A Bluestocking Knits

Happy New Year!

I am actually knitting, though you wouldn't much know it from recent posts, to be sure.  The Gladys socks are done and waiting to be photographed, as many things have interrupted, including -- hurray! -- a spate of rainy weather, much welcome in the parched Southland, though just not very good for photographing indoors.  I've also started a "hug-me-tight" of sorts, from a 1917 Priscilla book, hoping to race through its simplicity in time to take advantage of it in this sudden chill.  (Quick! garter stitch!!)

(This first ball of Matchmaker had FOUR splices and a knot!!)

Well, it is the time of year, of course, for looking back and then ahead.  I didn't accomplish many of my sewing ambitions at all, I'm afraid, finishing only two of the nine projects I named.  Sigh.  Sometimes I look back, say twenty-five or thirty years, and wonder how on earth I managed to read so much, and write so many letters -- long ones, too, fifteen or twenty sheets of airmail paper sometimes! -- but then I remember that of course that was both pre-children and pre-internet (which came in that order for me), and both can be massive time-devourers.  I still do want to sew all of those projects I chose, and have fabric ready for the apron for sure, so that may be on the schedule fairly soon.  Laura has in fact made some tentative I-want-to-learn-to-sew noises lately, which might help get my sewing inspiration warmed up again.

(And wouldn't you know it, as I write, Julia comes creeping in -- it is 5:45 in the morning on the first day of school after the holidays -- and says, "Um, it's raining and I have to take my clarinet to school, could you drive me, please?"  I have added the "please" myself, but as it happens even without it this was very polite for Julia.  Well, I can't really be annoyed at the interruption, as I am frequently saying, "Careful! don't let your clarinet get wet!" as she now has a very nice wooden one for concerts and fine days!)

Talking of fine days, we stayed at David's parents' house in Pasadena on New Year's Eve, to get Julia up for her three a.m. call before the Rose Parade.  It was alarmingly windy in the night, but dawned, as it so often does for the Parade, cold and sunny.  We didn't get grandstand seats this year, but watched the first half or so on television, then walked over to the park at the end of the route, where the floats and equestrian units broke off in one direction, and the bands went in another to have something to eat -- it was past ten by that time, a long stretch for teenagers to go without food, let alone after a 5 1/2-mile march! -- and then to get back on the buses which would take them back to the starting point.  So we had to stand to see the end of the parade, and not quite optimally, but this photo shows how close we were to the bands!  They sounded great, too -- at the Parade and a few days earlier at Disneyland -- we were very proud parents!

I still have a few letters to go on the ABChallenge, and it's getting a bit harder now as the last letters are not so ubiquitous -- oh, there's another "u" word!  I found this rock on the trail (urban, another "u" word) where I walk, and took it home because it is so pleasingly different.  No idea what it is -- the lighter parts look granitey, but then there are those curious strata, quite different from our common salt-and-pepper native granite.  Folded granite or migmatite, maybe?  (Whew, that Wikipedia article is like the Peanuts "wa-wah-wah wah wah wa-wah" to me!  I still really like my rock, though.)

That challenge reminds me that I actually still have a couple of project left to do on my "Knitting the Knitter's Almanac" project, since I, er, paused after the Nether Garments Event.  I didn't mean to give up, and so still consider that I haven't, although twelve years is a fairly long time for just a pause!  I still have October's Open-Collared Pullover, November's famous Moccasin Socks, and December's Hurry-Up Last-Minute Sweater to go.

And a pair of plain socks on the needles for something portable -- plainish.  This is Loops & Threads Perfect Pair sock yarn in the puzzlingly-named color "Drive All Night," which is actually very charming and springlike.

Knitting in the Movies and TV: "The Durrells in Corfu"

Watching "The Durrells in Corfu" on Sunday evening, as one does, I spotted this jumper of Margo's, worn a number of times throughout the episode, including in an earlier scene, which is a better view of the jumper itself but darker because it's indoors at Spiro's house --

Margo has at least one other knitted jumper, in this scene from episode 4 this season (the one with Larry's friend the Indian prince) --

but it was the mustard-colored one that caught my attention, partly because unlike the striped one it looks hand-knitted, and because it immediately reminded me of one in Marion Foale's Classic Knitwear book --

Foale's version is clearly inspired by the 1930s, and hers -- called "Badminton" in the book -- is so like the one that Margo is wearing that I wouldn't be surprised if the series costume designer used Foale's pattern, just trimming some of the 1980s hem to a more 1930s length.

Actually, all of the clothes in the series are very good, and the high-waisted, slim 1930s lines suit Keeley Hawes especially well, though I'm sure that she would look lovely in pretty much anything.

I love this hat.  I do not have much of a "hat head," but if I saw this hat in a shop I would buy it at once.

