All Laced Up

Good morning! (a special good morning to my friend Nad across the ocean!) I hope you have a nice cup of tea this morning, or evening, wherever you are because this is going to be a long post about vintage booklets and lace patterns.

We were supposed to have a cosy but not too severe snow storm last night, with several inches of snow and so I thought it would be a good time to pull out the old knitting and crochet books and have a nice look-though with a cup of tea. I had such a fun time looking through them again and again, and picking out my favorites to show you!

However, the snow storm never developed - which is a good thing for me with my long driveway! We had these sunny skies instead:



I should have gone outdoors for more than a couple of dog-walks, but the indoors cose was so soul-restoring for all that!

The books I have to show you are old ones:



Dainty Work for Pleasure and Profit, 1901

Home Needlework Magazine, Feb-Mar 1912

Home Needlework Magazine, Aug 1915

The magazines themselves are works of art. I really love this aspect of vintage books and magazines. They strove to make the outsides as creative and inspiring as the insides. Rather than try to "hook" you with snappy catch-phrases and current watch-words, they highlighted one of the patterns that was contained inside, or they employed a current artist to draw a gorgeous scene. The August Home Needlework displays an enlarged version of one of the silk embroidery patterns in this issue, dragonflies, waterlilies, and cattails...



Even the ads are works of art, often illustrated with artist's ink drawings. The only place that has such beautiful ads these days is Ravelry (and sometimes Etsy)!

The Corticelli Kitten:



I love the art-nouveau border on this crochet cotton ad:



But my first reason for searching through old books to begin with was to find some pretty lace trims to crochet. I do love knitted lace, but there is something about those crochet picots and shells that just makes me happy!

Many people, when they think about old lace, think first of filet crochet - and it's true that filet is gorgeous and there are so many ways to adapt it. Take this beautiful tray mat, for instance:



Although it is designed for a small mat for serving, it would be so perfect to keep repeating the motif and make a kitchen window half curtain! All you would need to do is sew a series of those old bone rings across the top, or even crochet a series of loops - anything for the spring-rod to go through. It would be an even more beautiful baby blanket, crocheted in a soft chunky yarn and lined on the back with a deep blue flannel to look like the birds were flying through the sky!

Just in case anyone would like to try any of these ideas, this might help:



Many of the lace patterns in my old books were used to make panels that either were inserted between panels of fine cotton lawn for petticoats, or were sewn together side by side for bed-covers. This is a good example:



and the edging to go around the border is one of my favorites:



It would be really pretty as the edge of a baby's bedsheet or on a pillowcase as a gift, wouldn't it?

This is a classic edging for cotton nightgowns and pillowcases, too:



And I particularly love this one because it reminds me of seashells from the beach:



Some trims are complicated and combine several different types of crochet stitches back-and-forth to complete the entire design, like these, but they are well worth the results!







That last one, of off-center fans, I did try to replicate for you in one of Blue Moon Fiber Arts' silk yarns... but turned out so wonky that I pulled it all out by the end of the night. The directions leave a lot to the imagination and experience of the lace worker, who is supposed to use the drawing as a guide. I know I can master it, but it will take a little longer than I was willing to spend last night!

It's the little tiny trims that I love best. I really like changing up old patterns by using new colours and weights of yarns and wished that I could have summoned enough energy last night to sample these little lace patterns in some bright cotton threads to show you! How pretty these trims would be in Pond Scum Green (one of my favorite new colours), Tomato Red, or Butter Yellow! Here are some unfortunately blurry little photos of the tiny edging laces from the 1901 book:







I'll share one last one, with it's precious little bell flowers, with you here. It calls for crocheting into the picots of a "fancy braid" but you could achieve very similar results by starting with a crochet chain and picots. I hope that if you try it out, you'll post a comment here with a link to your results!

Edging No. 2, 1901

1st Row - 3 tr. into 1 picot of fancy braid, 1 ch., pass over 1 picot and repeat.
2nd Row - 1 dc under 1 ch., 5 ch; repeat.

Boxing Day

My knitted gifts were all well received this Christmas:


Walkies??

I have two favorites that I haven't shown you yet. One is an original pattern that I designed using Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious Single Silk in two vibrant colourways. I want to wait to show you that until I have the pattern written up and I've done one more test knit.

But my other favorite is this:



Annis

My version is made from FibroFibers Nightfall Yarn in the Ivy colourway.

Blocking:





As you can see, Nightfall yarn is gradient-dyed, so that the colours go gradually into black...



