and there still is a huge granite quarry in the hills outside of town. That's why we all have so much granite - posts, steps, and foundations - in and around our houses, and why so many of the downtown buildings are built of granite and brick.

The market is at the top of a little rise and across the main street...



Being the first one of the season meant that this market day was an incredible bun fight! But there were lots of samples (artisan cheese, macaroni and cheese with mushrooms, lemon and artichoke ravioli, freshly made fried potatoes, Greek yogurt, ice cream...) and free giveaways - I got two new re-usable shopping bags, a green one and a yellow one! I bought a loaf of Oatmeal Bread that had been baked that morning, a container of the Mushroom Macaroni & Cheese, some Greek yogurt (with honey), a package of ice cream sandwiches, and a fresh-baked scone (which has just this minute been eaten while I type)...

With my groceries in my new shopping bags, I made my way back downhill to the car, passed the Mexican Restaurant:



and passed a beautiful old barn that has been renovated for offices:



I particularly liked the big black crow who decided that the very pinnacle of the cupola was his special spot for surveying the entire town.

My next stop was a yarn shop nearby that was having a big sale before closing for their spring vacation. This shop is in a pretty college town at the top of a small mountain:



The houses and the town green are typical of my state where there are many places that go back to the 1600's, 1700's and 1800's. I know that's young by European standards...



The yarn store, Knit New London, is a tiny little store packed full with a wonderful collection of special yarns that I don't see everywhere else... lot's of locally produced yarns (including a baby camel yarn from Cape Cod) and most of the Rowan booklets, which I love.



Of course, the shop was super-crowded because of the sale. One mother-daughter team was pushing in front of everyone else to snatch up the skeins they wanted and spreading the yarn from the shelves all over the floor to choose their colours. The women working the sale were kept very busy putting everything back on the shelves in their wake!

As usual, the shop owner and the others there were very friendly and helpful. At 30% off, I did collect quite a lot for my stash:



1. Malabrigo Silky Wool 2. Namaste Crocheted Flower Tape-measure 3. Rowan Kidsilk Haze 4. Blue Sky Alpacas Silk & Alpaca 5. Classic Elite Premiere Cotton and Tencel

The Premiere cotton is for this little sweater from Greetings from the Knit Cafe, a book I already have in my pattern stash.



But that will have to wait. After yesterday's excursions, I have to spend this sunny day raking the back yard and staking the blackberry bushes...