Louisa also has a number of very pretty blouses, many of which I would happily wear -- certainly this one, both for its simplicity and that lovely raspberry color.

As it happened, the first thing that came up while I was looking for photos for this post was a review on “Frock Flicks,” the gist of which was “if this were my family, I’d have run screaming into the night.”

Why are they such shits to each other? Why do they stick together if they hate each other so much? There’s no sense of familial affection or tradition or anything holding them together, and they don’t have any money, there is literally no reason to be together when they’re all such assholes to each other (except for Gerry, the little boy, who isn’t a total jerk, and obviously, being so young, does depend on his mom).

Admittedly, I missed some episodes here and there – including the very first one – so, fair enough, I might have missed the “long, tedious stretches of people being awful jerks to each other, and not in a fascinating or revealing way”. But I am coming away from the series with a vastly different impression. The Durrells in the series certainly take the famous English eccentricity to rather drastic heights, but I don’t at all see a family who hate each other, I see one in which at least three of its members are almost completely self-absorbed, which leads to them giving their own wants a far higher priority than anyone else’s, and with a mother who is indulgent to a rather amazing degree, especially for the 1930s – but this isn’t hate, or even dislike. It can certainly lead to exasperation with siblings and/or parent – and yes, “selfish bastard” behavior – but is a different emotion altogether.

The English have a tendency to not run away from unpleasant things, which at one end can lead to the sort of attitude shown during, say, the Blitz, having a cup of tea on the rubble of one’s bombed-out house before setting to work cleaning up the mess, and on the other to – in the past, at least, less so now – sticking with a family one doesn’t much like (or even actively dislikes) because they are one’s family. This I think is part of the Durrells’ situation here – they have all come to Corfu, even though Larry at least is old enough have stayed in England on his own, but presumably he goes with his mother and siblings partly because he is lazy and self-indulgent enough to not want to bother supporting himself (he writes constantly but hasn’t published anything) and make a home on his own, but partly simply because his mother arranges to move the whole family. (By the way, the real Lawrence Durrell was married and possibly – depending on whether you read Gerald’s or Lawrence’s Wikipedia articles – already living on Corfu when the rest of the family moved there.) And again, the series family pretty clearly don’t literally hate each other, so the easiest thing is to acquiesce to their mother's notion and go to Corfu, albeit complaining about it most of the way.

Much of what’s irritating about the story is the hugely ethnocentric attitude this British family has toward the people around them in Corfu. Aside from two characters, naturalist Dr. Theo Stephanides and cab driver/all-around good-guy Spiros Halikiopoulos, the local Greeks are treated as strange foreigners, indecipherable oddities, merely obstacles to be dealt with, not legitimate independent people who should be understood on their own terms. And really, Dr. Theo and Spiros are only there to serve the needs of the Durrells and act as go-betweens with other Greeks. Most interactions the family has with the locals are of the ‘we’re British, we know best’ variety. It’s a genre that’s been done to death.

In fact, I rather appreciated that the series doesn’t shy away from the reality of that English ethnocentricity, which was still in full form in the 1930s. There have certainly been some expatriates throughout history who dove pretty completely into their adopted cultures, but most took that “little corner of England” with them to at least some degree, whether traveling or living abroad. It can be more than a little dismaying for us to see that attitude now, especially when it manifests itself in overt racism and subjugation – which it does not in “The Durrells in Corfu” – but personally I find it more out-of-place to see a character who is anachronistically broad-minded and tolerant, someone “modern” in a “period” setting (one of the reasons, in fact, that I increasingly found Claire Randall Fraser in the Outlander books to be a bit jarring). It may very well be that from series 1 alone, this is all the impression that we get of the Durrells – except perhaps from Gerry – but there it is. It also should be remembered that the series is clearly not holding up the Durrells as sterling examples of model behavior, either, and thus their British-is-best attitude is not being condoned here, but mocked.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the characters are, like real people, taking quite some time to develop and mature.  In episode 6 this season, Larry, during a disastrous attempt by their mother to throw a birthday party for Gerry (she literally doesn't remember that he is turning thirteen, not twelve, and has wrapped up a knitted bunny toy for him more suitable in fact to a four-year-old), shows her some of Gerry's zoological notes and says to her, "Gerry's going to be a really good writer" -- one of the few times that Larry has said something really generous, or shown a real awareness of any of his siblings as a person.  I have been watching the series partly because it is filmed so beautifully and partly because it's hard not to think "what kind of idiotic things are these people going to do next?" but I'm enjoying it this season even more because the Durrells, while still as the English would say, completely mad, but also are, slowly but surely, growing up.

