A Bluestocking Knits

Knitting Days

Because there is still some knitting going on chez Bluestocking ...

It will shortly be Miss Watts's "Figured Comforter" Mark 2, though, as the first one, while handsome, is far too small.  Miss Watts unfortunately gives no indication of what weight of wool, so I picked a rather fine one -- too fine, obviously.  But I like the pattern stitch, so re-making it is not an effort.

This is FibraNatura's "Shepherd's Own", formerly in its natural cream color, dyed multiple times with Kool-Aid until I got a red that I liked -- unfortunately it took so very many times that I nearly despaired and now I've forgotten which colors I used.  I'm quite pleased with the three skeins above, though a bit puzzled by the marling (marled-ness??) of the one on the left below, and the certainly-not-100%-natural-wool intrusion in the one on the right.  I think I can pick it out without ill effect, though ...

Page 8

Finished page 8 of the "Quaker Virtues" sampler this morning!  The line runs down the center of that big motif just below "SIMPLICITY", with the top of the page through the word itself -- which isn't crooked, I assure you, the fabric is just a little stretched there!  I'm finding a rather surprising number of mistakes in the chart, and not just subjective things like spacing (which I admit to having tweaked here and there), but missing or extra stitches, one of which took me quite a bit of picking-out to fix, since the error was near where I started the particular motif, and I didn't realize it until I got to the next cardinal point.  Oh well.  I'm still enjoying the piece immensely!

Being so very near to finishing Laura's quilt (!), I felt justified the other day in starting a small knitting project (!!) -- having had a conversation with Brittany by way of the comments about Stephen Maturin's comforter, I thought, "well, I must have some suitable wool, let's just see what one of these 'comforters' looks like, eh?"  This one will be the "Figured Comforter" from the 1840 edition of Miss Watts's 1837 book -- about twenty-five years after the events of Desolation Island, but presumably things didn't change overmuch between.  This particular comforter's shape will narrow a bit where it rests at the back of the wearer's neck, then widen out again at the other end.  (I was a bit concerned at first that it wasn't going to lie flat, but once it got a bit of heft behind it, as it were, it settled down nicely.)

This miniature sampler was finished some weeks ago, and again I put off making the frame, had trouble with same, etc. etc. etc.  The chart is the "Heritage VI" by Annelle Ferguson -- I lightened all of the colors by one step, which result usually pleases me very much though in this case I suspect wasn't quite successful, but there it is.  I had great difficulty getting the picture-frame molding mitered properly, so rather than keep wasting it I ended up using plain strip wood (this is 1/8 x 1/4") and "scratch carving" a simple line around the opening to make it look like a home-made frame.  This didn't turn out too badly -- it looks old-ish, at any rate!

I have been reading quite a lot -- I keep meaning to write about that, then find myself absorbed in yet another book --

Knitting in the Movies and TV: "All Creatures Great and Small" (2020)

I am finding the new "All Creatures Great and Small" series a fairly solid B- -- adding in backstories etc. for characters like Mrs. Hall is all right, but a few points off for non-period dialogue that's full of pesky Americanisms (why on earth don't the older folks in the production crew let the writers know that you didn't "call" people in Britain of the 1930s, not even in Britain of the 1980s, you "rang" them?!), and even more points off for rewriting scenes from the book and taking much of the sparkle out of them.  But the cast is excellent, the scenery is gorgeous of course, and in most respects the production values are very good.  And there are lots of knits, many of them handmade! there is that, of course.

Helen (Rachel Shenton) and James (Nicholas Ralph), pretending they aren't flirting.

Tristan (Callum Woodhouse) looking quite louche, as one might expect!

Mrs. Hall's knitting is alarmingly chunky for the 1930s.  Points off for letting her wool roll about on the floor, which I don't think any self-respecting Yorkshire housekeeper would do, but points back for the crochet squares on the table.  I was a bit alarmed that her right hand is over the needle when so very many English ladies at this time and for some years later held their right hand under the needle, but apparently that was a "posh" thing, and so it seems quite likely after all that a country woman would have held it the way Anna Madeley is doing.

Tristan seems to get the lion's share of the hand-knitted slipovers!

Well, this is actually a pretty characteristic thing for book-Tristan, actually ...

A truly splendid Fair Isle-style scarf, in gorgeous colors too!