I assumed that the colour and the black would be blended from one to the other, the way that Blue Moon Fiber Arts colours are when they are mixed - where the two colours touch, a new hue is born. In other words, the mix magic happens. So I thought the lace would go from deepest black to dusk, to a greenish grey, to a light green, to a deep green. But Nightfall yarns are dyed in gradually increasing numbers of black patches, so that the illusion of gradually fading to black is created when you view the garment from a distance, but close up it looks a bit patchy. Not unpleasant by any means, but unexpected:



Annis is a lovely pattern, with lace edges...





I made this one double wide by going through the chart twice. It created almost-noticeable decreases, where in the original size the neck edge would have covered them...



In my version, I think the colour changes helped to disguise the short-row decreased a tiny bit:



This made a light delicate scarf - not wide enough for a true shawl but wide and long enough to drape around the neck twice. I have it on good authority that it is fun to wear: the recipient has had it on since opening it!

Wrap me in dark vines...

As you can see from the Bobicus medal, below, I've crossed the finish line in the Short Track Shawl race of the 2010 Ravelympics.



I cast on in a hotel room on the ocean while watching the Opening ceremonies last weekend - away for Valentine's with my sweetie. He was very supportive of my Ravelympics obsession and understood my need to cast on at this exact moment! After I got a good number or rows down, we went down to the bar and watched the rest of the Olympic opening there, with good wine and chocolate covered strawberries...

My Ravelympics challenge was the beautiful Saroyan pattern by Liz Abinante, but in shawlette size...



I used Blue Moon Fiber Arts in their gorgeous Luscious Single Silk fiber - the Thraven colourway, and a size 10 (6 mm) circular Addi needle. It worked perfectly - just as I'd hoped. I thought I would need to add repeats on the increase section to make it wide enough for a shawl, but in fact, I knit it exactly as written. The soft bulky-ness of the yarn did the rest...



The season seems to be struggling to turn - winter is trudging towards the bus stop, her tattered skirts trailing in the dirt and remnants of snow... but spring hasn't arrived. We have dark days that smell like rain and I'm often melancholy and dark. You can see that my new shawl suits me perfectly right now. I'll wear it today!

The knitting was hung by the chimney with care....

My final secret holiday knitting project was opened last night by my friend, so I can now reveal it here.

Raven's Wing



This shawl was knit from Blue Moon Fiber Arts lightweight Socks That Rock, 1 skein, in the Raven series Rauen. It is a deep black with flashes of deep red. This yarn is such a pleasure to work with!

I started with a US size 6 circular needle (32 inch) and used a regular neck-down triangle shawl construction from Cosmicpluto's Simple Yet Effective Shawl without the stripes.



After a few inches, I switched to a slightly larger needle - size 7 - because the shawl was becoming very dense and heavy. While I liked this cosiness around the neck, it wasn't the effect I was going for in the body of the shawl. This shawl uses garter stitch so I just knitted on and on and on. It was great take-along knitting and I got a lot done while at Thanksgiving Dinner at my boyfriend's parents' house!

As I got toward the end, I started contemplating a lace edging that would really have the wing-like effect of my imagination. I switched to a size 9 circular needle, and started the edging chart for the Shetland Triangle from Wrap Style (a book I recommend). I started running out of yarn on row 12 of this 14-row edging, and was able to complete a loose bind-off just in time!



Wet blocking had an incredible effect on this shawl. Remember, it was mostly garter stitch, so it was crimped-up and small when just off the needles. I worried about plunging it into a sink full of tepid water - afraid it would bleed or pill - but it came through famously and only looked better and smoother! The shawl blocked out so large that it overflowed the edges of my long dining room table! I used blocking wires for the first time with this shawl.

One of the things that made me most happy, besides the deep, soft yarn and how it looked knit up, was that it really did look like a Raven's Wing - just the effect I wanted.

and my friend liked it.

Now, I am really in a knitting funk and can't figure figure out my next project. Any ideas?

My other life (number 27)

Those of you who know me IRL, know that I've been living several lives at once for a long time. Like Paul Revere (though not as brilliant, of course), who was a politician, a craftsman, a landlord, and a shop-keeper, I move from one castle of the heart to another - sometimes through several different occupational identities in the same day. One of my other lives is as an antique textiles restorer.

The piece that I'm working on is an 88 square cotton crochet coverlet. Its owner tried to brighten it by soaking in bleach. And bleach, as we all know, is an eroder of natural fibers - it literally eats them away.... when you lift the item from its bleachy bath - whether it's antique lace or cotton lingerie - this is what you find:



My heart goes out to lovely antique lace or clothing painstakingly handmade that has been destroyed in a matter of minutes by an uninformed descendant and inherited by a chagrined historical society or museum.