"Mrs. Tim of the Regiment"

"Second June.  Spend the morning lying in a deck chair in the garden pretending to knit.  How glorious to have nothing to do!"

Mrs. Tim of the Regiment always seems to me like the "first" D.E. Stevenson novel, though it was neither the first one she published nor the first one I read.  But it is so indelibly and characteristically Stevenson that it is difficult not to think of it as such.  As it happens, this "diary of a officer's wife" was actually based on Stevenson's own, so that I'm sure we can take much of Hester Christie's character and sense of humor as very like Stevenson's own as well.  Mrs. Tim's diary -- there are four books, spanning the early 1930s to the early 1950s -- are rather like the Provincial Lady's, whom Jilly Cooper calls "gentle, disaster-prone, yet curiously dry-witted," though probably less of the last two than the Provincial Lady's, especially if you read the P.L.'s humor as more often than not verging on the satirical.  Mrs. Tim, though an army wife and therefore subject to the whims of the Service, has many of the same things to deal with as the Provincial Lady, being of a similar age and situation -- running a household, raising children, managing servants and an occasionally obtuse husband, and observing the quirks of those around her -- which last Mrs. Tim for the most part enjoys, I think in a warmer manner than Delafield's heroine.  That, I think, is one of Stevenson's salient characteristics, and Mrs. Tim's humor and good-nature I think keep her from seeming to us as caustic and near to the razor's edge as the Provincial Lady occasionally can.  Mrs. Tim seems to enjoy life much more than her contemporary.  One of the chief delights of both, however, is that wonderfully English -- British, I must say, for Stevenson was a Scot -- understated self-deprecation.

"I've heard a lot about Mrs. Christie from some friends of hers staying at the hotel -- Mr. and Mrs. McTurk," [says Mr. Baker to Mrs. Loudon.]
     I try to explain that I don't know them very well, but Mr. Baker does not listen.  "Very nice friends to have, Mrs. Christie, especially the lady.  She's always saying how sorry she is at you leaving Kiltwinkle.  It must be a bit trying for a lady like you not to have a settled home of your own, isn't it now?"
     This statement is often made to me, and it always annoys me, chiefly, I think, because it is true.  But some time ago I found a quotation which seemed to meet the case, and I always make use of it on these occasions.
     "'To a resolved mind his home is everywhere,'" I reply sententiously.

For my virtual D.E Stevenson Knitalong, I couldn't decide between two patterns from "Patons Specialty Knitting Book No.33" by Patons Australia, the "Faith" jumper, above, originally in blue bouclé with one of the ties in a contrasting grey, or

the "Amy" originally in Paton's Rose wool (a fingering weight) in "Kenya Red" -- I wonder what shade that is?!  Interesting that we would certainly call that a cardigan now, where in the early 1930s or so when this came out it was a "coat" -- there are three other front-buttoning garments in this particular book, two of which are called coats and one which is, strangely, called a "jumper-cardigan" though it clearly has two front pieces buttoning up in the middle.  They both seem very "Mrs. Tim" to me -- sensible, not too frivolous or youthful but still not at all dowdy (the frivolity would come with the hat, no doubt!), practical yet appealing.

(This Paton's book is indexed at Ravelry, though the patterns are not available there; the entire booklet has been scanned and is available here courtesy Bex of Subversive Femme.)

Actually, I'm strongly tempted to knit one or both of these!

Thoughts on the "Mittens Knitted on Two Needles"

Poring over the March/April issue of "Piecework", I was reading the article by Lesley O'Connell Edwards about two Midlands sisters who were writers of knitting "receipts" in the 1860s and 70s, and one of the photos was of a "mitten knitted on two needles" (mentioned in passing in the text) from one of the sisters' books.  It was an interesting little thing that piqued my curiosity, and it wasn't difficult to track down the book, scanned and available on the internet thanks to the wonderful folks in charge of the Richard Rutt Collection at the University of Southampton.  There was apparently an earlier edition of this particular book around 1866, but there doesn't seem to be a copy online, and my mittens are knitted from the 1876 ed. instructions.

Edwards notes the "radical construction" of this mitten, wondering what prompted the change from the usual welt-up versions.  It certainly crossed my mind while knitting, too -- the thumb gusset is a rather ingenious use of short rows, but what's wrong with working them in the round?  Maybe Miss Harriet was one of those who find four needles a bother, or -- like Elizabeth Zimmermann a few generations later -- exceedingly fond of garter stitch, much easier-worked flat?

But never mind!  The pattern is quite easy to follow, with no unfamiliar abbreviations and only a few things like "put your needle at liberty through the last stitch" which is very euphonious but just a little bit puzzling nowadays (I'm pretty sure I know what she means, but I don't know why the needle is "at liberty" -- is it not at other times? &c. &c. &c.)