I don't really know why barmaid Maggie (Mollie Winnard) should be holding a donkey on a rope halter, but perhaps that will be explained later -- what I am interested in at the moment is those very fetching Scandinavian-star fingerless gloves!

I am enjoying watching 1930s and 40s programs while I knit on the Rae slipover for Julia, so it's all good.  The Palette is loosely-spun and a bit splitty, but I'm hoping that most of the inconsistencies come out in the wash -- and it is surprisingly soft even still on the needles.  These are some of the craziest "Fair Isle" patterns I've ever seen, but there is no question about it not being "1940s"!

I couldn't get enough of the "Oregon Coast" in the same dyelot, and I also had a bit of trouble matching the gauge of the single-color bands to the gauge of the two-color ones, so I solved both issues at once by working the single-color bands with two balls of the same color but one each from the different dyelots.  I don't think the difference between the two is quite as apparent in real life as it is in the photo, or perhaps the random-ish alternation is working its magic.

And for a bonus, a flashback to the original series, here with a very young Peter Davison as Tristan -- now that I look at it, the slipover has a rather 1980s look to it in gauge and length! but it is still very charming --

Hooray! It's Ray-Ray-Raining

Well -- we had another generous few hours or so last night, it's not raining now, but the air has that clean feeling and the garden has got a pleasantly-surprised perked-up look.  I'm also starting the "Rae" pullover, so there's a nice little pun for you.  Julia and I settled on an adjusted color scheme, and after I had to winkle some glue down into the crack in my only pair of wood 2.5mm circs, I was knitting away on the ribbing.  The original gauge is 30 sts per 4"/10cm, and I'm getting 28 (in the round), so I'm recalculating a bit. 

After my success with the Crazy Rails quilt, I dove straight in to the new quilt for our bed, fabrics for which have been sitting in a drawer untouched for a year.  For some reason, though, although I still really like the Cross and Crown I had decided on, it seemed a bit more-advanced than I am at present -- perhaps I'm wrong, but neither do I want to stretch myself too far.  I decided on something simpler, half-square triangles, and so I am cutting and pressing this week.  And at the same time, I thought about Laura, who at twenty is making plans to go away to college in September, and I wanted to make her a quilt to take with her.  She liked the idea, and after I proposed a few patterns I felt I could handle, she said, "You know, I'd like something with stars."  I nodded, and went to another room and came back with my copy of this magazine --

which I've been daydreaming over for quite a while.  The one on the cover was what had come to mind when Laura said "stars" -- so she likes it and we've conferred and ordered fabrics.  I'm kind of glad that I decided on something simpler for our bed quilt -- the stars one is I think a bit less-complex than it looks, but still I don't want to overwhelm myself.

A 1:12 scale sampler kit from Annelle Ferguson, on 48-count gauze.  I have had a bit of a slump this year where miniatures are concerned, but I got two of these kits for Christmas, and they are certainly very charming!

I admit also that knitting on this vintage pattern has got me thinking about knitting myself a little vintage something, perhaps in that KnitPicks Palette that didn't really work with the crocheted vest thingy last summer.  I really like the sleeveless vest/pullover style, as it's more versatile here, where real winter lasts only about three weeks, if we're lucky.  I'm very taken with the one on the left here --

or maybe (rather wildly!) this one --

for which I actually have the pattern -- "Simonetta"! -- unlike the first, which I guess I will have to make up as I go.

And because the title of this post has me singing the song, here is a version of it sung by Disneyland's Dapper Dans --

 

Victory Roll

Julia astonished me last week by saying, "Mom, I'd like a 40s Fair Isle vest."  I nearly fell off my chair.  Julia, for whom even Shepherd Sock is "too scratchy"??  She is getting very interested in "retro" and period clothing, mainly 1940s.  She had seen some modern versions on a website somewhere, and showed me what had piqued her interest, although when I started cross-examining it turned out that she liked the actual 40s details better -- the higher waist and shorter ribbed welt, the slightly-smaller armholes and narrower armhole ribbing, and the generally-closer fit.  Poking around on various websites looking for free patterns, there were quite a number of ones that were close, but none with all of the details plus a set of Fair Isle patterns that she liked.  I was on the verge of cobbling the right shape garment with color-your-own Fair Isle patterns, when I traced an image I found on Pinterest to FabForties.co.uk (formerly The Vintage Knitting Lady) where I found the above Bairns-Wear sleeveless pullover for mere pennies -- almost as good as free.