The first thing I do is to lay the lace on a dark surface and catalog the damage. I make a grid or use graph paper and designate each square by horizontal and vertical rows to note both its specific destruction and how many stitches are needed to mend it and what kind. For instance, the tear above is

#15 2/5 to 2/6; 3 triangles 4 loops 2 st

This coverlet had 102 areas needing mending.

Matching the weight and colour of the original materials is an important prep step, too. I have a collection of vintage crochet threads and knitting yarns that I use for this purpose. Usually lace thread this old is the colour of old bones. But in the case of cotton crochet thread that has been bleached, new white thread is needed to match the now too-white colour.



In most cases, I use my antique tools in order to match the size and effect of the original stitches as closely as possible. Most of the old crochet hooks that I have were inherited from relatives and most of my antique knitting needles have been gifts from my friend Marky. The particular lace hooks that I used for this bit of lace were a gift from my bf one Christmas:



Over time, cotton crochet stitches pull against each other and tighten so that it's sometimes hard to get even a lace hook between the threads. In many places I didn't have the tiny hook size I needed so I crocheted with the tip of a sewing needle.

I also use any vintage books I have to look up the lace pattern that was used in the original. I don't have nearly the archive that I need, and in this case I ended up recreating a square of the pattern by counting stitches visually. Once I've established in my mind how each part of the original was created, I use that knowledge to mend the individual portions. In this case, the design was a multiple of three: each part was either 3 stitches, 6, 9, or 12 stitches, etc. This helps to keep the proportions of the mended parts equal to the original parts. After this, it's just a matter of painstakingly and methodically moving from one square to the next, referring to my grid and sample-square notes, and mending, mending, mending. I always incorporate any remaining ends of threads into the mend - this results in a stronger overall fabric that won't unravel through another 100 years of wear.

Here are the photos of the same area as the first one, above, after I was finished:

Bluejay Wings

C'est fini!



Stats:
Pattern: Shetland Triangle by Evelyn A Clark, in Wrap Style
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts, Socks That Rock lightweight in Smoky Topaz, 1 skein 360 yards
Needles: Addi lace needles, size US 6, 4 mm, circular 32"
Started August 8, 2008 at 8:08 am
Finished August 15, 2008 at 11:20 pm

The obligatory "bathroom mirror photo":



My Ravelympics medal!



sigh....that was so much fun! Being part of Ravelympics, especially Team Blue Moon, it was "the experience of a lifetime"!!

all about knitting

Life is certainly fast and furious these days! its been only four days since I updated my journal, but it seems like a week's worth of events have gone by... no wonder I'm so exhausted!

I am designing another pair of socks, using the Esprit yarn from Elann.com. This yarn has a minute amount of elastic in it, and is otherwise cotton. It is half the price of Cascade fixation, which is the same composition, but I think the Esprit colours are nicer! This colour is, I think, called Rose Garden. The photo turned it into a kind of bright red and pink, but it is actually a beautiful rose colour and the what looks pink in the photo is a subtler rose-grey. It really looks like a rose garden in the fall, doesn't it, when the greens are muted to silver and sable?



Since today was payday, I did splurge a bit on this new knitting book:



Let me just say, if you're going to buy this book, do it through Amazon - its much less expensive! Its all lace. And much of it is Vintage lace patterns, which as you know is my greatest knitting passion... for my knitting friends who want to see what's inside, here are a couple of shawl patterns that fall in the category of desirable...







The patterns are very well described and have charts, and there are so many! And there are sections on knitting patterns from the 1800's and Weldon's Practical Knitter (a newspaper type knitting magazine that I've always wanted but never found).

Finally, on the yarn front, a dear friend wanted to give me a cheer-up gift because of the minor surgery I went through recently, and asked what I wanted. I said "Habu!" Habu is a Japanese art fiber company in New York city. You can walk in and view their marvelous silk and exotic yarns and purchase right there, but you can't get it anywhere else. My friend found that two online companies are starting to sell Habu - naturesong.com and pureknits.com. I thought this gift would be at most, maybe one or two balls of their silk and mohair, (and it should have been - my friends are way, way too generous! I'm very grateful.) but this is what came in the mail yesterday!!!!



Its just amazing. Its a couple of sample packs that contain a ball or two of each of the different yarns. Aren't the colours beautiful? The cones are laceweight baby alpaca in a natural camel colour. There is 100% silk in shiny and matt, and silk boucle, and something called Paper, which is actually linen and alpaca, and a wine-coloured cashmere lace-weight. Two of the silk and mohair balls are hand-dyed with brown, tan, and black and the other is green, dark and light... each is enough for a lace scarf in one ball! Good thing I have that new Victorian Lace book, no?