I had no idea what this new-fangled "Laine de Vienne" wool is, but some leftover Regia 4-ply came up to gauge for me quite nicely.  The Kroy Sock is a bit heavier, but turned out all right as a border.

I used the lace cast-on (like the usual cable cast-on but instead of putting the needle between the last and next-to last stitches before making a new one, you put it into the last stitch) -- I figured this would make the later seam a bit softer.  I also decided to interpret the injunction to "observe the 1st stitch in each row must be slipped" more specifically as "slip 1st st purl-wise with yarn in front, and K every last st" as we often do now, so as to get the "chain" selvage (you must be sure on Row 5, though, to K the last st, not P as you have been merrily doing, or you will have a little "bump" in your handsome chain).

The original pattern has you work a "colored border" in K2, P2 ribbing before sewing up the mitten.  For once in my life, though, I decided that something I'm going to wear myself looked a little too plain, and that just a touch of pretty at the top would be quite appealing.  I didn't feel any qualms about not sticking to the source, as I think this would be quite in keeping with a period knitter if these were being made for a lady or girl, instead of the more sober 2x2 ribbing.

I did have to juggle the gauge and number of stitches more than a bit, but fair enough, and ended up working this picot crochet edging from the wrong side, as the picots tended to lean towards me, which would be outwards if on the RS.  I have found also that I quite like that little rope-like line that comes from working single-crochets through the front loop only, and liked the look of that here, so my edging turned out to be this:

Rnd 1 (RS): SC to end, turn.
Rnd 2 (WS): Ch 1, SC into front loop to end.
Rnd 3 (WS): Pico 1 (SC1, ch3, Sl into same SC), SC1, rep to end.

I wrote down what I did on the first mitten so that I could repeat it easily on the second one, but as you can clearly see in the above photo, I apparently did not use a US5 hook, as the second border turned out much bigger! and I had to rip it out and do it again, after I'd already washed and blocked them.

There is no method specified for sewing up, but since these are done horizontally, I used the duplicate-stitch method, stockinette for the rib section and garter for the hand. This turned out pretty well, and much of my wobbliness -- it was difficult to get the tension just right -- is happily disguised by the welt pulling in at just that spot!

I also sewed up each mitten before working the crochet border, as it seemed simpler to accomplish the latter that way.

Note that I did not have to make the last section on my mitt a little shorter than the pattern's as I usually do -- I like mitts to end just about at my knuckles -- so you could certainly add some stitches to the top end (slipping them with the pattern's "first 7" onto a stitch holder before making the thumb gusset) if you want the top longer.  You could also easily make the welt at the wrist a bit longer if desired.

(The fabric in the background is, by the way, a rather neo-William-Morris-y print I have bought for my Edwardian-apron-to-be ...)

Year or Period: 1876, though possibly earlier as the first ed. is ca.1866
Materials: Regia 4-fädig in color 1991 (grey heather) on US0 needles, and Paton's Kroy in "Muslin" with US3 hook
Hours to complete: Less than a week, including numerous false starts with the crochet edging
How historically accurate is it? Aside from the non-period wool, the body of the mitten is worked entirely to pattern, and the crochet edging is I feel a typical mid-Victorian modification
Sources/Documentation: The pattern is found in Miss H.P. Ryder's Winter Comforts and How to Knit Them (1876), available through the University of Southampton's "Victorian Knitting Manuals" page

Thoughts on the Winter Cuffs in Double Knitting

Here is my first historical knit of the year, and very timely it is, too, as the weather here can be quite cold at the moment (for southern California, mind), and in fact has gone all gloomy this morning, so a pair of warm cuffs is just the thing.  I wanted to make something with that lovely Blue-faced Leicester wool, though at DK weight it is considerably thicker than the original "four-thread Berlin wool" (The helpful article "Everyone His Own Knitting Needles" by Colleen Formby tells us that four-thread Berlin is equivalent to modern fingering weight) -- but the British Blue is a pleasure to knit with, from start to finish, and I don't mind compromising a bit now and then, especially since I am also being economical by using what is on hand!

The Godey's page shows how very basic old knitting patterns were -- I mean, yes, it's pretty obvious that you would have to bind off at some point (!), but it doesn't tell you how long to make the cuffs, to put the top border on, or to sew it up.  It's pretty generous of them, in fact, judging by a number of historical knitting patterns I've seen, just to tell the knitter what size needles to use.

The cuffs are fairly obviously knitted flat, by the double knitting instructions.  But I really don't much care for seams on my hands, so I worked my cuffs in the round, since of course this was well-known in 1861.  I can understand why this particular pattern isn't though, since double-knitting in the round nearly makes me tear out my hair.  Knitting the first attempts -- and I made numerous ones, trying to get the sizing right in this gauge -- I said, "Gaahhh!" more times working these things than in all my life up to this point, I guess.