With a pattern in hand at last, I sat down with a chart-making software and graphed the first two patterns from the written-out instructions -- all three patterns have a 10-stitch repeat -- in something vaguely resembling the suggested colors, which are a burgundy ground with maize (the lighter yellow here), ice blue, berberis (the gold), sea green, and "Queen Mary Rose".  I didn't even get to the sea green and rose before I knew something was very wrong.  I tried it again, thinking maybe I was a stitch off somewhere and things were misaligned, but it was exactly the same.  The next day, it occurred to me that since -- nowadays at least -- Fair Isle is usually worked in the round, and these instructions are for knitting flat, maybe the designer had worked it in the round and whoever typed it up hadn't realized that, so I tried charting it with every row worked as though from the front, and got this --

which en masse looks like this --

which looks much more likely.  I'm still pretty sure that that bottom band is not the same one as in the knitted-up slipover in the photo ...

Still oddly irregular for Fair Isle, but not as Chinese-dragon-like as the one from the instructions!  (Chinese dragons are all very well when you want Chinese dragons, of course -- maybe not so much in a 1940s Fair-Isle slipover.)

As a relief from those garish chart colors, here is what we worked out from the Knit Picks "Palette" line -- with the main mousy-brown color "repeated" between the pattern colors --

Fingers crossed that they go well together in real life!

To be continued ...!

A, B, C, J --

I was going to shamelessly pinch an idea from Beyond Eden Rock and do an ABC of miscellanea, but found myself with multiple ideas for S (some of which I've redistributed to other letters -- !) and nothing at all for Z, M-N-O, not even for E.  And so rather than leave this post marooned in the Drafts folder while I flail about trying to think of what would work for D, I'll just go with what I've got ...

A = The “Anna Ohman” sampler continues to be a pleasure to work.  (I have since gone back and put in the missing dot on the downward stroke of the R in år, Swedish for "year," florid though it is.)

B = This week's “Bookshelf Traveling for Insane Times” is one of our living-room bookcases.  Most of the one on the right is science fiction and fantasy.  Dedicated shelf-readers might spot in the other case my set of Laura Ingalls Wilder companionably next to my set of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturins, and the Ransomes on the shelf below.  What you do not see is the Golden Lion, aka Hardy House, which has resided in front of these shelves on a pair of sawhorses for the past two years or so.  It was a bit of a wrench to even decide it was time to give it away, let alone do so, but I realized that not only was I not able to devote the time to fixing it up that it deserves, but that it was keeping me from even beginning the project that had got me started in miniatures in the first place.  Luckily for me, its departure was as gentle and sudden as its arrival three years ago.  So -- bless you, dear Lion, and fare well!

C = I asked David to put up some shelves in the closet in our front bedroom -- which we continue to call a bedroom though in the twenty-some years we've lived here has never had a bed in it, but is our family/catch-all room.  All three of our bedrooms still have the original 1929 built-in dressers, but we have added to the shelves that other owners have added, because, really, can you ever have too much storage space?  I had suggested merely a plank resting on the existing 2x4s attached to the walls on either side, and another across the top of the window frame, but David either didn't believe me or knows me too well when I said that there would still be enough light from the window, and so he decided this was a better idea.  Which it probably is, mind you, as I can put my boxes of embroidery floss (just about to perform a sort of meiosis into at least one more box) on the little shelves as the boxes are not heavy and will be quite easily reachable, with the much-larger shelf on top for heavier seasonal things.  I have also made the promise to weed things out as they go into the closet ...

J = I'm very much enjoying my re-read of the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin series -- am on the fourth at the moment, The Mauritius Command.

    [Jack] sighed, smiled, and was about to seal when Stephen walked in, looking mean and pinched.  "Stephen," he said, "I have just written to Sophie.  Have you any message?"
    "Love, of course.  And compliments to Mrs. Williams [Jack's mother-in-law, a tartar]."
    "Lord," cried Jack, writing fast, "thank you for reminding me.  I have explained about Lady Clonfert [a fellow-officer's wife who has begged passage on Jack's new command]," he observed, as he closed the letter up.
    "Then I trust you kept your explanation short," said Stephen.  "Circumstantial details destroy a tale entirely.  The longer, the less credible."
    "I merely stated that she did not appear at the rendezvous, and passed on."
    "Nothing about three o'clock in the morning, the hocus-pocus at the inn, signals disregarded, the boat being made to row as though we were escaping from the Day of Judgement, and the lady ditched?" asked Stephen, with the unpleasant creaking noise that was his nearest approach to a laugh.
    "What a rattle you are, to be sure," said Jack.

L = Two lace samples from an 1849 lace collar pattern that I'm trying to figure out from the both complex and somewhat cryptic period instructions.  These are the two choices for edgings once the collar is knitted -- I did these in crochet cotton at a much-larger gauge, just to get it worked out before I started the real thing.  As it happened, I recognized both of them after a few repeats -- the bottom one is  a variation of the "Hearth and Home Lace" edging and the top one a variation of the "Clover Leaf Lace" found in Nancie Wiseman's Lace from the Attic, and probably numerous other Shetland edgings sources.  I started knitting the collar in no.80 tatting cotton on the smallest needles I have, but got interrupted enough times by Julia wanting another length of the cotton for her elaborate bobbin lace project that I decided it would be better to just give her the rest of the spool and start again with a fresh one! which I haven't got hold of yet.

Q = I had already heard, around the internet and from the local needlework shop owner, that if you work cross-stitch with overdyed thread, you should do it in the "English style" and not the "Danish," which is making each X before going on to the next, instead of a line of //// as long as necessary then returning to work the \\\\.  Why "English" and "Danish"?  I don't know! but the reason is that because, unlike in the days when unevenly-dyed thread was something to be disguised, now we celebrate it, and making all of the strokes in one direction then coming back to finish the Xs tends to even out the variations, whereas making the whole X at once keeps them prominent.  It seems that I have been working Danish-style all my life without knowing it (also "left-handed" with my right hand, though that's another story)!  Because I wasn't sure if I could go back and forth between the two methods without driving myself crazy, or if concentrating hard on making sure that I was keeping to one or the other would spoil my enjoyment of both projects, I decided that a bit of prudence was in order and I will set the “Quaker Virtues” aside -- but not very far -- for the much-smaller "Anna Ohman".

S = Yeah, I also needed a knitting project, because the gauges are small enough on the samplers that it's easier for me to work them without my glasses or contacts.  I can't watch television without my glasses, obviously, so having a knitting project means that I can watch the new season of the "Bake Off" or "The Good Place" while I knit! and save the samplers for the quiet hour after my usually-early breakfast, before anyone else gets up.  The S is for Savannah cashmere/nylon/superwash merino, wonderfully soft, which is on its way to becoming the “Copilot” cowl.

T = Skillet Turkey Chili from Smitten Kitchen -- impressively delicious for something so quick and so simple!

Summer Reading

I was sitting here some weeks ago thinking suddenly, I need to read more, and so I pondered for a while what to choose.  I decided that it was time, after a great many years, to reread the Narnia books, and though I finished Prince Caspian with a sigh of pleasure and my hand was reaching, metaphorically, for Dawn Treader, it occurred to me that there were six volumes of Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series on my shelf still utterly unread.  I had picked up Swallows and Amazons at our beloved local children's bookstore, and enjoyed it very much, enough that when the owner decided to retire and was selling off her stock at half-price, I went over and bought all of the rest of the series that she had -- and yet, there they sat on the shelf, for years.  And so I thought now that they would be just the thing right now, in these difficult times when one wants children's stories with plenty of adventure but the assurance of a safe homecoming at the end.  It had been long enough that I thought I should read the first book again, just to get the sail filled, as it were, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time around.  But I have to say that, while the first book is certainly good, Ransome really hit his stride as he went on.  He clearly knows his stuff, both boats and the Lake District in which many of the stories are set, and better still, he has that rather rare ability to write from a child's perspective that makes you forget that he isn't one himself -- as I say, I love the Narnia stories, but it is always clear that they are being told to you by an adult, where Ransome reminds me quite a lot in this respect of Elizabeth Enright's Melendy family series, a different sort of story but with that same feeling of immediacy, of being immersed in it yourself, this is what it's like. 