Over an even number of sts:

• Round 1: *K1, sl 1 p-wise wyif, rep from * to end.
• Round 2: *Sl 1 k-wise wyib, P1, rep from * to end.

For a long time, my brain just did not want to slip a knit stitch and work a purl one.  This was not "mindless knitting," to be sure! I ended up having to stop murmuring to myself, "slip one, purl one, slip one purl one" since even though I was actually saying it, after a few minutes my fingers would just knit the stitch I was supposed to be slipping -- I had to stop thinking about the slipped stitches entirely, and just say "purl, [get the next one out of the way], purl, [get the next one out of the way]".  It's also surprisingly difficult to tell which round you are on, since once you have moved the working yarn around to wherever it's supposed to be for the next stitch, the just-worked stitches compress and you can't really tell unless you really interrogate it whether you just worked it or slipped it.

I couldn't help remembering Elizabeth Zimmermann saying in The Knitter's Almanac that double knitting always seemed to her "though fascinating, a great waste of time," because each stitch has to be handled twice, either knitting it or slipping it, then vice versa on the next row.  "The result is a rather charming tube of stocking-stitch, which occasionally sticks together where you made a mistake".  She does admit, though, that double knitting is light and fluffy, which she of course would have understood is because of the slipping process, since it stretches the stitch a little bit lengthwise -- this makes one's gauge a bit larger than regular stockinette would be even on the same needles, but does give the fabric that soft fluffiness.

To compensate for this difference in gauge, Elizabeth always casts on far fewer stitches for the edging and increases to size for the double-knitted section.  I suspect that the reason the Godey's pattern calls for such a large number of cast-on sts relative to the double-knitted section is because if you use a smaller number for the garter edges, you will have to work a more-than-usually stretchy cast-on and an exceptionally stretchy bind-off, otherwise you won't be able to get the cuffs over your hands!  But I like a snug cuff, and so having learned the lesson early from Elizabeth, I went with her suggestion to cast on half the number of sts required, so that the cuff fitted smoothly but not tightly.

I ended up casting on 30 sts in crochet cast-on with the white wool, working 6 rnds of garter st (not 4, it just looked better with another ridge), with purple Kfb on every st, then 50 rnds of double knitting, then with white dec'd every other st (with an SSK because it looked better, disguising the decrease rnd), then 5 more rnds garter, and finally a suspended bind-off to match the crochet cast-on.  (It's curious that although the British Blue must be considerably heavier than a fingering-weight "four-thread Berlin", my double-knitted section is only 6 sts fewer than the original larger size!)  And as it happened, I set this down for a few weeks, and then when I picked it up again my fingers seemed to suddenly get the hang of double-knitting in the round, and I managed to whip out each cuff in merely hours.

I was tempted, though in the end I did not, to make a vertical buttonhole a few rounds from the top of the double knitting section, so that the cuffs could be worn as muffatees if so desired -- I think this would also be an appropriate period variation, and I might make another pair later and incorporate the idea.

(Double knitting in the round with one strand of yarn, by the way, produces a tube except at the beg/end of the round.  Because the wool must be moved from one side to the other, it will necessarily have to go across the inside of the "tube" at this point.  There is also a slight ladder here, so I would advise taking these into consideration also, when deciding whether or not to work it in the round.)

The new badge is a painting called "Old Woman Knitting" (ca.1882) by Thomas Eakins.  I don't find anything more about it online -- I wonder if it was an oil sketch for a proposed, more finished, painting, hence the grid.  I like it very much the way it is.

The Project: "Winter Cuffs in Double Knitting"
Year or Period: 1861
Materials: 2 skeins British Blue Wool (pure Blue-faced Leicester) in Milk (white) and French (greyish purple), 2.5mm needles
Hours to complete: 29 January and 31 January 2017 (a day for each cuff!)
How historically accurate is it? I think my modifications are quite within the bounds of what a period knitter might do with the wool she had in hand, except for the gauge of the British Blue and possibly the suspended bind-off
Sources/Documentation: Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, no.62-63 (1861), p.164 (the pattern is reproduced in full in the image in this post)

Mora Mittens, First (Mis)steps

I started the Mora mittens on Wednesday -- it's slow-going, this two-end knitting, and the Mora Z-ply wool is rather a different beast from S-ply.  I expected the two-end process to require regular untwisting, which it does (I usually do this twice every round), but each strand is also untwisting itself as I knit, which means that quite often, it isn't really a "two-ply" yarn but "two plies lying next to each other", which makes it worm up on itself.