I read, in rapid succession, Swallowdale, Winter Holiday, Pigeon Post, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, Secret Water, and Great Northern?, coming suddenly to the end of my collection with a sigh of dismay.  They are all, of course, boat-related but the focus is on different things in each, and new characters come in here and there, so that each book is quite different -- especially, I thought, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, as throughout the series there are adventures and risky situations of course, but, perhaps because I'm a parent now and long past being the same age as the Walker children, the very real danger they are in at being literally swept out to sea was more than unsettling.  (This one contains the only mention in the whole series of one of the children being seasick, and the physical reality of it comes as quite a shock.)  But, as I say, I enjoyed the series immensely, and can see why so many readers still think of them as beloved favorites.  I am amazed only at the fact that I had never heard of them before!

(The photograph is a still from the 2016 movie version of the first book.  I haven't seen it -- I found out about it not long after I finished the book the second time, but after reading in reviews that the writers felt it necessary to insert a completely new subplot about real spies, I thought, "oh no!"  Hearing that Susan has been turned into a whiny bumbler who can't even manage to cook a fish made me shriek -- apparently Peter has also been made "more real".  Why, why, why take classics that generations of children have loved passionately, and change them??  Oh, well -- it looks beautiful, at least.  Sigh.)

The D.E. Stevenson list is reading Amberwell, and this time around I volunteered to lead a section, offering a summary of each chapter and some discussion questions.  Mine turned out to be quite early in the book, chapters 4-6, which I estimate to be taking place around 1930.  The Ayrton family live in a fine old estate on the west coast of Scotland -- the story begins a few centuries earlier with the building of the house and the establishment of the Ayrtons, but by chapter 4 the main characters of the "present day" have been introduced, Mr. and Mrs. Ayrton, his two sons from his first marriage, and three daughters from this second, which daughters are all still under ten and in the care of their Nannie.  One of the central events of this section, and a recurring motif in the story, is the dedication of Mr. Ayrton's contribution to the estate -- others in the generations before him were a walled garden, a bowling-green, a stone terrace, and so on -- Mr. Ayrton has decided upon a fountain with the statue of a little mermaid. On the day of the ceremonial Turning on the Fountain, the girls are sitting on rugs on the bowling-green in their best dresses and the boys in their kilts, waiting for the festivities, and Nannie is nearby keeping an eye on them, and knitting.  This seems too good and opportunity to pass up, to choose something for my "Knitting with DES" virtual knit-along -- so what might Nannie be knitting, I asked myself.

This is a bit later than ca.1930, by about a decade, but how could I possibly resist three little girls in matching boleros? and just the right ages!  This is in the Bestway 749 booklet, this pattern available for a small fee from FabForties.co.uk (who seems to have changed her name recently from The Vintage Knitting Lady, perhaps to specialize in the 1940s?).

(The house in the photo above, by the way, is Inchmarlo, not on the west coast as in the story but in Aberdeenshire.  My Scottish-immigrant ancestors worked there, according to the 1840 census!  The descriptions of Stevenson's Amberwell and a number of the dust-jacket illustrations in the book's long publishing history remind me of Inchmarlo, and so I was delighted to find this photo available for Creative Commons use at Geograph.uk -- this one is by Stanley Howe.)

"Swallows and Amazons" leads quite naturally to a grown-up sea adventure, and I picked up Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander after many years -- too long!  I've only just finished the second in the series, Post Captain, enjoying every moment.  O'Brian's prose is so complex yet wonderfully fluid that it is a pleasure to read, and his flashes of wit and deft characterizations are sheer genius.

(The photo -- from Wikimedia Commons -- is the stern of the Surprise built for the 2003 movie and now at the Maritime Museum of San Diego.)

It's been too hot lately for snuggling-under-a-blanket reading, so I just made one instead, and gave it away as a house-warming present -- it is the simple-but-effective "Modern Granny Stitch Blanket" by Jess of Make & Do Crew.  I used the recommended Lion Brand "Heartland" yarn, in "Glacier Bay", "Hot Springs", "Olympic", "Mount Rainier", and "Kings Canyon" (for a lark, try guessing which is which! I think I got only one right). 