Then I was knitting blithely on, thinking I'm getting the hang of it and feeling pleased with myself, as one does, when I realized, looking at the gusset edging, that the purl stitches didn't stand out nearly as much as I expected them to.  I kept going for a few rounds thinking it might get better, but it didn't, so I looked at the instructions more closely -- you can see where this is going, I expect -- and discovered that I thought I knew how to make a purl stitch, but for the two-ended version, you don't just bring the yarn round to the front, purl, then take the yarn back, you have to bring it round a stitch earlier then take it back a stitch later, which gives you that little swoop on either side.  So I ripped the mitten back an inch or so -- although not far enough, as it turns out, since you can see at the bottom part of the gusset edging in the photo above that it looks a little uncertain just there.  It was a real bother ripping it out, because of course you work from a center-pull ball, and you can't just shove the center strand back in -- so I used a tip I'd seen somewhere, and stuck a spare double-pointed needle across the entry-point for the center strand, and butterflied both strands around that using the needle as a sort of cleat.

This morning when I looked at it in a rare patch of brilliant sunshine, I realized that, yes, the hook stitches I'd done earlier, around the cuff, were exactly the same -- viz., wrong.

See? they should all have that little swoop, similar to the chain path just above.  So I'm waiting a little this morning to make up my mind whether to rip it back to the beginning of the damask pattern and use the cleat trick to avoid rewinding, or just take the whole thing out completely and rewind the ball properly.  The first option might be more trouble than it's worth, but would (at least today) keep me from feeling like I've wasted all this time, but the second option would, in addition to having a properly-wound center-pull ball, also give me the opportunity to try and smooth out some tension blobs here and here.

On the bright side, I'm very happy with the cast-on, now that I've figured it out, wh. I must admit took some doing.  I will post some step-by-step pictures when I get to that point later.  It looks remarkably like the cast-on edge on the half-mittens in the Nordiska Museet, so that's a good sign!

"Mora Vantar"

The description of this lovely pair of twined-knitted mittens says that they were given to the museum by a Dr. Hazelius in 1873, who "got them many years ago from a Mora girl" -- a Morakulla, which is the same word used to describe many of the young women in Anders Zorn's paintings, as well as this one by Emelie von Walterstorff --

Ever since my first steps in two-end knitting, I've been dreaming about the Mora wool from Nancy Bush at The Wooly West, and so with my Christmas money I splurged on two skeins. This is Swedish Z-ply wool -- apparently especially suited to two-end knitting because of the way the twist lies -- so I'm looking forward to making Nancy's pattern from the Winter 2010 issue of "Knitting Traditions", with enough left over for the Ormsta wristwarmers!

Plain mittens in sheep's wool (fårull), from the village of Vinäs in Mora parish.  This well-used pair was acquired by the museum in 1891.  (I wonder what the hook-and-eye are for ...?)

The museum gives surprisingly little information about this pair in beautiful condition, except that they were acquired in 1879 as part of an ethnographic collection.  These are halvvantar, half-mittens.

This elegant pair of Mora vantar were given to the museum in 1877 by the committee for Sweden's participation in the World Exposition -- it doesn't specify which one, but I'm assuming the one in Philadelphia the year before.

Clearly two-end-knitted, but wildly different from the others.  According to a post by Lars ("Baritono") of Lappone, this kind of mitten was probably knitted to sell as souvenirs.  (I think that not only because the Dalarna region, having kept their traditional costumes as everyday wear longer than most Swedish regions, was especially picturesque, but also because of Carl Larsson, Dalarna was particularly popular with tourists.)

These images of Mora vantar -- mittens from Mora parish in Dalarna -- are all from DigitaltMuseum.se.

Adventures in Tvåändsstickning

Of course one can't be interested in the history of knitting, especially of Scandinavian knitting, without coming across tvåändsstickning, and I have seen it in my own books and here and there on the internet throughout the years, but I've always given a sort of not-for-me shrug and moved on.  There is a short section about it in Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way, and a rather longer one in Sheila McGregor's Complete Book of Traditional Scandinavian Knitting, to name just two on my shelf.  I don't know why I kept passing it by -- perhaps because of the fact that both Roberts and McGregor imply, by saying that instead of working it the traditional way with the two yarns in one hand, they do with with one strand in each hand, that it's really difficult -- but the other day I came across a photo on the internet, and, to coin a phrase, it had me at "Ormsta".  Something about it just made me think, I have to make that.

(The painting above is "Stickande Kulle (Girl Knitting)" (1901) by Anders Zorn, Mora parish's favorite son.  This is one of the areas in Dalarna in central Sweden where many of David's Swedish ancestors are from, and so from that and having consequently spent quite a lot of time buried, as it were, in Mora church books, of course I feel a particular affinity with the place.  The young woman in the painting is wearing the distinctive Mora green jacket, with the traditional green or red apron with simple colored bands near the hem.  Apparently it is obvious to folk knitters that she is working two-end knitting by the way she is holding her right hand, especially the first two fingers.)

I have a stash of wool that has been stuffed in a drawer for, I don't know, twenty-five years at least, which I bought with prize money from a rather gratifying first-place win in the county fair some time ago, but --

it is in a parlous state, I'm sorry to say.  It is Trendsetter Yarns' Micro Cashmore [sic], a superfine merino and microfiber blend, baby-soft and in a lovely pale lavender with a hint of grey.  I loved it so much from the moment I saw it, that the project I would make with it had to be utterly perfect, and although I tried any number of times, it never was.  Of course the yarn was rather battered after being knitted and ripped out and knitted and ripped out, but when looked at in a hopeful light, it is still whisper-soft and a beautiful color, and would be very pleasing as a set of mitts which could be worn under coat sleeves so that no-one would know how badly I've treated it, but could still be fondled for its amazing softness.  And so, feeling so unsettled this past week that I just wanted to knit something and thinking of this long-buried stash of wool in the drawer, and seeing the Ormsta mitts, it all just came together like the tumblers of a lock quietly clicking into place.

I do not, though, know a single person who can do this technique, so I turned perforce to the internet with a set of 2.5mm needles and a ball of the Cashmore in my hands.

This is I think a fairly good introduction to the technique, starting with one of the simpler cast-ons, and no worries about not understanding Swedish because there isn't any audio at all.  (I sympathize, by the way, with the translation "twined knitting" because the two strands of yarn twine around each other as you work, like ivy vines, but I rather prefer the more literal translation of "two-end knitting".  The Swedish word is a bit of a tongue-twister for English speakers, but the pronunciation "tvoh-endts-stick-ning" isn't far off.)

After a couple of attempts at using two balls of wool, by the way, I realized that it is much easier to untwist the two strands -- which you will have to do regularly, there is no way around it -- if you are working with a center-pull ball, because you can just hold either the ball or your knitting in the air and let it unspin itself, which is harder with two balls plus knitting.

This method makes a nice, soft, center-pull ball, though after a while, when I wanted a second one and the first was still in use, I thought I might as well learn another Scandinavian technique while I'm at it, and try a nostepinne ("nohst-uh-pin-nuh").  I don't actually have one, but thought of a reasonable substitute borrowed from the girls --

I haven't got this technique at all yet, understanding it in principle -- which is brilliantly simple -- but not in practice.  My first ball is much more ovoid than anything I've seen come off a nostepinne in other people's hands, but I suspect it's really worth figuring out.

I decided to work a beginning section on my first sampler with the yarns held one in each hand, so that I could see the difference between the two techniques, and I'm glad I did because it is quite clear.  This is the outside --

and this the inside --

I expect the wobbliness of the stranded portion would smooth out a bit with blocking, but even without you can see how much more firm and dense the twisted portion is.  There is also a distinctive slight angle to the fronts of the knit stitches, so I'm a bit puzzled by Roberts' and McGregor's assertions that you can work it stranded and have it come out "the same" -- oh well.  McGregor says that she likes the fluffier (and thus theoretically warmer) texture of the two-handed version, which is fine and logical, of course, but I'm exploring the technique here, so wanted to try it the traditional way.

Rather surprisingly, I could find little information about how to work the various stitches, only lots of examples of them.  One of the helpful places was spinnity's "Larus and Ardea" set of fingerless mitts on Knitty, which describes (in words only) the basic variations.  I also found this post helpful, from Rebecca at The Fiber Bug.

When I decided that I wanted to try a three-strand cast-on, the only illustrated tutorial I found online was from Kitty at Knit Buddies, though I'm pretty sure I'm not doing it right, as mine looks quite different from hers --

I don't know if I've "unvented" something or if I've just put the back side at the front, but it looks quite tidy at least, so I carried on.  It's firm and yet quite stretchy and it doesn't curl, though obviously I should also figure out the "real" method!

So here is my sampler so far --

with the “easy” two-end knitting (two-handed) for 10 rounds at the bottom and then 10 rounds of properly-twisted two-end (one-handed), then a twined purl round which makes a distinct braid-like line, then isolated crook stitches, a "chain path" of two rounds of crook stitches, and then what I thought I was doing with the isolated crook stitches, the little O's like in the Ormsta mitts, which is actually a two-round process, making the crook stitch (which is a P, K, P combination with the two yarns held on their respective sides of the fabric) in the first round, then a sort of reverse-crook (K, P, K, again with the yarns held on their respective sides). Yeah, it's a little complicated, but I think I'm getting the hang of it! though I can certainly imagine a quiet "Nej, min vän, garnet går det så här" if I were to knit in Swedish company! I felt confident enough last night to start another sampler, which I hope will actually be a wearable wrist-warmer before too long.