I ran out of "Olympic" just a little over two rows short -- there had been only one skein of it in the store, so I bought a sixth color but decided that I'd risk looking for another skein somewhere else.  And rather surprisingly, because it's 100% acrylic and therefore produced by recipe that isn't subject to the whims and eccentricities of natural fibers, the dye lots of "Olympic" at least are noticeably, even disappointingly, different.  There is much less of the black in the second skein, leaving the color rather dull and flat -- oh, well.

I'm not generally a huge fan of acrylics, but this is quite pleasant to work with, and I must say it makes yummy tassels!

A Rose by Any Other Name

I have in fact finished the No.467 wrap-front vest I've been plugging away at since January, but despite the numerous re-workings I did of the angles for the front edges, which in the end turned out pretty well, the vest as a whole is unfortunately just too big for me.  Clearly, I should have tried it on and considered it for a while before I worked the crocheted armhole edging.  It's possible that at a previous point in my life I would have worn it anyway, but now, well, I want it to look good, I want it to be close-fitting like the original would, and although it was an awful lot of rather dull garter stitch, I'm prepared to rip it out -- after some careful measuring and note-taking, of course -- and re-knit it, but I think I might have to change its name to the Penelope vest, for patiently ripping it out so very many times.

Even weeks after writing about the Victory jumper as my choice for the D.E. Stevenson knitalong while reading Spring Magic, I found myself still thinking about it, wondering if the Knitpicks Palette I had somewhere in my stash would work ....  I think it will, but the larger gauge (!) and the single relatively-tiny size of the original will require a number of adjustments to accommodate the Palette, and of course a rather reserved color like this (which is "Mist") would alone make it unlike the original jumper, whose most salient characteristic is probably its distinctive and celebratory scallopy stripes.  So perhaps a "Spring Magic" jumper?!

A Bit of War-time Knitting in "Mrs. Tim Carries On" and "Spring Magic"

The D.E. Stevenson group is reading the "Mrs. Tim" series, interspersed with related DES titles, and we have just finished Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) and started Spring Magic (1942).  Being wartime, of course there is knitting for one's menfolk and others in the armed forces sprinkled throughout, especially in Mrs. Tim Carries On, but since there are so very many patterns available for "soldiers' comforts" and really, how many variations can there be on plain, dark socks, I chose for my virtual "Knitting with D.E. Stevenson" project the girl's socks in this late-1930s/early-1940s Bairnswear leaflet available in reproduction from The Vintage Knitting Lady. The photo reminds me not a little of Hester's young daughter Betty who likes dolls and girlish things, to be sure, but doesn't stick at climbing trees as well.  As a knitter, I like how these particular socks have different kinds of heels, too -- I know it's comfortable to knit something that one is familiar with, but it's also pleasing to have different options.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Dean Street Press -- especially Scott of Furrowed Middlebrow, whose Furrowed Middlebrow colophon debuted there a few years ago and specializes in "works by lesser-known British women novelists and memoirists" -- three of the four Mrs. Tim books are now available in e-book format (the first was reprinted some years ago by the Bloomsbury Group), as well as Spring Magic and 1935's Smouldering Fire, of which more in another post.  I have been very much looking forward to the group read of Spring Magic, as it is one of my favorites.  We've only just started, and already have had interesting discussions about books a sheltered child might have read (a child such as Frances, though she is now at 25 not sheltered so much as trapped), the idiom "doing the messages" (which may or may not involve actual messages, depending on whether one is north or south of Hadrian's Wall ...), horsehair mattresses (and sofas), the Pioneer Corps, and potential inspirations for the setting's Scottish fishing village -- not to mention sidetracks like April Fool pranks and plagiarism.

But knitting, that's what I was talking about.  In one scene in the book, during a rather terrifying air raid -- this isn't London, mind you, it's a fishing village on the west coast of Scotland -- the ladies of the inn where Frances is staying are knitting -- who could sleep? -- and Annie offers to share a knitting pattern.  "It's quite an easy pattern," she says, "you slip one and knit one and pass the slipped stitch over.  I'll give you the pattern tomorrow if you would like it --"  In searching the internet hopefully for "lacy knitting pattern 1940s", I came across this one --

which is available free from the V&A (here's the Ravelry link) as part of a page about 1940s knitting patterns (huzzah!).  The lace stitch is a simple two-row one with a familiar "sl1, K1, psso" maneuver that combined with K2tog and judicious yarn-overs produces the pretty scallop effect, here in patriotic red, white, and blue -- so it seems particularly appropriate for my Spring Magic choice!  I've used the Ravelry link instead of going straight to the pattern itself so that you can see some examples of how changing the colors or simply changing the number of rows of red, white, or blue can vary the effect of the jumper.

Time for Some Knitting

I've put together and finished the two clock kits from Cynthia Howe.  First, because it was my reason for visiting her website in the first place, was this lovely banjo clock.  The kit comes with a ready-made face+dome and a couple of printed faces, but since all of the ones I've seen made up have used the dome face, I decided to be a little different and use the other one.

This is finished with Rust-Oleum wood stain in dark walnut and two or three coats of Ceramcoat gloss varnish with the details picked out in Martha Stewart Metallic Gold craft paint.  I also flooded the face and the two inserts with artist's gloss medium, which gives them a sort of faux glass look, and I hope will protect the images from fading as well.

This clock is "missing" the usual finial at the top, but to be honest that doesn't surprise or bother me, as it would add a lot of fiddliness to a kit that is otherwise fairly easy to put together.  Well -- I almost gave up on the little ornament at the bottom, because -- really, look at it! --

I glued it with wood glue twice, it came off twice, I glued it with super-glue, it came off, I glued it again with super-glue and it finally stuck.  If it's crooked, please don't say anything!

The Welch clock is charming in its gaudy Victorianness.  Cynthia Howe doesn't say so, but surely her version is based on this one --

so I think it's a pretty impressive feat to reduce this to 1:12 scale!  This is the "Donita" hanging clock (it also came in a shelf version, without the lower trim) from E.N. Welch -- the Antiques Clock Guy has a little background piece on the company, whose glory days were in the 1870s and early 1880s.  This miniature kit is fairly straightforward to put together, but was a bit more effort than the banjo clock simply because there are more pieces -- delicate ones, with all of that carving! -- and they are attached to the main box at different depths.  I wasn't quite sure how to get the faux-glass insert to stay where I wanted it, so I ended up cutting some props from the spare bits of the matrix and gluing them inside the box, thus --

before staining them and gluing the glass on top.  If I had been a little more experienced, I would have tried coloring the edges of the Plexiglas with a marker, as I found later that from some angles the silvery-white reflection from the edge is surprisingly bright.

(I have just now noticed that the coved molding on the original Donita goes this way \__/ on the upper shelf and this way /__\ on the lower, where the miniature one has them both go the same way!  Well, maker's choice, then, I guess!)

I couldn't quite tell where the two little pieces went that matched the bottom piece of trim, so I glued them behind that as bracing -- and after that I decided to use the leftover centimeter or so of molding as more bracing, behind the "bonnet" trim at the top.  Stability is good.  I didn't have enough for the side trims, but the upper and lower ones looked more vulnerable to me.

As for knitting, it's true I have been neglecting it dreadfully in my fascination with miniatures, but I find myself thinking wistfully of it at odd moments now, or waiting at the optometrist's, say, and thinking, "Oh, I could be knitting!"  I got out of having to knit that lace schmatta for my mom, as it happened -- quite innocently, I assure you! -- when I discovered that there wasn't nearly enough of the wool to finish it.  And just when I was getting the hang of the first chart, too -- oh, well.  I've had to rip back and re-do the Priscilla hug-me-tight a couple of times, wanting to stick with the original pattern -- which is much of the point of knitting from historical patterns, of course -- but I couldn't see how, as written, the thing would possibly fit even my embonpoint (cough), with a 45 deg. angle from shoulder to -- theoretically, anyway -- opposite hip.  It might almost have gone past my hip and around the back to the other hip.  I think I have found a happy medium, increasing every third row, but this is a pain in the neck, necessitating actually keeping track of which row I'm on instead of just saying, "right side, time to increase," since on the angled edge it's surprisingly difficult to tell how many rows ago was the previous increase.  On the other hand, it is probably the only thing that is keeping me awake in this eternal garter stitch, so there is that.

(I'm a bit embarrassed at how wobbly this is, and am rather nervously hoping that it will come out in the blocking.  I have not had this trouble with Matchmaker before.  Either the lot is a bit off -- I did find four splices and a knot in the first ball alone! -- or I really am dozing off as I knit!)