Miss Marple Knits

It seems appropriate to end this little series of knitting in the movies and television with Miss Marple, Agatha Christie's famous amateur sleuth, one of whose main characteristics is that she is often to be found knitting, and it seems that in the half-dozen-plus films and series featuring Miss Marple over the years, the knitting part has come more and more into play.

I admit that I haven't seen any of Margaret Rutherford's 1960s Miss Marple outings in full, and so I don't really know whether she actually knits much in the films, but I could find only the one image to use in this post.  She isn't actually knitting in the second one, obviously, but she is wearing a wonderfully dumpy cardigan as well as a knitted hat, with characteristically Rutherford pompom of course.  (Apparently, she insisted in wearing her own clothes to portray Miss Marple!)

Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple in a single outing in 1980, so perhaps there was not much time for knitting.  I don't see a single image of Helen Hayes as Miss Marple actually knitting, which is a shame -- I don't remember her two films, though I must have seen them, so I will certainly make the effort to do so again.

Joan Hickson played Miss Marple in the late 1980s and early 90s for the first television series, one that remains firmly in the consciousness of many viewers as the definitive Marple.

The production values and attention to detail for Geraldine McEwan's tenure as Miss Marple in "Agatha Christie's Marple" were high enough that she was often shown knitting, although I will not be the first to say, nor the last I'm sure, that for a series called "Agatha Christie's Marple" it strayed rather far from the original at times.  I am still hoping that McEwan was simply doing what the director asked for.

Julia McKenzie took over from McEwan after the latter's retirement, and I must say that she fits my mental image of Miss Marple rather more (I won't say "better" because I admire McEwan tremendously) -- and of course I love the fact that pictures of her knitting in the series abound!

Bonus -- slightly out of order, but how could I not end with this? --

Miss Marple herself wearing a classic keyhole scarf.  Free patterns are available for Skiff's Miss Marple Scarf here, and another one here by SusanneS-vV, and an actual 1948 one here from The Sunny Stitcher.  Just for fun, here's a faux-fox version.  I knitted mine up -- in two days! -- in some of the late and much-lamented Jaeger Extrafine Merino left over from my Pearl Buck Swing Jacket, in the beautiful elderberry shade 944 (about 80g).

Knitting in the Movies (and TV): "Home Fires"

This is a bit old, but I was weeding out the images file on my computer this morning and realized I'd not posted these yet.  They are from the late "Home Fires" -- yes, it's been cancelled -- which I watched sort of half-fascinated, because Blitz-era England is one of my fascinations, and half-guiltily, since it was not a little soapy at times.  I do love Francesca Annis, though, in just about anything.

Part of these photos, I admit, are for the aprons and pinnies as much as for the knitting, though!  Above we have the ladies of the village out blackberrying -- Pat on the right (Claire Rushbrook) has a fairly typical cardy in a basketweave stitch.  Each of the women has a different yet very typically-1940s apron, Erica (Frances Grey) a wrap-around, Frances (Samantha Bond) a scoop-neck, and Pat a full one, probably H-back but we can't see this.

 An apparently favorite slipover worn by the butcher's son with the overprotective mother (Will Attenborough and Claire Price respectively), who has presumably knitted it herself.  Don't get me wrong, I completely understand not wanting to send your son off to shoot and be shot at, but she's a bit mad about it at the same time.  She herself has an interesting raglan-sleeved cardigan in a rather lovely sea-foam green.

Curiously, Frances's apron seems to have no ties, which I think would be fairly annoying, with it dragging in things.

An absolutely bang-on perfect 1940s pullover in chevron stripes on the blind Isobel (Gillian Dean).  If looks could kill, the entire Luftwaffe would have simply dropped stone-dead from the skies at this glare from Mrs. Cameron (Francesca Annis).

A very pretty green lacy cardigan worn by Kate (Rachel Hurd-Wood).  I think her sister Laura (Leila Mimmack) is also wearing a knitted cardigan of some sort, but in this picture it isn't quite clear.

The man we love to hate, the thoroughly-nasty Bob Simms (Mark Bazeley) in another perfectly-period slipover, this one a classic faded Fair Isle.

Sarah (Ruth Gemmell) has this very pretty cardigan in the famous King Charles brocade stitch, accented presumably with embroidered flowers inside lines of the diamonds at the front.

The wardrobe for this series is really excellent -- full marks, especially for including lots of period-looking knits!

And if you like the soundtrack, it was composed by Samuel Sim, with the haunting title track sung by Synergy Vocals, and for the time being at least, you can listen to the whole album on YouTube --